Vincent Oliver reviews the Epson Perfection V750 Pro bundled with SilverFast Ai
The EPSON Perfection V750 PRO scanner review.

The V750 is EPSON's top of the range flatbed scanner designed specifically for the professional photographer and designer who needs high quality scans. As the V750 is supplied with identical film holders and other accessories to the V700, and has more or less the same specifications, I will skip my usual "What's in the box" section and will also skip the setting up section. If you want to know more about this then take a look at our V700 review.
Having said I will skip the setting up section, I will mention that I did encounter a problem installing SilverFast Ai. On running SilverFast, from the desktop icon, the application instantly shut down. On launching SF from within Photoshop CS2 the same thing happened, but this time it also shut down Photoshop. I downloaded an updated driver from the Lasersoft site and still had the same problem. I emailed LaserSoft and they replied within the hour giving full instructions on how to fully uninstall the app. and re-install again. It works fine now. As I had several versions of SilverFast installed it was bound to cause some conflict, other users probably won't have the same problem. I will cover SF and Monaco EZ Color later in this review.

Spot the difference.

The V750 is identical in appearance and construction to the V700, other than the writing on the front which now says V750 Pro. Internally the optical coating has been improved, we will test this in our review.

  1. The Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner is aimed at the high end consumer market, whereas the V750 is targeted for the professional user.
  2. The main difference between the two models is the V750 has an Anti-Reflection Optical Coating. This coating is applied to the CCD glass to eliminate or minimize the amount of reflections. Abnormal Ghost images are reduced.
  3. The V750 includes the full version of SilverFast Ai 6 together with Monaco EZ Colour management solution.
The film holders were the weak link for the V700 and now for the V750 too. As this is aimed at the professional user I would have expected a higher quality build from these holders - I wonder how long they will last under constant use by a professional.

The Fluid Mount Accessory is not supplied with the V750, it has to be purchased as a separate item, I will cover this in great detail later in the review - just waiting for some mounting fluid to arrive. Just to clarify this point, the Fluid Mount accessory will also work with the V700 and at a price of less than $50.00 it may prove to be an essential item to have - our tests later on will prove this one way or another.

The software difference between the V700 and V750 is that you get EZ Color together with IT8 targets, print and 5x4 film. The full Ai version of SilverFast is also included - shame Epson couldn't have left out Photoshop Elements 3 and given the Ai Studio version instead.
EZcolour SF
Monaco EZ Color (Colour) SilverFast Ai (not studio)
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IT8 IT8film
IT8 Target IT8 Film (5x4 supplied but not a 35mm slide)


(Source: photo-i, Vincent Oliver, 2006)