There's some good deals to be had on the Epsons now. B&H had the 750 for just over 600.00 plus two rebates totaling 100.00
If I were in the same situation I'd take advantage of the discount pricing through B&H, plus the rebates, and invest the money saved into the following:
- Upgrade the bundled Silverfast Ai to the Studio Edition - multi-exposure, aaco, and some other nice features not included in the bundled version.
- Purchase a couple IT8 targets direct from Silverfast so you can properly calibrate the scanner. The supplied ones don't work directly with Silverfast.
- Invest in Joseph Holmes' excellent Chrome Space 100 profile and its 29 variants. Your color slides and negs will thank you for it.
Then, after you've done sufficient testing to determine the optimum film adjustment height, if you want/need to squeeze every last drop of performance out of this scanner, check out:
- Doug Fisher's BetterScanning variable height film holders and/or mounting station
- Experiment with wet mounting using either the KAMI kit from Aztek or the Lumina setup from ScanScience