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I spent ten years doing everything on a v700 but eventually decided that a drum scanner was the way to go for the type of work that I do. It's certainly not the reasonable method and it does weigh 550 pounds as it's made of solid steel and you have to use a 20 year old Mac to run the software. The mounting station also takes up additional space and it takes a long time to wet mount the film and then scan it. I can at the very most get twelve 4x5 sheets scanned in during a full day. That's about three hours of mounting time and software setup followed by many more hours of actual scanning time.
What do I recommend to people that come to me asking the question about scanners? Just get a v550 or v600 if you do 35mm or MF, or the v700 or v800 if you also do 4x5. The v550's and 600's are so damn cheap that I can't see a reason to mess around with any other options and they will get you results as good as nearly all people will need. And after having to do manual color inversions with the drum scanner, I can honestly say that the Epson Scan software does a decent job of getting the colors close on negative film. If you really need something printed at the highest quality or need some more shadows pulled out of a slide, then send it out for drum scanning unless you decide you want to buy a scanner. The used drum scanners aren't really all that expensive these days and less than most Imacons on the market, but they do take an extreme level of commitment.
Pic related, scanned on the drum scanner.
