Plustek Opticfilm 7300
by Plustek
|
List Price: Our Price: $250.00 You Save: $39.00 (13%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Plustek Opticfilm 7300
Customer Review: Some tips for an excellent unit
Summary: 5 Stars
I did my due diligence before buying this scanner. Ten years ago I decided to digitize all of my negatives and slides and there was a huge selection of dedicated slide/film scanners to chose from; Nikon, Canon, Polaroid, Epson, among others. At the time, I chose a Minolta Dual Scan V with 2700 dpi.
Now only Nikon and Plustek remain available in the U.S. I wanted the Nikon V ED, but it has been discontinued and the Nikon Coolscan 2000 ED is over $2,000 with Amazon stating it "usually ships in 1-2 months." My initial preference was for the English Reflecta RP 7200 which has a 7200 dpi and Silverfast AI software., but it is not available in the U.S. and the Pacific Image 725 OU, which seems to be identical, does not include Silverfast. Amazon offered the Plustek at $[...] with Silverfast SE software and free shipping and I couldn't resist.
The Plustek arrived well packaged and setup was quite fast and simple. Documentation is minimal so reading user reviews on Amazon was very helpful in avoiding pitfalls. Specifically, I did not waste time with the Plustek software, but went directly to the Silverfast. NOTE: you MUST install the Plustek disk first because it contains the necessary drivers for the hardware. I have Photroshop CS3 on a Windows XP system with a Dual Pentium 1.7 and 4GB of RAM. I installed using the Photoshop TWAIN plug-in and was up and running in less than 20 minutes.
I strongly suggest registering the software immediately after installation so that you can download the most recent update. The version in the box is not the most recent, and may be the cause of some complaints about it not working with Photoshop and/or Macs. For some reason, I was unable to register from within Silverfast, but I went to [...] and registered without a problem. Download and save the update for future use in case you need to re-install. I would also suggest typing the serial number in your word processor and saving the document so that you can cut & paste later.
The Silverfast software has a reasonably high learning curve, but a few simple tests in the beginning showed me what worked best in my situation and also convinced me that most editing should be done in Photoshop. Specifically, I scanned a small cropped section of the same image at 2400, 3600, and 4800 dpi and compared them side by side. I found that 2400 was adequate for family photos or images that would print at 8 x 10 or smaller and 3600 worked best for me with images I intended for larger format. There was a small increase in image clarity at 4800, but not, I felt, sufficient to justify the huge increase in scanning time. I did find that running the 2X Multi-Scan feature significantly improved image detail.
One problem I encountered was that when I did my initial tests, I tried running several features at once and managed to freeze the system. I re-booted and all was well but suddenly Silverfast no longer accessed Photoshop via TWAIN. I uninstalled and re-installed twice with no improvement. An query to Silverfast via their website brought an e-mail the next day (possible corrupted TWAIN shortcut. Copy and replace it) but in the meantime I had re-installed again using the regular Photoshop/StandAlone plug-in method and all was well again.
Bottom line: The unit works beautifully.
Customer Review: great little scanner
Summary: 5 Stars
after 2 weeks and over 700 negatives and slides scanned i find very little to complain about with this scanner. i am using this under osx leopard and have not tried the windows software.
pros - depending on the quality of the negatives or slides the results can be absolutely amazing. some well preserved slides i scanned, kodak of unknown film type, at 1200 dpi produce 1.3 megabyte files of approximately 7.1 megapixles - 3320x2240 pixels. color saturation and replication was excellent using the default settings. color negatives from kodak gold 200 also scanned excellent using the default settings. slight changes to the saturation and brightness were necessary on a few of the negatives but those were a result of the lighting when the pictures were taken. for black and white negatives the default settings for kodak tmax 400 and trix 400 work very well. the only items i have needed to change are the brightness for midtones and overall brightness depending on how the picture was exposed orginally. several negatives i scanned at 2000 dpi, both color and bw, and the size of the files grows to about 11 megabytes each, 5577x3763 pixels. still excellent quality scan, just about 3 times longer to actually scan the file. i have not used the more advanced featurse for automatic scratch removal so i cannot comment on that part of the software. if your negatives or slides have been stored in protective sleeves, the 3 hole punch style with 6 sleeves for 6 pictures each seem to have worked best for me, the results can be fantastic. a few color negatives i have tried that were loose in the packets ritz camera would return your pictures in have a had a lot of scratches on the negatives.
cons - 1. the software will not work without stamping a big DEMO text across the scans unless you register it thru the internet. this is lousy! especially as the software provided is an SE version. read Special Edition with less features than a full version. 2. user name has to be capital first letter of first name and capital first letter of last name. you cannot type your user name in all caps or all lowercase. registration fails otherwise but does not tell you why. 3. how do you this on a machine that does not have access to the internet? i.e. a dedicated workstation in an office would not be able to use it. 4. sometimes when scanning bw negatives the saturation will wig out and the displayed color will change to a purplish hue. turning the saturation setting to the lowest setting corrects this but i am not sure why it happens in the first place.
neutral - as stated by others scanning is a little slow. you will not scan your entire collection in a weekend. considering the amount of tweaking i have done on underexposed or overexposed pictures i can see automatic scanning might not be best for everyone.
final comments - on osx after the scan is complete the file is opened with preview so you can rotate it then if you need to. i would recommend this scanner to someone else who has the time, the collection, and the desire to scan a lot of negatives or slides. the only negative, pun intended, i have is the software registration - especially for an SE version of software.
Customer Review: scanner 4.5*. software 2*
Summary: 3 Stars
The scanner is very easy to set up and use. And from what I could tell, it's the cheapest slide/film scanner out there that works with Macs. The only problem I've had is that while the slide scanner does have notches for positioning the slides, they are very subtle, and I've had to reposition slides over and over. I'm assuming that as I get more experience, I'll be able to get this correct the first time. I would prefer a no-fault single slide feeder to this. The scan quality is good.
The software ... first to say, I've been doing slide and flatbed scanning for over 15 years and have used a wide variety of software. This is one of the worst. A beginner without experience will find this very easy to use to get started, but if you are experienced, you might be as frustrated as I am.
1. the worst part is that it keeps crashing. And since it keeps crashing, I have to reenter the loooong serial number each time.
2. The selector/cropper doesn't work like you expect - using the handles to enlarge or reduce the scanning portions. Sometimes it would let me redraw the shape from scratch, other times it didn't work. Not acceptable.
3. The default scan size is 1 inch. Now who wants a 1 inch digital image? Why let you choose dpi and then ignore your choice? It remembers your choice from slide to slide within a session, but didn't in the next session. Or didn't because it crashed. Maybe it remembers things when it doesn't crash.
4. The color adjust sliders are a blunt weapon, but the auto color/contrast adjustment works better than the one in Photoshop.
5. I also find it a problem that it doesn't just supply some kind of name for each scan. Having to stop and come up with a name for each slide slows me down.
6. The Photoshop plug in doesn't let you run the software within Photoshop, it just launches the software itself. Why bother?
The solution to this costs money. I've used the VueScan software for years with flatbed scanners and found it superior to any software that ships with a scanenr. The software supports this scanner on both Macs & Windows machines and corrects all the problems I have with the SilverFast. I wish I didn't have to spend more money, but this will make the scanner a much more useful tool.
Customer Review: Good scanner that does the job done
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been using this scanner for a couple of days now, and have scanned approx. 50 negs.
Pros: Works as promised. Installation is quick and easy. You can get the software installed and ready to work in minutes. I tried both Quick Scan and Intelliscan. If you are trying to preserve your treasured memory recorded on your negs, don't bother with Quick Scan as its result is quite poor. Intellican, together with SliveFast software, on the other hand can produce very good results. I'm now using Intelliscan exclusively to scan all my negs into digital photos. SilverFast software is powerful and feature rich. There are many switches and knobs you can turn to adjust your scan result. The build quality of this machine is also very impressive.
Cons: I consider these things minor, but they do affect user experience.
1) There are 3 Quick Start guides when you open the box, how will you know which one to go first? Well, let me document it here so everyone else can save some time. Follow the Quick Start guide for hardware and driver installation first. If you don't want to bother with Quick Scan that generates poor result, skip the guide on that. Follow the guide on SilverFast software installation guide. Once finished, you can start scanning your negs and slides using Intelliscan.
2) The learning curve for SilverFast is steep because its documentation is not very well organized. The CD does contain QuickTime movies that explain various features in the software, but there is nothing to connect them together to give you a bigger picture on the work flow that you will go through. But I still find that to be more useful than the doc.
3) The film holder is not the easiest thing to use. I wish it had "teeth" that can quickly and easily hold your neg strips in place.
4) If you plan to scan all your negs accumulated over the years in one weekend, it won't happen.
Conclusion: Overall, it's a very good machine that gets the job done. Result is good, and price is reasonable. For all the memory recorded on your early pictures, spending a bit time to preserve it is well worthwhile.
Customer Review: MAC User Review
Summary: 4 Stars
I hope this review helps out any MAC / OSX 10.5 people out there.
My criteria was to buy a decent 35mm film scanner that fell within $200 - $300. Had to be OSX compatible and create scans around 5 megs each I believe it can go up to 12 meg scans.
At first I thought I would be stuck with buying a really expensive scanner but did read some reviews of this Plustek. As others have described the instructions are lacking.
Installation.
Based on the my installation experience of the software this improved compared from the past reviews. I installed the silverfast software SE software and and started scanning within 10 minutes. I recommend that you also go to their website for the latest update. I received this in November 08 and was several revisions down. Everything went smoothly after the update.
Experience
Depending on the quality you are looking for this unit did go beyond my expectations with old 35mm film. The speed to scan is not bad. If you are using single pass. You can use up to 16 pass scans but that does take much longer (Noticed the Silverfast app would crash after first installing the sotfware. To fix this I ran disk utility to repair permissions and everything is working fine). A single pass scan take about a minute to show up on my macbook pro. Dust removal does work but really depends on how much damage was done to the film. The more damage, the more you will need to retouch using photoshop.
Finally, the filter presets for the type of film does work great. Use this!
Final Impressions
As I am writing this I dropped this down from 5 to 4 stars. For the price this is a great scanner. Works with my Macbook Pro and and does excellent scans. It is a manual feed scanner. I am taking one star away because it does not include the best documentation and the web site support is rather lacking. The Silverfast software is not as intuitive as other OS X applications but isn't too bad after getting used to it. If you have prior experience with scanning and retouching this is a great film scanner.