Plustek Opticfilm 7300
by Plustek
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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 |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Plustek Opticfilm 7300
Customer Review: Fantastic Scanner Comes With Junk Software
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great scanner burdened with one of the most ill-conceived software programs I've seen in 30 years. But, fear not, there is salvation. Get this scanner and then spend $39 for ScanVue software. You're still under $300 and you can create seriously good scans from 35mm film or slides. Here's what I liked about the scanner:
1. It is a simple USB interface.
2. The scanner is small and fits easily on a desktop.
3. The 35mm loading rails work pretty well. Better than most, not as good as I wish. They would be killer if they had sprockets. They don't.
4. The scan quality is far superior to my flatbed Epson 4990 photo.
5. It scans 35mm negatives, or transparencies (slides)
I don't see how you can beat this thing for the price. Now, about the included software - - it's called SilverFast. The first problem is the documentation. It comes on a bedsheet-sized piece of paper folded worse than a road map, and in about 8 languages. So, you have to keep flipping this gargantuan piece of paper too and fro, back and forth, to get some clues as to how to operate the software. That's insane right there. But, on a practical level, the software was unaware of "Ektar 100" color film. So, there was no chance at all of coming up with the right scan on my negatives. Try as I might, the scans simply looked hideous. and the user interface looks about 30 years old. This is simply crap and will make you hate the scanner if you use it. Now, by comparison, the VueScan ($39 additional) fires up and guides you through a scan in 10 seconds and you are on your way. It is worth every red cent of $39 and will make this little scanner hum like a dream. I produced gorgeous high quality scans in the first couple hours of experimentation.
High end film only scanners from Nikon cost thousands of dollars. I think this little punk will give them a real run for the money - - IF and ONLY IF you toss out the SilverScan. If only SilverScan was available, I would not own this scanner. I am using this on a Mac with OS/X Snow Leopard.
Customer Review: Great scanner, good software, try it with Picasa
Summary: 4 Stars
Received the Plustek 7300 a few days ago and have been scanning several sets of slides since then from all types of film, cameras, and as far back as 30 years. So far I'm very pleased with the results.
My experience matches that of some other reviewers in that the IntelliScan option with SilverFast software is far superior to the QuickScan option. The SilverFast software requires some getting used to. If you have Photoshop experience, it will be relatively easy for you to port that knowledge over to SilverFast. If you don't have Photoshop experience, then I recommend being patient with learning the software and experimenting with it for a while before trying to slog through scanning a batch of slides. It's quite powerful but there are a lot of options to play with. The little videos that they have available in the toolboxes are worth watching. Scan the same slide several times with different options set so that you can see the results side by side.
I tend to like to play around with the settings and tweak each slide, so it can take a couple of minutes per slide for me to get what I want. I generally follow their little ScanPilot work flow diagram. I make special adjustments using Global Colour Correction and also brightness, contrast and saturation.
I had some trouble with what looked like a lack of dynamic range particularly in the darker colors that tended to streaks of purple. Then I downloaded Picasa and it was a HUGE difference! I now do a lot of the tweaking in Picasa and use Silverfast to just get things in the ball park. If you're having difficulty with getting used to Silverfast or the results you see on your screen, try downloading Picasa and using it for some of the editing.
We bought a cheaper scanner from a different manufacturer and were very unhappy with the result and so returned it. Then we bought this one from Amazon. The extra price seems to have been worth it.
Customer Review: RE: Plustek Model 7300 OpticFilm Scanner
Summary: 5 Stars
RE: About Model 7300 OpticFilm
Dear Plustek:
My company, Polymer Valley Media Corporation based in Fairlawn,
Ohio USA is the Master Licensor of the largest privately-held single-artist
fine-art collection of its kind in the world; the Lowell S.V. Devin Collection
of Drawings and Paintings.
After researching several popular slide scanner brands and models
we chose the Plustek OpticFilm 7300 (w/Silverfast SE Plus) to commence
initial testing from hundreds of 35mm Kodachrome 64 archive slides of
the collection taken throughout the mid-1980's and 1990's.
Although we had prior commercially-prepared digitized slide files
from the collection, simplicity of use and 'first-person' quality control
of results from your Plustek OpticFilm 7300 were voted better than
those from the commercial lab.
The Value of the Human Factor:
This is especially critical in balancing legacy-integrity
of both art and (its) attending 35mm photo-archive record,
prioritized individual attention your Plustek product most
assuredly provides. For us, output continuity is everything,
the advantage of an all-purpose scanner such as your
OpticFilm 7300, the result being more natural, not
over-processed looking results.
We wish to share our story with Plustek
and invite decoration markets and manufacturers
worldwide to preview and compare our historic results.
Respectfully,
David B. Keller
Founder & Exec. Director
[...]
&
Pres. & Chairman
Polymer Valley Media Corporation
3867 W. Market Street #400
Akron,OH 44333 U.S.A.
Customer Review: Very capable scanner at a great value.
Summary: 5 Stars
After getting back into 35mm film shooting, I was finding scanning with my Epson V500 very frustrating. Even with ANR glass inserts, it was still hard to avoid Newton Rings on my images. While the medium format scanning was great, something was lacking on the 35mm end. So I started searching for an affordable option that would yield acceptable results.
As far as a dedicated 35 scanner goes, the Nikon Coolscans are top of the food chain, and out of my price range. I searched Flickr for a couple of weeks and viewed images scanned with different equipment. I decided I liked what I saw with the 7300 so I ordered it up. Amazon's shipping was ridiculously quick, by the way.
What I get from the 7300 is beyond what I could have expected at this price point. The Silverfast software packaged with the scanner is $120 by itself. It is a very powerful piece of software with a tremendous amount of control. Once I got the basic understanding of the software suite down, the very first scan was amazing. It was the same sized tiff that I would get from the V500, but the detail in the grain was so sharp! I'm still blown away at the sharpness that this little scanner is able to read. When enlarging a file in Photoshop, it's just like looking through a grain magnifier in the darkroom. The negative holder holds the film very, very flat. Most film would have to be flattened under the weight of books for a day or two just to get a half way decent scan with the Epson.
While it is missing some features, such as digital ICE, and auto-feed, it works perfectly for my needs. I also wish I was able to scan 100% of the image, borders included, but it's pretty close. The actual footprint of the scanner is tiny too, easy to fit on a desk.
I love it and wouldn't hesitate to buy it.
Customer Review: impressive resolution for low price
Summary: 4 Stars
I've had other film scanners and most of them required a SCSI card, and a lengthy calibration process every few hours of on-time. The 7300 is a much smaller and more convenient product, with scratch removal and multi scans its a great extra for just [...]
pros:
usb2, carry case =). yes it serves it purpose
simple to use slide and film loader
hardware based scratch removal (worked well on some stepped on negs)
multi exposure and multiscan feature are awesome on burnt negs
silverfast software tool is well suited to the scanners capabilities
cons:
the source light doubles as a slide viewer and thus does not turn off, this likely will reduce the life of the light source over time.
matching sprockets to hold negatives in place in conjunction with the rails on the film loader would be a plus.
software bugs:
If you run vista make sure to install as administrator or saving files to your computer will fail.
large striped or dotted objects will confuse the rotation feature and give you a cropped scan with the top and bottom pixels 'streaking'. you have to use an external app (photoshop) to rotate the image manually in these cases.
Some people complained about the mediocre scan interface, i believe they were talking about the quick scan app, but silverfast works well, although not without its own bugs. and yes, scanning film in general is a time consuming process, but be happy wippersnappers...it used to take even longer than this to get a less decent scan..