Review on Plustek OpticFilm 8100-35mm Negative Film/Slide Scanner with 7200 DPI and 48-bit Output: Bundle Silverfast SE Plus 8.8, Supports Mac and Windows by Dre Fowler

Most importantly, it can produce excellent quality scans of 35mm slides and negatives, only exceeding the level required for web format use is required. I typically scan at 3600 dpi and 300 dpi which gives me the ability to enlarge the print to around 11 x 7.5 inches. I save as TIFF to avoid compression artifacts. For best results, use a technique that scans a film frame twice to improve contrast, but at the cost of approximately doubling the frame scan time. And at this resolution, we're not talking about fast scanning. Also, since it's a single frame scan, you can't just queue the package and do something else. (It helps a lot to have a book to read while you're scanning.) You can of course always use a lower resolution if you're just trying to scan something for web use or similar, but I try that way to get something as close as possible to the original negative I can get, albeit with a compromise between file size (just over 20MB per image) and scan time. The scanning software has profiles for different film types so it can perform basic film color correction. yourself, which is helpful. It can also do a lot of other tricks (e.g. dust removal) but in exchange for the extra processing time it needs some manual adjustments to account for differences between shots etc. To be honest I prefer to do things like this later in Lightroom as I can do this selectively for the images I need at any given time when I can spend more time tweaking the images and my needs. Disappointing, both have to do with usability: firstly, the negative media, which can make frame alignment difficult, especially when the negatives are slightly curved in the middle. There's nothing quite like sprockets to insert into the holes of the negatives to help with this and quite often I have to try several times before I can get a strip right. The other is with software in general. Another with software. Due to the strong features of the software, there is a certain inherent complexity. There are some "simple presets" (for lack of a better name) that nominally make things easier, but give totally unacceptable results in my experience, so I'll tweak the settings to best suit my needs. While there are video links that can help with some explanations and some independent YouTube videos that might be helpful for getting ideas, there are still areas that are difficult to understand. Beyond that, however, there are some areas where you make a change (like asking the software to automatically set the frame size based on a prescan) and also change other things (like the filename you set). , which will be reset to the default value). This is just one example, but there are other areas, such as those related to color correction (besides film profiles). Ultimately, I just decided to work around the application's quirks as much as possible, e.g. B. by manually framing each frame to avoid problems when the software does it. (At one point I thought about finding another scanning app, but back then I didn't have time to scan much, and my research didn't really turn up anything obvious. I don't want to waste time learning other apps.) Bottom line are Both the scanner and the software are quite competent, although there are some disappointments when it comes to ease of use.