Review on 📷 Plustek OpticFilm 135i: High-Resolution 35mm Film & Slide Scanner with Automatic Batch Conversion, 7200 dpi, Infrared Dust/Scratch Removal, and 3rd Party Editing Software Support by Kuldip Roberts

I'm looking at over 23,000 slides. I will select about 2500 to digitize and preserve for posterity. 135i does everything I need. It took me a little while to figure out what all the settings would do. I started with the included Quickscan software. It turned out to be a little awkward to use, but it had very good features. Scans can easily be sent directly to Photoshop. The scanning was so good that I felt I rarely needed PhotoShop. I switched to the VueScan software. With that, I might not have to go to PhotoShop, although I could use PhotoShop later if needed. The included slide tray is pretty durable. Care should be taken when loading and unloading slides in the holder, as card slides can deform due to the high force required to load them into the holder. This is not a problem if everything is done carefully. It would be nice to have additional slide holders but there aren't any. The 135i's scratch and dust removal function works VERY well. However, this takes longer because the slide is scanned twice. I dust my slides before scanning and I don't usually need to use the IR Dust & Scratch Cleaner. It's quicker for me to just scan the slides and then rescan the few that need scratching and dusting. After much experimentation, I decided to scan the slides at 3600 dpi. As a result, most of my slides are 3 to 4 MB in .jpg format. The device scans at 7200 dpi, but it takes much longer. I didn't notice any difference in the final JPG format even when viewed on a 50" screen at 1080p. I decided that much more memory and longer scan times wasn't worth it for me. The device works very reliably, I have scanned over 200 slides. I waited many years to find a device that could scan a project in a reasonable amount of time! I'm glad I have this machine. Previous devices (and even today's low-end devices) just didn't scan at a high enough resolution or speed to pay for my massive project. My goal was to digitize the slides in a way that viewing the results was about as good as using a slide projector, and this device does it!