Review on Pacific Image PowerFilm CCD Scanner: Fast 📷 and Automated 35mm Film Scanning at 6MP Speed! by Robert Maysey

NOTES FROM AUGUST 2019: I scanned about 4000 images from 160 rolls of negative film (3-5 strips each). roll). During that time I had to clean the scanner twice with a cotton swab to get to where the sensing element is. It's tricky to get to - you just press the Q-tip and wiggle it back and forth, great, but it's still hidden. If the scan area didn't open up like the hood of a car and we could see the scan element directly, that would be a huge improvement. The company reacted very quickly to changes in the PowerFilm for OS/X scanning application and fixed the error. a few bugs - I found one, and they found the other. The scanner pulls film strips in very well. There was only one jam in the last 30 rolls, and that was probably due to the corner of the negative strip getting stuck in the other strip's sprocket, so it's not the scanner's fault. There were no spontaneous failures. The edge detection of each frame was perfect and that's reason enough to have this scanner. I've started (and stopped) this project with several other scanners, all of which required careful manual adjustments for frame separation. I haven't had a single frame misalignment, except for one case where the film was exposed to light and the frame separation was lost at one point. In this case there is no obvious way to successfully process the image as the crop will remain incorrect. I had a lot of frustration/regrets with this scanner initially but with improvements and even after pressing the -> lever to load the film. works perfectly, I scan as fast as I can let the film run. The picture quality is very good. For some frames I wonder if it will be checked AGAIN at the end of June 2019: There is a mechanical lever in the scanner that has to be in the 'back' position to smoothly insert the negatives. I'm surprised there's a stack of negatives in there right now, and they're basically being fed one at a time. So I revised the review again. I'm giving it 5 stars for the following reasons: - It's the only scanner in its class at this price point that can pull out a stack of negatives - The technical support was fantastic. They heard me describe problems with the software, solved them, and sort of specifically followed me around to report what was fixed. What other provider has done this for anyone in the last decade? No one. Well, maybe someday Southwest Airlines. But that's it: they heard my concerns about negative misfeeds and without me having to send in a separate question, they sent a picture from the setup guide for that internal arm that I seemed to have missed. I still have tens of thousands of frames of 35mm images left to scan and I think everything will be fine. Here are a few more notes so you know it's legit - things I've learned along the way, ongoing issues you might want to know about - I've tried third-party software that some reviewers have recommended, and thought working with her was a nightmare. It also can't separate frames based on a clear line between frames - it only enters a certain distance into the movie. But each strip is indexed a little differently, so getting a clean and finely cropped set of images with this software seemed impossible. With the recent fix to the included application (and a firmware update - I don't know what did it, but it's supposed to help) I have no problem scanning batches of negatives. MagicTouch is needed to remove dust from your scans, but if you have few bright negatives with lots of red light, turn it off for low-light or red-heavy color negatives. The instructions are very good, but could be better. It was clearly translated into English. If it were more complete and included more information about the operation of the scanner itself (rather than just an overview of the software with very brief information about its capabilities), maybe my experience would be better. There are also some on-screen instructions (and a YouTube video) but it took me a while to figure out how to clear the actual scan window (very difficult to get to) as there are two videos and them differ " I'll get back to you after scanning about 10,000 images :) UPDATE JUNE 2019: Since purchasing this scanner in December, I've received multiple calls to tech support, on the same day - I can't say that there are many companies that do this.However, I really don't want to go into diagnosing problems when buying a scanner - I want to scan negatives.The last problem - a crash - was caused by a buffer overflow because of the number of characters allowed in a filename was artificially limited in Mac OS/X (not on a Mac, but in the program.) The software didn't show an error like "filename too long" (which would be annoying worse , but at least I'd know what's going on). It just collapsed. Boom. I found an error and pointed it out, and after finally figuring out the problem (I lost the whole two days I wanted to spend scanning negs) I switched to saving to a shorter directory path and everything works fine. received an email stating that they updated the software to fix this error. It is great. They heard about the problem and responded. However, this bug is very easy to spot, and it's like CS101 that programmers should ALWAYS validate user input before trying to work with it, as users do all sorts of stupid things like: B. storing files on long paths. If you need a scanner that can reliably scan a 35mm strip of negatives and save individual images as separate files, this may be the only scanner on the market that can. Being able to successfully feed a *stack* of negatives was a dream come true. They stick together when pulled and no adjustment helps. So I feed one strip at a time. It takes me a lot longer to scan everything I want to scan, but it's still faster than loading media for a flatbed scanner and the images look good. The dust removal also works well, the scans are clean. In general everything is fine. I'm just frustrated with the behavior of the software and also sad that I can't safely load a stack of negatives. I think feeding plastic negatives with a roller system is a pretty sketchy endeavor and good luck to literally anyone trying it. However, as this is inevitably frustrating, it would be really nice if this scanner could pause at the end of each trace so I can load another trace instead of pausing (and requiring mouse clicks to scan more images). ** When I first reviewed this scanner, I had the following experience. ** I haven't used it for a few months since then. Before using it again I updated the firmware and the PowerFilm scan app. Now it crashes every time I try to scan. In other words. It's worth $750 worth of junk. ----- As a former professional photojournalist, I was hoping that a high-volume stripe scanner under $1,000 would be able to scan tens of thousands of frames from negatives. When it came out recently I bought it. Image quality is excellent, especially when IR "Magic Touch" is enabled, which removes surface artifacts/dust/scratches. But consumer negative scanners have been reliable for about 10 years, so I expect that. The boxed experience is terrible. The link to download the scan app didn't work, I had to contact support and sketchily download the app from Dropbox. I'm glad they were able to help but it was at a low level. The scanning software is absolutely terrible. It is not possible to pause and resume a scanning session if the scanner has messed up feeder strips, which is often the case. The software also crashed several times or lost communication with the scanner. When scanning 10 rolls, I force closed the app and cycled the scanner off and on 5 times. It is very difficult to reliably feed multiple strips - the scanner pulls two strips together from time to time and often does not see the gap between strips and scans. then as one before hitting frame 6 and discarding the second band with the remaining unscanned frames. The film sensor displays "Film present" almost constantly when it is not in the bleed. Bottom line: if you have a lot of film images to scan, are on a budget under $1,000, and want to try and scan more than you would get from a flatbed scanner with a film holder, this scanner is pretty much your only option. It's an absolutely frustrating pain to use. If anyone knows better software for this thing please post. Mechanically, it has tape feed issues, and the software should do a better job of allowing the user to pause or otherwise correct things during a scanning session (ensuring that individual images retain their correct sequential numbering, for example).