Tamarack Technologies 2400 FS Film Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought mine from Amazon for about three weeks ago for justunder $200. Considering that ProLab here in Seattle charges $3 perpicture scanned, it seemed like a good deal in the long run.
Myexperience with it so far: the scanner does a great job with photostaken in bright, even sunlight but has a tougher time withhigh-contrast pics -- especially those with big patches of black. Trueblack on a color slide often comes out filled with rainbow splotcheson the scan. (I haven't scanned any color negatives yet.)
On theupside, the scanner comes with Adobe PhotoDeluxe, which is a choppedversion of Photoshop. It's pretty good for fixing defects like theabove. A guy I talked to at Prolab said even the high-end scanner theyuse doesn't render slides/negs perfectly, and that you still need somesort of photo software. So the Tamarack's shortcomings may be commonto all analog-to-digital transfers. PROS:
* Scanner pays for itselfonce you get beyond 60 photos
* Small footprint; about the size of abrick
* Good choice for pics that will end up on the Web
* UsefulAdobe software
CONS:
* Doesn't handle true blacks well
*Documentation is atrocious, very badly translated from Chinese END

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The ArtiScan 2400FS color film scanner is a compact, easy-to-use film and slide scanning solution. With 36-bit color depth and 2,400 x 4,800 dpi optical resolution, the scanner provides high-quality images and simple operation, making it perfect for business professionals. Plus, it's compact, measuring only 8 by 4.4 by 4.6 inches.
The 2400FS features parallel input and pass-through connections; however, it also comes with a USB adapter cable to make the unit operate as a USB device. Installation involves inserting the DocuMan CD-ROM, connecting the cable to the PC and scanner, and stepping through the Add New Hardware wizard. This process places a scanner icon on to your desktop, which you can use to start the driver software. It's important to note the USB interface will not work with Windows NT 4.0. The 2400FS is also TWAIN compliant, so it's an ideal companion for your TWAIN-compatible applications.
Cartridges are included to hold six-frame 35mm negative strips or four slides. These cartridges slide directly into the front of the scanner where a motor feeds them through to the rear. Simple LEDs for power, ready status, and busy status provide basic status information about scanner operation.
Tamarack Technologies' DocuMan 2.07 serves as the anchor of the software bundle. It provides a desktop-style interface--similar to Visioneer's PaperPort--that organizes scanned images and includes functions to scan directly to a printer, fax, or e-mail. Also included is the company's DocuPal 1.0 software for image handling and constructing complex, professional looking documents. Adobe PhotoDeluxe is also included for user-friendly image editing.

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Canon CanoScan FS2710 Film Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)I have used the FS2710 for over a year and find it to be the best for the money IMHO. The only reason I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars is the 3.2 Dymanic Range. I have used the scanner to scan litterally hundreds of slides, both mounted and in strips, without any problems what-so-ever. The scanner was simple to install, the software works flawlessly. All of my images on my site were made with this scanner. Instead of just taking someones word for it, look and judge for yourself.

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Canon has assembled a digital film scanner designed to be the essential accessory for the digital photographer. The CanoScan FS2710 can scan slides or negatives, color or black and white, 35mm or APS film, and convert them into convenient digital files. It is also ideal for enlargements, Web pages, newsletters, and business documents. Compatible with both PC and Macintosh, this scanner produces sharp scans with high optical resolution and natural color reproduction at fast scanning speeds, meeting the requirements of photography enthusiasts and small office users.
Quality output is paramount to the design of the compact CanoScan FS2710. Scan 35mm film strips or slides, with 2,700 dpi optical resolution and 12-bit RGB input and output, at speeds of up to 13 seconds, with a 3.2 dynamic range. Advanced Photo System film can be scanned at a quick 10 seconds per frame. Other advantages of the CanoScan FS2710 include quiet operation and the semitransparent dust cover, which protects the unit when it is not in use so you'll waste less time working on defective images.
The FS2710 comes with important accessories, including a SCSI adapter and cable and a software bundle for both Mac and PC. The Windows and Macintosh software bundles each have Adobe Photoshop LE, CanoCraft FS, Presto! PhotoAlbum, plus full support from Canon. --Barbara Price

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VuPoint FS-C1-VP Film and Slide Digital Converter Review

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(More customer reviews)Although I'd been successfully using a Canon CanoScan LIDE 500f to scan OLD 35mm color and B&W negatives, it was slow going. Many of the negatives had curled up with the low humidity of Winter and mounting them into the 500f's slide adapter was quickly becoming a nightmare. I worked out how long it was taking me to mount and scan each negative, and took a look at my remaining workload (about 2,000 negatives and mounted 35mm slides remaining). It became clear I needed a faster solution both in terms of mounting and scanning speed.
Since the 500f's slide attachment only supports film strips, the new device had to support mounted slides. Also, the new device had to be simple to operate, allowing me to get negatives and film strips mounted as quickly as possible, while also having facilities to secure srips curled from low humidity. That's when I saw the VuPoint FS-C1-VP 35mm scanner. It was cheap, simple, and appeared to do everything I needed.
------THE UNIT
The VuPoint 35mm slide scanner is exactly what it appears to be, a 5 megapixel low-mid range CCD in a plastic housing. The housing contains a mini lightbox at the bottom to illuminate 35mm slides/negatives for scanning by the CCD. Simply take your slides or negatives, mount them in the included trays, and slide the trays into the scanner unit. Each tray window snaps gently into place, helping you to align slides/negatives under the CCD. The trays are VERY GOOD at holding curled negatives securely. (Extremely curled/rumpled negatives may introduce shadows into the scan. To relax the slides fully, try holding the tray over a steaming pot for about 10 seconds.)
The build quality of the VuPoint scanner is quite high. Although made of plastic, it has a very nice feel (akin to a 'satin finish' cell phone) and the mounted slide and filmstrip trays appear durable and fit firmly into the unit.
The unit gets power from an attached 4 foot long USB 2.0 cable, so it has an extremly small desktop footprint. The scanner is also insensitive to attitude, allowing usage virtually anywhere, from any angle (sideways on your lap, in bed, etc) making it much more likely you'll get that scanning job done.
------SCANNING
I installed the scanner drivers ONLY, ignoring the image editing software that came with the unit (Photoimpression 6) and instead chose to scan directly into PhotoShop CS3. Using this method I was only able to 'dumb scan' at the highest resolution of 2592x1680. For negatives, this means you will need to invert the image after scanning and then perform color correction/level adjustment/unsharp masking/etc. Mounted slides or film stips will scan positive but will still need additional filters applied for best results. If you're scanning into CS3, create ACTIONS to handle typical slide archetypes (negative, positive, blurry negative, desaturated positive, scratched and dusty slide, etc).
In practice, the scan driver shows you a low framerate preview of the image under the CCD. If you wait between 5 and 15 seconds, the light levels in the image will balance and be ready for scanning. A sequence of positives with extremely different light levels will push your waiting time towards the maximum. In extreme cases you can wait 45 seconds+ for decent balancing.
To initiate a scan you either press the 'copy' button on the unit, or click the 'snapshot' icon via the scanner software driver. Snapshots are quick, but once you have a snapshot you then need to 'transfer' the image to CS3. This can take as long as 30 seconds per image.
The driver holds 12 snapshots. Once this 'buffer' is full you need to transfer the snapshots to CS3.
The driver grabs a decent amount of CPU while its previewing - taking 60% CPU on a 1GHz Pentium M laptop, and 40% CPU on a 2GHz P4. I'd imagine CPU usage would be around 20% on a dual core (will test this out later).
------IMAGE QUALITY
This unit will win no awards for image quality. I scanned in three 35mm mounted slides and viewed them onscreen while simultaneously also using a backlit slide viewer. The raw scans were fairly grainy, with blown out highlights.
I am linking to the RAW scans (with light JPG compression) for your review. Try cleaning up these photos yourself to get an idea of what the scanner is capable of.
http://www.geocities.com/gamedev123/35mm_ektachrome_slide_aug81.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/gamedev123/35mm_fujichrome_slide_jun68.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/gamedev123/35mm_kodachrome_slide_aug81.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/gamedev123/35mm_kodachrome_slide_sep68.jpgI was subsequently able to clean the slides up in CS3 but couldn't recapture the lost details in the highlights. In some cases the loss of detail was so extreme that the photos were virtually worthless. High contrast photos seem to suffer the most (ex: a person in an unlit room sitting framed in a sunny window). However "normal" photos will occasionally suffer the same fate (a person sitting at a cafe with black shirt and creme colored striped pants = dramatic loss of detail in the pants).
The source photos provided were taken by my father and grandfather, using low-midrange SLR cameras - I have no idea of the lens or settings used. I assume these types of images represent typical inputs for this scanner. Higher quality slides with large, in-focus subjects should provide comparatively higher quality scans.
------OVERALL VALUE
As just a raw USB slide scanner, the VuPoint is arguably worth the US$99 purchase price.
The hardware is well designed and very user friendly, looking like something worth at least $99. However, the driver software is horribly amateur compared to the likes of Canon and HP and seems cobbled together AT BEST. It cripples the hardware side of things, turning a potentially quality product into a questionable purchase. Until the driver software is vastly improved, allowing you to switch off the 'auto' adjustment functionality and set your own parameters, there will be no way to scan high contrast imagery.[NOTE: The AMSHOW direct capture software that is installed along with the driver allows you to access some scan parameters. But I have been unable to make these changes persist or affect my scans into PhotoShop. I eventually installed the PhotoImpression software suite that came with the scanner, hoping it would provide me with a few more scanner control options. Sadly, this is just a consumer level app for rotating/sorting pics and applying canned image effect.]


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Pacific Image Electronics' PrimeFilm PF1800U USB Film Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)Customer support [is bad]; the drivers and software that I bought in March 2003 had a 1996-1998 copyright date; and worst of all, scans get progressively darker. A scanner that can't handle exposure settings! it's OK until it runs thru it's 'calibration' routine, then it's the beginning of the end. I went thru two different units, they both were terrible.

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Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED Film Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)First of all, let me say I am a neophyte when it comes to scanning. My mother passed away recently and I wanted to go through my father's 20,000 slides and scan the best ones before they, as many before them, disappeared into the hands of one of my 7 other siblings never to be found again.
After culling my father's slides I ended up with about 1000 I wanted to scan. After culling my own slides I ended up with another 250 slides. Additionally, I had about 250 slides from my grandfather slides And after that I decided to go through my color negative collection and scan the best of those as well. A daunting project! But honestly well worth the effort.
Most of my father's slides are Kodachrome. Much has been written about the inability of this scanner to scan Kodachrome slides and said about ICE4 not working with Kodachrome. Well, I have some good news The ICE4 does work extremely well for the most part. However, with Kodachrome slides it does produce minor artifacts in about 5 percent of the slides.I scanned with ICE (not ICE4) always on and then rescanned if I encountered unacceptable artifacts. I did notice that the scanner ICE feature was more likely to be stumped by old Kodachrome slides where subjects were wearing shirts with stripes.
The GEM ROC and DEE (the other stalwarts of the ICE4 other than ICE itself) work on Kodachrome slides as well, but I found that the results were unpredictable and that I could achieve better results myself in Photoshop far more quickly. The GEM ROC and DEE features simply took too long and slowed down the scanning unacceptably. The results, for me, were not worth the additional scanning time. So I never used these features. But the "enhance" feature on the scanner I used nearly 100% of the time with great results - much better than the GEM ROC and DEE features.
The scanner is fast and does produce wonderful wonderful detailed scans, easily demonstrating the grain in the transparancies at 3000 and 4000 dpi. The Kodachrome slides were a challenge to the Dynamic Range of the scanner, but I believe that most of the detail in the shadows that is there was extracted. With dark slides I used the VERY useful gain feature turning it all the way up to 2 in the really dark slides. Unfortunately, Kodachrome, with all of its many attributes, does have substantial downsides including a very narrow exposure latitude and shadow detail is simply lacking. I think the scanner accurately reproduced the information including the colors on the Kodachrome slides, with perhaps a slight bluish cast noticed in some cases.
It wasn't until I was finished scanning all of the culled slides that I undertook to scan my select color negatives.And this scanner really came into its own scanning color negatives. Don't even TRY to scan color negatives without ICE because the results are unbelievably bad. Even pristine negatives have scratches and dust that magically are erased by the ICE feature. What a godsend. The scanned color negatives were just beautiful with very accurate color rendition. But immediately I noticed much more grain in the color negatives (Royal Gold and Fuji Superia Gold) than in the scanned slides.
One note unrelated to the scanner itself. Until you've used a digital scanner to scan your color negatives you can't begin to realize how far superior Kodachrome, Provia, and Ektachrome slides are to color negatives insofar as capturing detail. Even the best color negatives have much more grain that Kodachrome. And the difference in color negatives is substantial too.
The included Nikon software worked fantastic for me. I downloaded a copy of VueScan which according to many reviews is superior to the Nikon software and found that for me the Nikon software was easier to work with and produced superior results.
The software did cause my computer to crash occasionally which was an aggravation, but a minor one when considered against its many attributes.
Setup Summary: I scanned at a 8 bit color depth (to reduce file size to 55MB and because I could not see a difference between 8 and 16 bit depth in the old slides) and 4000 pixels per inch with the scan enhancer turned on and the Digital ICE turned on. I did not use GEM ROC and DEE because of inconsistent results. I turned up the gain as necessary for dark slides and turned it down for light slides. Gain adjustments were only necessary on about 15 - 20% of the slides. The only two variables that I used once I was set up and running were gain adjustment and type of film or slide. All other adjustments were made in PS IF necessary. The scan at these settings took 90 seconds. Setting up the Nikon Scan window was a little tricky too. I placed the tool palette in the far upper right corner of the window with the scan window placed under it to the right. The image window occupied the largest portion space to the left.
I can recommend this scanner without reservation. It is a phenomenal piece of equipment.

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A high-performance dedicated film scanner designed for imaging professionals, the Super Coolscan 5000 ED offers high-quality scanning of 35mm slides, 35mm film strips, APS film (with optional IX240 film adapter), and prepared slides (with optional medical slide holder). The Scanner-Nikkor ED glass lens offers a 4,000 dpi optical resolution, while the 3,964-pixel, two-line linear CCD image sensor and 16-bit per color A/D input (8-/16-bit output) provide true-to-life, brilliant results.
Nikon's own LED illumination technology ensures accurate color separation with no warm-up time or risk of heat damage. Scan times are as fast as 20 seconds including image transfer to display, and as fast as 11 seconds in preview mode. Automatic color/contrast compensation helps you achieve accurate results, while the ICE4 advanced digital image correction suite of technologies--including digital ICE, digital ROC, digital GEM, and digital DEE--helps to restore old slides to their original glory. Additionally, the included Nikon Scan 4 software provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use interface for managing your scans.
The Super Coolscan 5000 ED has a convenient, plug-and-play USB interface, while one-touch scan and preview buttons will have you scanning film in no time. PC and Mac compatible, the Super Coolscan 5000 ED also comes backed with a one-year limited warranty.
More Features:

What's in the Box Scanner, power cord, USB cable, MA-21 slide mount adapter, SA-21 strip film adapter, software CD-ROM (Nikonview, Nikon Scan 4), Nikon User's Guide, one-year Nikon U.S.A. limited warranty information

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Wolverine F2D300 7.3MP 35mm Slides and Negatives to Digital Image Converter (Blue) Review

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(More customer reviews)It sure looks like it should have a motor in it (considering the cost and that the box says that it is a two-step operation), but it doesn't. You have to physically push each image through, then press the same button twice (once to scan, a second time to save) -- that's a 3-step operation for each image, not a 2-step. It does not scan, but photographs slides / film that are backlit (pay attention that the box says "converter" not "scanner"), so it is rather fast to capture images, but at a price: quality.
The quality is at best mediocre and the tray slides and wiggles even when inserted, such that your slides can often look slightly crooked every time. Another annoyance is that you have to turn the scanner off to disconnect the scanner from the computer, or to get back to the main screen after using the scanner. If your images require color correction, you have to do them one at a time, which isn't much of an issue if you have a computer and photoshop, but if the intent of the machine was to bypass the computer, it's not very convenient.
There are flatbed scanners out there, designed to scan slides and film at extremely higher resolutions. They take much longer, but the quality is exceedingly better.
This product appears to specifically target people who want to make smallish (4x6) prints or to display on a TV screen, and that's it. If you thought that this might be a good way to digitize your Ektachrome slides for posterity, you're looking at the wrong product.

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HP ScanJet G3110 Photo Scanner - Scanner à plat - 220 x 300 mm - 4800 ppp x 9600 ppp - Hi-Speed USB Review

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(More customer reviews)Just bought this one today and am returning it right away.
The installation software on the CD did not work, saying that there a file called hpzrein01 has failed. Once I managed to download the 168Mb software from HP website, the problem again persisted. I've tried in two different laptops (Windows XP) and the problem was the same. In the end, I managed to just download the driver without the full software.
The scans are horribly done. I wanted to use it to scan photos but it keeps on scanning the part of the lid that has the entrance for the negatives. This means that I would have to crop the picture to get the actual photo size. Add to this that the scan was super slow, I cannot believe this product actually came out the market.
I am sorry but whoever at HP that gave the green light for this product to come out should look for another job. He would do HP (and the world) a favor.

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Innovative Technology 35mm Negative and Slide Converter to PC Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought the converter to use with color slides, because my computer scanner takes 2-3 minutes for each slide, and with about 6000 slides that's just too much time.
I run Windows XP, and when I got the converter I mistakenly set it up for 64-bit Windows, when my computer is actually running 32-bit. I found out it won't work at all if you make that mistake. Once I corrected it, everything worked just fine. I did run into some difficulty with the slide tray. You have to open and close it carefully -- there are three clips (one in the middle and one on each end). If they are not all snapped shut the slide tray will get stuck. Also, be careful not to spring one of the hinges on the back of the slide tray -- that will also make it stick. In other words, the slide tray is plastic so don't treat it like it was made out of metal. I accidentally sprung one of the back hinges and the tray stuck in the device with my slides in it. I called Innovative Technologies and got complete cooperation from them. They were great!

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