Works well if you know what you're doing !!!
I have a ridiculous amount of 35mm film that I had been putting off scanning for years, reason being I was a bit sceptical about buying a scanner, particularly this one, as the reviews seemed a bit iffy. Finally got around to buying it after 4 years and so far everything has been great !!! That being said, I am a professional photographer and would likely have struggled much more with this device and the necessary procedures to get decent scans without my previous experience.
I was unsure as whether to buy this model or the more expensive 8200i SE that has dust and scratch removal and I'm quite sure I've made the right choice. I purchased a blower brush which is incredibly useful to getting all the dust off the film (as well as a pair of white cotton gloves for handling the film) and as for the scratches, I am quite adept at using Photoshop to get of rid of such imperfections. Other reviews mentioned that any dust and scratch removal function tends to also get get rid of a lot of the detail in an image and this was confirmed by scans I had done by a photo lab. Ultimately I believe the ideal situation, if you can do it, is to take a raw scan with scratches and then remove them later using photo editing software yourself.
I have had almost no problems with the included software Silverfast. It works well, only problem is the auto setting that 'fixes' the image, as it's impossible to reverse these changes. Most of the time the auto setting greatly improves the image, but sometimes it makes it worse. I find that I need to make a scan before I run the auto setting because it's impossible to get back to the default setting. Perhaps there's a way around this but I havn't figured it out yet. There is also an option for Multi Exposure scans which in most cases greatly improves the image by giving it much greater shadow detail.
I'm doing all my scans now at a setting of 1200 dpi, but it can go up to 7200 dpi. 1200 dpi should certainly be large enough for prints around the size of 12x8 inches or A4 and would still allow for some cropping. A 1200 dpi scan takes just a few seconds, a bit longer if you use the Multiple Exposure option. At 7200 dpi, a scan will take a good 2 to 3 minutes, so if you have a lot of film to scan, I would suggest doing 1200 dpi first then going back and scanning your best shots at a higher dpi later. 7200 dpi scans also look very grainy, and in my opinion, 35mm film was never supposed to be blown up that large anyway, most people back in the day just got 6x4 inch prints from the photo lab and only occasionally would get significantly larger prints. Digital photography and the ridiculous amount of pixels some cameras have today has really spoiled us.
For my personal needs I would definitely give it 5/5 stars, as it gives me a significant amount of flexibility to get some really good scans. I've not had it too long, so that doesn't take into account any reliability issues however. The reason I've given it 4 stars is that for someone who may not have a very good PC, isn't particularly computer savvy, doesn't have and/or isn't very experienced with Photoshop or other photo editing software and isn't a professional photographer, the device, the software and the procedure with which to operate them could indeed be a bit of a struggle at first and could require quite a steep learning curve. That said, once you know how to make this device work for you, it certainly does a fantastic job and really is great value for the money !!!Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
