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24 reviews
Good scanner with reservations
I recently bought one of these because of the limitations of my ageing flatbed scanner. It's a nice piece of kit, solid and well made and the scans are probably about as good as is possible from my old negatives.
However, the Silverfast software is troublesome to set up and understand and I found that on my 4K monitor the fonts used were so small that I could only see them with a magnifying glass ! The only solution (since I already had magnification set to 200%) was to reduce screen resolution to 1920 x 1080 while using the scanner. Also note that the scanner only has manual transport of the trays so you have to push them through to scan each image.
Scan time is fairly quick and after a bit of practice the scanner is worth the investment.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: new • Sold by: carmarthencameras
As good as it gets
This scanner can out resolve any known film and has greater dynamic range, so everything on the film is going to be captured. The advantage of oversampling like this is that any slight quality loss due to colour correction, cropping or rotating will be invisible. Images can be downsized after processing.
The colour rendering of film is not very good, so to be able to colour balance in the digital domain is very useful.
The only penalty of a true scanner is that a scan takes a bit of time. Given the results, it's worth it.
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Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: pre-owned • Sold by: jasjasonbrown
First experience of my Plustek 1800
A little slower 'reading' the image than expected yet film cassettes are simple to load and easy to use.
Have yet to fully read the instructions on how to identify and file images but reviewing those retrieved from the hard drive are of good quality.
It is going to be a more pleasurable experience to view old photos than setting up a slide projector and screen; sharing, and boring friends, via the PC will be a pleasure.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: new • Sold by: ebuyer_uk_ltd
Great quality, simple, reliable and portable.
I bought this because I was fed up with scanning B&W negs on my old Epson flatbed, which was painfully slow and difficult to keep dust free and almost enough to make me abandon my beloved film cameras. The Plustek is a game changer, it was up and running on my Windows 10 PC in less than 10 minutes out of the box and produces very high quality scans. The software is heavily populated with video clips to help you learn how to use it, but I found everything very intuitive and you can make it easy or complex, up to you. The whole thing is light and portable and comes in a nifty zip up bag, so with this, a changing bag and a laptop I've essentially got a portable darkroom I can take on holiday (as long as I don't try and fly with bottles of suspicious liquids...) The digital kit has pretty much stayed in the bag since this arrived.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: new • Sold by: dwi-digital-cam...
Great Scanner and Software.
Just replaced my old 7600i + SilverFast6.6 with this 8100 + SilverFast 8. What an improvement! The new software needed some re-learning, but once sussed is easy to use and more flexible than the 6.6. Colour slides and negatives come out very well, thus minimising the need for PhotoScape or the like. I've not yet tried my monochrome negs, but don't anticipate any problems.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: new • Sold by: kikatek
A bit of tweaking is sometimes necessary.
More or less immediately on receiving the item, I was straight into getting it connected and fired up. It took a protracted phone call to the Silverfast Helpdesk (in Germany) to work out registration and get it working.
For any Mac users, it isn't necessary to use the Plustek software. It's all managed from the Silverfast software. I've been uploading negs via my iMac into Pictures for editing, then transferring the finished article to my NAS external hard drive. It's possible to scan up to 600dpi which makes for a slow upload, but worth it for the higher resolution. The onboard editing suite is a tad tricky to get used to, so I just uploaded and used the editing software I already have.
All said and done, a great piece of kit for those with a mountain of negs and slides to upload. Be prepared for a small amount of frustration.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: new • Sold by: carmarthencameras
Difficult to set up but a good product once all set up.
A really good product. Software however did not work and I had to find downloadable versions on the Internet. Worked fine after about an hour of fiddling about.
It quick to scan and easy to load. Watch the help videos available for each section - they helped me.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: pre-owned • Sold by: sanwe-29
Plustek opticfilm 8100
This is an excellent slide scanner, I had a slight difficulty in getting it set up on my MacBook , but after downloading the latest Silverfast driver it is now working perfectly , very easy to use as it takes you through all the steps needed.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: new • Sold by: carmarthencameras
A bit pricey but good value
Does what it says on the tin. A bit slow at high resolution but gives good results. I wouldn't want to use it to do a whole large collection, life is too short, but for special images it's very good. The colour setting software for negative films is excellent. So much better than the rubbish 5mp stuff floating about.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: new • Sold by: carmarthencameras
Just excellent
Bought it to scan some old family films, quality was excellent as expected. Film tray worked fine keeping my curled films flat. This model does not have infrared scratch/dust feature (8200 does), but I did not really miss it, as the software did amazing job in finding and correcting most of defects. Not much else to be said, it simply works exactly as advertised. Overall very happy with it.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes • Condition: new • Sold by: ebuyer_uk_ltd