painless, cheap 35mm scanning: Pacific Imaging 7250 Pro3 / Reflecta RPS 7200 Professional

I'm new here. I don't know your customs. Forgive me in advance.

I wrote a review of an old scanner that solved a problem for me. I hated scanning. Now I don't. It's even cheaper now than when I bought it a few months ago - for $150 US it can be yours. That's insane. There's already a good thread about this device here:
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/reflecta-rps-7200-any-opinions.151937/#post-1977468

But that was written in the past, when this scanner was more of a current affair. People might not be thinking about it now. So I offer my humble opinion, here:

Dead Link Removed

If it works for you, well and good. But multi purpose technology however good it may be for everyday household purposes, rarely if ever produces the goods to satisfy when used for film.

If you scan only film, you should consider selling your scanners for whatever you can get for them, and invest some small money into a secondhand Plustek 7600i (for 35mm) or Epson 600 (for 120 film). You will never ever look back. Trust me on this.

Interesting and well written review overall, but to my mind, for photo purposes all rather false economy. You are working with mutton dressed as lamb.

ozmoose said:

If it works for you, well and good. But multi purpose technology however good it may be for everyday household purposes, rarely if ever produces the goods to satisfy when used for film.

If you scan only film, you should consider selling your scanners for whatever you can get for them, and invest some small money into a secondhand Plustek 7600i (for 35mm) or Epson 600 (for 120 film). You will never ever look back. Trust me on this.

Interesting and well written review overall, but to my mind, for photo purposes all rather false economy. You are working with mutton dressed as lamb.

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According to www.filmscanner.info, both the Reflecta RPS 7200 Professional and the Plustek 7600i have an actual resolution of approximately 3800, so selling one to buy the other will not result in better scans.

Oh, but they will. Try them and see. Have you? I have.

Have you read the entire filmscanner.info reviews? Again, I have.

Based on a lot of reading and several years of use, I reckon the main problem with the Plustek 7600i is not resolution, but that it can easily drive some impatient types quite mad by having to endlessly move the film holders image by image into the scanner. Otherwise, the Pluseks have it all over the others.

Nothwistanding all the above, the bottom line in all this discourse is the old "horses for courses" theory. If one owns a scanner and it does the job, well and good. By way of an example of this in action, my Epson 600 is not particularly recommended by any source for 35mm, but with careful use and sensible post processing (also good negatives to start off with), I can get 16x20 and even 20x30 prints from 35mm. Not easily, but doable.

So entirely without prejudice.

Then followed by someone with an Imacon and then followed by someone with a Heidelberg Tabgo . . . and on and on . . .

I am satisfied with the performance and results from my Coolscans 5000 & 9000 - over 45,000 frames at this time and I expect to get at least that many more . . .

ozmoose said:

If it works for you, well and good. But multi purpose technology however good it may be for everyday household purposes, rarely if ever produces the goods to satisfy when used for film.

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I'm not sure I follow you as the scanner I'm writing about only handles 35mm, very single-purpose, but thanks for reading anyway.

Nice write-up and welcome to the forum.

-Jason

I think the RPS7200 is a really nice unit. A while back I did some comparisons. I had an old Kodachrome 25 slide that I sent off to be professionally scanned and printed. It was scanned on whatever scanner sits on the front of a Fuji Frontier I think. Anyway, got it printed to 12"x16" from 35mm and looked great. Then I scanned in the same slide on an RPS7200 in Silverfast, did a little (minimum) manipulation and sent it to the same lab to be printed to 12"x16". Side by side, the professionally scanned one looks way better when up close, but at normal viewing distances the difference is marginal. I could/should have done more manipulation, certainly a load more unsharp mask and boosted the colour. I'm very cautious with unsharp mask as I loathe overly sharpened photos but on scanned negs/slides I think it really does benefit from a little more than you would normally do. Never found any good starting points on the web for how much is enough for scanned slides or negs though. As I send it off to be printed I don't get the opportunity to print any to see if it's too much.

That review was a great read, thanks for posting.

Thank you so much. I got that scanner based on your review and I am really happy with it.