Please recommend a 35mm scanner!

Hello All,

Sorry to start my first post on this forum with a question.

I just started shooting film again after several years break. I used to scan with a Nikon L5000 that I unfortunately sold for a very cheap price before it got discontinued. Now I'm looking for a new scanner and I have been considering the plustek 7600 and the pacific image 7250 pro 3.

I would greatly appreciate it, if you could give me any recommendations or comments about the mentioned scanners, or if you think I should consider something else.

Thank a lot in advance.

Cheers,
Edward

I see that the Pacific Image is also sold under Reflecta RPS 7200.

Edward Karaa said:

I see that the Pacific Image is also sold under Reflecta RPS 7200.

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As I understand it, the Pacific Image PrimeFilm 120 and the Reflecta MF5000 are the same item, just sold under different brands.

The RPS 7200 is something entirely different from either of them, an older model from 6 years ago, that doesn't do medium format.

A. J. Pylvninen said:

As I understand it, the Pacific Image PrimeFilm 120 and the Reflecta MF5000 are the same item, just sold under different brands.

The RPS 7200 is something entirely different from either of them, an older model from 6 years ago, that doesn't do medium format.

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Yes, you are correct. The MF5000 is a bit too expensive around 2000$ even though I might get it later on but for the moment I am looking at the cheaper options. The RPS is interesting due to the AF and automatic film loading. I feel the Reflecta have better color from what I saw on flickr, but this could be due to the skills of the operators more than anything. The Plustek samples do look inferior but again I don't know how they were processed. What scanner do you use Pylvanainen?

I;m very pleased with the Plustek 7600

although I haven't used any other dedicated film scanners, so can't make any comparisons, the results are very satisfying. From what I understand from some reviews, the plustek and the Reflecta Proscan 7200 should deliver comparible results, but the Reflecta has faster scanning times.

My main use so far has just been scanning some test rolls for myself and old slides from my grandparents. From these I made some test prints, which look great at A3 and A2 sizes, from film between iso 100 and 400. I made one A3 print from iso 800 negative film which looked great, but showed some grain. This is of course only my opinion, you may have completely different demands from prints or be more easily offended by the faintest hint of grain.

It isn't the fastest scanner, both with manualy feeding the film and with scan times, but as I've mentioned, I like the results so far. Slides scan easiest, followed by negative colour. B&W is the most difficult for me. I still have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, so if you know more about scanning it should be possibe to get better results I think.

If you would like to see some examples from my scans, I've uploaded some to my flickr account. I'd have to add you as a family contact, because I don't want these test shots in my stream. Let me know.

Cheers,

Daniel

The reflecta proscan is a different scanner than the RPS 7200, in my country it's also cheaper.

Thank you very much for your feedback Daniel. Much appreciated.

And yes, f course, the RPS and the proscan are different models, with the RPS having AF and automatic film transport.

Hi

The Patient said:

If you would like to see some examples from my scans, I've uploaded some to my flickr account. I'd have to add you as a family contact, because I don't want these test shots in my stream. Let me know.

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was unable to find your flickr account, would you mind putting in a link?

Also are you interested in doing a comparison between that scanner and a Nikon LS-4000? We could scan the same negative and I would be happy to publish the scans on my blog. I think it would make an interesting comparison as many seem to ask if this scanner would be the equal of a use Nikon.

please feel free to message me or email me if you want to do this.

This is my flickr account: Flickr: forty-six_images' Photostream
If you want to see the Plustek scans, you'd have to let me make you a contact.

The comparison sounds like a good idea, I will email you for some details.

Cheers

Rather a pity that Sony didn't continue with it, but the Minolta DiMage Scan Elite 5400 (I have the v.1) offers the best scans I've found short of a PMT drum scan... and in some instances it's better than some drum scanners. For instance, I've done scans on mine that skilled Tango operators couldn't get right with multiple attempts. The DMSE 5400 was/is the only prosumer model dedicated film scanner with 5400 dpi resolution, AFAIK. It'll do a native 16x24" print at 300 dpi with no interpolation that looks terrific if your originals are up to snuff. I've printed the equivalent of 24"x36 from my scans and the images hold up well.

These scanners do crop up on eBay from time to time, and tend to fetch prices similar to what they were when new (up to $750). You may need to step back to an older OS like Windows XP or OS 10.4 to run the bundled KM driver (the later versions of which were actually quite good). There is also driver support from Silverfast and Vuescan for this scanner, but I earlier found Minolta's implementation of Digital ICE to be superior and haven't looked into these for awhile.

Imacons have been made for the better part of two decades and some have similar resolution used with 35mm. They lack Digital ICE, and multisampling, which can be godsends. They were about 8X as expensive as the MDSE 5400 new, but you might find a good deal on one. (Older ones probably require a computer with SCSI II support, so buyer beware.)

Thanks Ivan for your reply. I have actually bought the reflecta proscan 7200, with actual scan resolution of 3600 dpi. To be honest I am quite pleased with the results, even more than what I used to get with the Nikon L5000.