Plustek 120 scanner review

Looking good!

Plustek OpticFilm 120 Film Scanner Review

Thanks for posting. Good to know if my Nikon 8000 dies.

Rattymouse said:

Looking good!

Plustek OpticFilm 120 Film Scanner Review

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I hope someone will do a more rigorous review. In particular, I'd like to know the real resolution and DR, whether the holders can achieve a sharp scan edge-to-edge, and exactly how the Plustek fares in a head-to-head comparison with the Nikon 9000. Sure, the 900 is no longer available, but I think most of us consider the Plustek to be a 9000 replacement.

Just got mine. Very good indeed, even compared to my 9000.
And definitely faster, given I don't have to mess around with focusing and keeping film flat: the holders are a generation better than the Nikon's.
Still experimenting.

nsouto said:

Just got mine. Very good indeed, even compared to my 9000.
And definitely faster, given I don't have to mess around with focusing and keeping film flat: the holders are a generation better than the Nikon's.
Still experimenting.

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I hope you get to post some actual technical results.

BTW, when you say it is faster than the 9000, is that the actual scanning process? I believe previous review posted puts the 9000 way ahead and generally even more so when ICE is used. Can you post your times with and without ICE?

Faster as I explained in that I don't have to mess around with focusing.
The 9000 film holders require multiple focus points to be taken (or AN-glass added ) - even with 35mm - before a mid-point is found that is acceptable for the whole frame.
With the Opticfilm, I just close the flap door and it's done. As fast as that.
It adds up: I find myself fussing with focus in the 9000 for a lot longer than the actual scan takes.
Will post some actual results soon, likely after the weekend.

As a point of reference, I have personally scanned over 20,000 frames of various films with the Coolscan 5000 and 9000 and at less than a minute per frame of 35mm with ICE on - about 30 seconds without, I have a reasonable idea of what adds up. I can tell you that minimal to no pre or post work required - particularly color adjustments, when using fully automatic batch scans using Nikonscan is a good time saver to go along with actual scan times. BTW, it seems we don't share the same focus issues.

Here is an example of the Coolscans time saving when it comes to a particularly scratched up frame of film. I cannot possibly match it in post work considering it takes less than a minute to scan with ICE.

Link to larger version -> Coolscan ICE


Here is an example of timesaving when it comes to Coolscan+Nikonscan automatic default color results compared to Vuescan many settings and film specific setting. No doubt personal preferences with color is highly subjective.

Link to larger version -> Coolscan Colors

No doubt I cannot expect as much data in a review considering the unit just came out. So I really appreciate the work that you are putting in to help the general knowledge. After all, the Coolscans are no longer in production so it is only a matter of time (knock on wood) even though they have certainly proven their build quality.

so only 6x12.. no 6x17 support?

Les, I'm not anymore interested in what Coolscans can do. Fact is, as you very well noted: Nikon doesn't make them anymore and neither do they service them. Witness: my non-working Coolscan V. I'm waiting for the sad time my 9000 goes the same way.
Entirely agreed: the Coolscans were excellent in their time. They still are, when they are working. Hey, someone will have to pry my 9000 out of my cold dead hands!
But Nikon's failure in improving them at all in the last 10 years has finally resulted in a very reasonable scanner being available by someone else.


About time! Finally! This is the first multi-format scanner still being made that I found both good and affordable. And I'm counting my blessings as there ain't that many of them left... Flatbeds are just not up to the task - I've owned 2 and they were hopeless for anything smaller than 6X4.5. The V750 Epson might be an exception but they are unobtainable in Australia as no one stocks them. And getting them from overseas is horrendously expensive on p&p.

The holders in the 9000 are completely unusable for serialized high definition 35mm scans. The point of ideal focus changes as the holder moves in and out of the scanner. Mostly because the spring of the front door and initial track is so strong it actually bends the flimsy plastic holder! And the gear that moves the setup is under the holder, which immediately makes it prone to up-down movement against a fixed focus point.
That has been the bugbear of all Coolscans I've used: keeping the film flat. On the 9000 I had to modify the holders myself with addition of a metal frame and AN-glass to try and work around the problem. It works really well now but the AN-glass introduces its own set of issues: one more thing to keep spotlessly clean! Which basically means: more lost time!

The Opticfilm uses a much more intelligent way of moving the holders - a lateral acting gear that simply cannot push the holder out of focus.

Aside:
For 35mm only, I'm finding a Primefilm 7250 Pro3 as good as anything else. The drivers and software are horrendous but with vuescan it's a much better scanner. Sure, the density range is way down on the Coolscans. Vuescan can work around that. It is however a much slower scanner in operation, but I can live with that if I can set it once and scan a long string automatically.
What appears to be very good is the focus! Once set for the middle of a frame, I don't have to worry about it changing. On the Coolscan V it was a constant source of pain with the strip holder not being able to keep film flat, forcing me to fine focus by trial and error for every frame in a strip of 6.
/Aside

Forgive me for not providing much more detail at this stage. I am flat out at work and about to go overseas on holidays soon. I don't have much free time to dedicate to a full review like I feel this gear deserves. All I can say at this stage is I am very well impressed with it. As time goes by I'll try to fill more - and I'm quite sure I'll find things that are not ideal.

The software UI is horrendous, but I'm getting used to it. The scan operation is not faster than the 9000 but it's right up there at least up to 5000 rez. The d-Ice is Plustek/Silverfast's i-SRD thingie, which basically means a second (faster - lower rez?) pass with infra-red light on. I don't think it's as good as Kodak's d-Ice on the Coolscans. But then again if it's good enough, I'm happy.

I haven't dared go 10000 yet as I don't feel it'll improve things that much with the film I'm testing - Fuji Xtra-400 - and that setting is interpolated anyway. And I'll need to fine tune the focus point, that much I've seen already. Good thing is: once that is out of the way, I can just leave it on and go for a coffee break: something I never was able to do with the Coolscans!

The drivers were a bit of a problem. After downloading the new version from the Plustek site, incorrect framing of 35mm went away. But it took a bit of fiddling to get the 64-bit version of the drivers for my Win-64 desktop. The installer simply does not understand 64-bit OS and forces a 32-bit install. Which stuffs up things majorly with Silverfast. Once I understood what was happening, I just fired off the 64-bit installer by hand instead of through the "idiot's front end" and it all works fine now with the unexplained "freezes" of Silverfast completely gone. I've also updated Silverfast from the original as there is now a new one in their site. Nothing new here, just standard fare for Wintel users...

Once again, apologies for the lack of much more detail and examples. I haven't been able to do anything major this weekend, flat out organizing things for the holiday. Will update as soon as I have more interesting stuff to report.

jimcollum said:

so only 6x12.. no 6x17 support?

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Yup. I'd suggest if 6X17 is a requirement, to try a flatbed: there ain't that many affordable film scanners that can do that. Neither are there affordable cameras...

nsouto said:

Les, I'm not anymore interested in what Coolscans can do. Fact is, as you very well noted: Nikon doesn't make them anymore and neither do they service them. Witness: my non-working Coolscan V. I'm waiting for the sad time my 9000 goes the same way.
Entirely agreed: the Coolscans were excellent in their time. They still are, when they are working. Hey, someone will have to pry my 9000 out of my cold dead hands!
But Nikon's failure in improving them at all in the last 10 years has finally resulted in a very reasonable scanner being available by someone else.

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I don't know about the Coolscan V but I do know the 5000 & 9000 are typical of Nikon design and production that are meant to last a very long time. I scanned over 15,000 frames on the 5000 and over 5,000 frames on the 9000 and both provide scans exactly like it did when I first got them. It would be good to know that the Plustek can perform at least as well - hopefully even better, and last as long.

OK folks, here is a Fuji Superia Xtra400 35mm negative scan done on the Opticfilm 120 at 5300dpi rez.

That works out at a nominal 36MPixel image. Yes, I know that's close to a D800E! Then again, I'm not claiming anything in that field!
It's what a 35mm frame works out at 5300 dpi scan, so there!

Please be gentle with the downloads! Save the images in your system if you want to play rather than do multiple downloads from the addresses below:
my ISP total allowance is limited! And please be patient - they are BIIIG images!

Original off the scanner:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~nsouto/photos/latest/lights 02.jpg

After my post-processing:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~nsouto/photos/latest/lights 02 proc.jpg

Conditions of the above:

The camera used was a Konica Hexar RF Titanium with a CV 35/1.4 M-mount lens, hand held and focused roughly just behind the Xmas tree lights.
Don't ask me for exposure details - all I recall is I took it early in the morning just before last Xmas at the Skylobby of the Sydney Westfield shopping mall and Head Office, where I work. If anything, it'd have been +1 overexposed as I like to do that with Superia 400 when there are strong and opposed lighting levels.

Negative strip was held in the vanilla standard 35mm strip holder that comes with the scanner.

Both saved from same ZIP compressed tiff original- unfortunately too large to upload in my ISP at 67MB!

Both are jpgs saved at 100% quality and full size from original tiff, using Irfanview.

The original has a slight development blotch (purple) next to the right top of the Xmas tree lights, which iSRD couldn't quite get rid of. But it did an excellent job of getting rid of a few choice pieces of dust I added to test it. I did set the iSRD correction to 5 out of a gauge of 10.

I selected the Fuji Superia 400 film profile in silverfast and then added a slight histogram correction to the reds to make the tree electric lights go yellow, rather than the usual orange tone of daylight film when faced with tungsten indoor lighting. Otherwise, the image colours are as the scanner interpreted them and quite accurate.

I noticed that after iSRD was processed, the image went overall slightly darker so I gave it a tweak of +0.5 "stop" in Silverfast.

The second file (with "proc" in the name) was processed with my usual post-scanning treatment:
Neat Image with a custom "noise" filter that gets rid of most of the film grain + Focus Magic set for "film image" and a sharpen setting of 5.

The times were 50 secs for the image scan and 50 secs for the infrared, with around 50 secs processing after that. Total was just under 3 minutes including the holder being moved in and out. That's not bad at all for USB2 and 5300 dpi!

Focus time was of course 0 - the scanner is pre-focused.

Otherwise, the images are pretty much vanilla. Rather than comment extensively myself, I submit them for your appreciation. Let me know what you think.

The image is not supposed to make any "statement"! It was taken long before this scanner was available and is part of my normal amateur work: it was not taken to specifically show anything other than the place itself.

At this stage, I'm prepared to say this equals or surpasses the best the Coolscan 9000 can do with this same negative strip - except for d-Ice, where the Nikon has an advantage, IMHO. I don't think iSRD is right up there on that...

Next I'm embarking on testing some choice film strips of Velvia 100 and Provia, taken with much better lenses and a Nikon F6 on a monopod.
I reckon the handling of grain on those is gonna be a nice surprise - the lighting in this scanner is much softer than the one in the Coolscan, although it is LED-based.
That soft light helps with handling grain and I'm actually quite excited to test it with some Adox B&W film - quite sure it'll blow the socks off the 9000!

But as I explained, it'll have to wait a bit as I'm flat out at work.

Enjoy.:munch:

nsouto said:

OK folks, here is a Fuji Superia Xtra400 35mm negative scan done on the Opticfilm 120 at 5300dpi rez.

That works out at a nominal 36MPixel image. Yes, I know that's close to a D800E! Then again, I'm not claiming anything in that field!
It's what a 35mm frame works out at 5300 dpi scan, so there!

At this stage, I'm prepared to say this equals or surpasses the best the Coolscan 9000 can do with this same negative strip - except for d-Ice, where the Nikon has an advantage, IMHO. I don't think iSRD is right up there on that...

Next I'm embarking on testing some choice film strips of Velvia 100 and Provia, taken with much better lenses and a Nikon F6 on a monopod.

Enjoy.:munch:

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I can understand your enthusiasm as the claimed 5300dpi is supposedly correct and should outresolve the Coolscan's 4000dpi. Look forward to the Velvia and Provia results. TIA.

At this stage, I'm prepared to say this equals or surpasses the best the Coolscan 9000 can do with this same negative strip ... quite excited to test it with some Adox B&W film - quite sure it'll blow the socks off the 9000!

Maybe, but what is needed is a head-to-head comparison of the same negative scanned on both a Nikon and a Plustek.

pschwart said:

Maybe, but what is needed is a head-to-head comparison of the same negative scanned on both a Nikon and a Plustek.

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THAT, can definitely be arranged! Stay tuned.

Flatbed scanner

Someone mentioned that the flatbed scanners were not very good. I'll try to post two that I did with my Epson V 500 last week. The Basilica is from a 4x6 print and the Zebra is from a 35 mm color negative.

nsouto said:

THAT, can definitely be arranged! Stay tuned.

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How is this coming along? Thanks

Finally, a technical review of the Plustek OpticFilm 120. It's 5300dpi is less than that of the Coolscan's 4000dpi in actual detail resolved. I wonder if this is just because of a non-optimal sample? Scan times are also in excess of the Coolscans. The 9000+Nikonscan ICE is still the best by far.

Les Sarile said:

Finally, a technical review of the Plustek OpticFilm 120. It's 5300dpi is less than that of the Coolscan's 4000dpi in actual detail resolved. I wonder if this is just because of a non-optimal sample? Scan times are also in excess of the Coolscans. The 9000+Nikonscan ICE is still the best by far.

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Interesting, not very good for the plustek people...

Does the Hassleblad X1 scan 4x5's?


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StoneNYC said:

Interesting, not very good for the plustek people...

Does the Hassleblad X1 scan 4x5's?


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Yes it will same as the Imacon 949 and probably right down the line to the older models - don't quote me on the last part though.

Looks like they got one of the bad ones.

I wonder if they should have set the scanner to 10600 to achieve the effective 5300? Would be nice for Plustek to respond...

chuck94022 said:

I wonder if they should have set the scanner to 10600 to achieve the effective 5300? Would be nice for Plustek to respond...

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What? That makes no sense, can you explain yourself? Are you talking about re-sampling the 10600 to 5300? That wouldn't really work because the image is already interpolated big time at 5300


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The scans aren't interpolated, the scanner really does have a stepping resolution of 10600. They are optics-limited, that's all - and I suspect in this case, it's a faulty scanner. With some scanners you can squeeze a little more resolution out by choosing the highest settings.

artobest said:

The scans aren't interpolated, the scanner really does have a stepping resolution of 10600. They are optics-limited, that's all - and I suspect in this case, it's a faulty scanner. With some scanners you can squeeze a little more resolution out by choosing the highest settings.

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Are you sure? I'm not trying to argue I just doubt it would be double what they claim.


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