Reflecta rps 10m

Does anybody have experience with this scanner? I've been looking online and I find very mixed reviews. I was looking for a scanner with automatic feed and this seems the only new "affordable" model on the market, but I've read from various people that it is not gentle to the film...
The alternative could be a coolscan 4000 which seems in the same price range, albeit with no automatic feed. But I'm not totally convinced in investing in a 15 year old piece of equipment...

I had two Reflectas, the 7200 and the 10M. The 10M replaced the previous one and it was really good for scanning individual frames. I have reservations regarding the feed you mentioned. Both Reflectas had very poor frame recognition and I was not able to make strip scans automatically. I found two issues: first the ability of the software to identify frames and the second the feed mechanism is not precise - the film slips sometimes so even when you have the first frame correctly positioned, there is not guarantee that the second frame will be where it should be. I tried automatic feature also in Silverscan without success. As I recall it , the folks from Lasersoft commented the issues with 10M on their forum roughly this way: "... we cannot get information from RPS 10M about actual position of the strip, without this information there is no possibility for Silverfast position the frame exactly as it should be... ". Regarding the mechanical feed issue itself, I had a conversation with Reflecta Support about it. They responded to me that "... sometimes transport problems are just related to the film material". I found this to be true, I had problems with strip slipping only (edited: SOMETIMES) with C41 films (colour and XP2), not with classical BW films. As a result, I gave up the automatic feed, scanned the frames individually and that is. I was satisfied then. Sold the RPS 10M only because of the need to fund my Bronica GS-1 ...
Petr

The Nikon 4000 has automatic feed, but you need the right carrier for it, or you can modify one which is easy to do. I've beed using one for many years. Still going strong. It takes roughly 40 or so minutes to scan a roll of 36 with Vuescan if you keep the settings simple. I've done somewhere north of 40,000 scans with it.

If you use it with Vuescan, you can set it up to scan the film as soon as you insert it.

If you want a fast scanner the only ones are the minilab scanners. Those have gotten expensive though, and the quality isn't as good.

Mmh ok so I should not trust the feed of the 10m... I didn't know the 4000 can do automatic, that is quite interesting! Speed is not a problem, I would just prefer to avoid pushing the strips one-by-one for an hour.

Patrick Robert James said:

The Nikon 4000 has automatic feed, but you need the right carrier for it, or you can modify one which is easy to do. I've beed using one for many years. Still going strong. It takes roughly 40 or so minutes to scan a roll of 36 with Vuescan if you keep the settings simple. I've done somewhere north of 40,000 scans with it.

If you use it with Vuescan, you can set it up to scan the film as soon as you insert it.

If you want a fast scanner the only ones are the minilab scanners. Those have gotten expensive though, and the quality isn't as good.

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Heard great reviews about Nikon 4000 as well. Sounds be a reliable one.

Yes I'm trying to find a 4000 or 5000 now I even already have the firewire adapter!

I have the RPS7200 - on the whole it is a pretty decent scanner when used with care, though I've found you need Silverfast to get the most from it (Vuescan doesn't really get on with it very well). There is no automatic frame detection. You load the first frame, adjust the offset manually and then Silverfast just sends a command to the scanner to advance one frame - it does this with a standard number of stepper motor actuation's (I suspect). If you have non-standard frame spacing, or irregular frame spacing, then you'll find that by the end of the strip you are a little out. As others have mentioned, it also sometimes slips a little pulling the film through. I've found this worse with some films (Portra slips most for me), though it's much better when put through shiny side up. Give the rollers a good air blast from time to time too as dust seems to make them slip. It never achieves the stated 7200 ppi resolution, but does get close or exceed 4000 ppi. It can reliably resolve 3600 ppi, so you can either just scan at that, or I have found that scanning at 7200 to TIFF with iSRD (colour or chromogenic films only) and ME on as an archive and then USM then then resizing down gives better results than straight scanning at 3600. This takes time though.

xtolsniffer said:

I have found that scanning at 7200 to TIFF with iSRD (colour or chromogenic films only) and ME on as an archive and then USM then then resizing down gives better results than straight scanning at 3600. This takes time though.

Click to expand...

Curious how long does it take to scan a frame in this manner - 7200dpi vs 3600 with and without iSRD?
The Coolscan 5000 can scan a frame @ 4000dpi with ICE (dust and scratch removal) in about 50 seconds and about 35 seconds with ICE turned off.

I just timed a frame, at 7200ppi with iSRD takes just over 2 minutes. 3600ppi with iSRD also takes just over 2 minutes and 3600ppi with no iSRD takes one minute 19. If you add in multiple exposure there is obviously a second pass so the time doubles plus quite a bit for processing the image after. It's not the fastest scanner on the block.

Those are actually reasonable scan times.