Smashed the Plustek with a hammer

Canon4me · Mar 21, 2021

I feel very fortunate I have my Nikon Super Coolscan 9000ED that I bought new over 10 years ago. It has less than 100 negatives scanned on it. I sent it in to somebody that works on them and he checked it out and cleaned my mirror. It works great and delivers great scans. I’m waiting on delivery of a new Epson V850 Pro I’m going to use for photos and large negatives. I’m sorry your scanner gave out on you and hopefully you can pick up something dependable.

brbo · Mar 22, 2021

Why take it out on a poor scanner? Wife and kids were not around?!

Seriously though, you should at least take the lens out of the scanner and use it for scanning with digital camera. Scanning with Plustek will then seem like nirvana...

Brad Deputy · Apr 19, 2021

Funny I come across this post today....my Plustek 8200i has, after an update to SilverFast 9.0.2, began introducing white lines randomly in one of every 10 of my scans. It's not the scanners fault, because I can rescan 10 times and the lines are in exactly the same place, but if I make a slight adjustment to the scan area, they go away. And I've scanned 2000 photos now before this update with nary a hitch.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who shares the same sentiment, but can I use some sort of digital hammer and smash SilverFast??

From what I've read the Plustek seems like the most reliable unit for the quality for 35mm negs and slides today. Other than limping along an unsupported Coolscan, do we really have any choice? Sigh... . I'm not sweating it since I find my scans better than any Noritsu lab I've come across yet (even thedarkroom.com)

Brad Deputy · Apr 19, 2021

Hmm, even from 9.0.1 to 9.0.2? Oddly I didn't have any issues upgrading from 8.x to 9 last month. Yeah I'm lazy I should contact their support

PhilBurton · Apr 19, 2021

Brad Deputy said:
Hmm, even from 9.0.1 to 9.0.2? Oddly I didn't have any issues upgrading from 8.x to 9 last month. Yeah I'm lazy I should contact their support

I had to contact their support when I was doing an eval of Silverfast, and they were very helpful. One of the factors that led me to choose Silverfast over Vuescan.

Brad Deputy · Apr 26, 2021

I contacted support and (no surprise ) theyasked me to clear my settings, and update the Plustek Driver too.
All done, and the white lines are gone!
(Also, Silverfast overall is much snappier now)
Thanks everyone.

Rick A · Apr 30, 2021

pentaxpete · May 8, 2021

I have a PlusTek OpticFilm 7200 given to me by a Camera Club Friend -- it developed a fault where there was a White Line down one side of scanned negs -- then Mr Hamrick of 'Vuescan Fame' sent out his Newsletter in which it was stated in an upgrade ' solved faults with Plus Tek so I got that upgrade and now NO 'White Lines' -- it was a 'SOFTWARE Fault' after all NOT your PlusTek !

choiliefan · May 8, 2021

Hammer in haste, repent with credit card.

Down Under · May 8, 2021

markjwyatt said:
I usually remove the hard rive and damage it beyond repair. Less messy than smashing a computer.

Unclean spirits, my pooter! Next time one of your little darlings passes away, go on Ebay and buy a portable disk box for <$10. Take out the hard disk from your computer (often very easily done) and pop it in (the disk boxes usually come with instructions) and presto! you now have a new portable hard disk, also with luck whatever files you had in the original disk will still be there. I've had one with the disk from my 2007 Dell laptop since it suffered sudden death syndrome in 2015. Works perfectly and I retrieved everything I still had on it.

choiliefan · May 9, 2021

Thanks for the tip on the portable disk box.
First I've heard of such a thing.
https://www.google.com/search?q=por...j0i22i30l2.19915j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

KenS · May 26, 2021

Andrew O'Neill said:
Matt is correct. Manuel!

I believe the 'this is an ex-parrot' one to be 'funnier'.

Since immigrating to Canada in the mid 60's I have to admit I REALLY miss some of the BBC comedy shows (both on the 'tele' and radio. I do have some Brit radio comedy (The Goon show.. Monty Python and a few others on a CD that I get to listen to 'when the needs must'.

Ken

Andrew O'Neill · May 26, 2021

KenS said:
I believe the 'this is an ex-parrot' one to be 'funnier'.

Since immigrating to Canada in the mid 60's I have to admit I REALLY miss some of the BBC comedy shows (both on the 'tele' and radio. I do have some Brit radio comedy (The Goon show.. Monty Python and a few others on a CD that I get to listen to 'when the needs must'.

Ken

I grew up with The Good Show. My dad (from Scotland) made sure we got our daily dosage. Monty Python, Fawlty Towers... hard to beat!

nerologic · Jun 1, 2021

If you start hearing stepper motors in your dreams…. you’ll know why. Gonna be haunted by white lines on your actual negs too.

grat · Jun 2, 2021

nerologic said:
If you start hearing stepper motors in your dreams…. you’ll know why. Gonna be haunted by white lines on your actual negs too.

If you're hearing stepper motors in your dreams, you need a quieter stepper driver. TMC drivers are popular.

mtjade2007 · Jun 18, 2021

pentaxpete said:
I have a PlusTek OpticFilm 7200 given to me by a Camera Club Friend -- it developed a fault where there was a White Line down one side of scanned negs -- then Mr Hamrick of 'Vuescan Fame' sent out his Newsletter in which it was stated in an upgrade ' solved faults with Plus Tek so I got that upgrade and now NO 'White Lines' -- it was a 'SOFTWARE Fault' after all NOT your PlusTek !

Till this day I never understand why Nikon and Minolta quit making those film scanners. Their film scanners may not be at the level of drum scanners they were affordable and very good quality. I have two Minolta MF scanners but I did not get in time the latest ones. Flatbed scanners are just not ideal for scanning films, especially for small films such as 35 mm. Try to get a hold of a real film scanner and see the difference. In the worst case you can return it back to eBay.

PhilBurton · Jun 20, 2021

mtjade2007 said:
Till this day I never understand why Nikon and Minolta quit making those film scanners. Their film scanners may not be at the level of drum scanners they were affordable and very good quality. I have two Minolta MF scanners but I did not get in time the latest ones. Flatbed scanners are just not ideal for scanning films, especially for small films such as 35 mm. Try to get a hold of a real film scanner and see the difference. In the worst case you can return it back to eBay.

I am sorry that Nikon is no longer making film scanners, but I'm going to guess that it was issue of revenue or market size. They have only so much R&D money, and they need to keep up with Canon and now Sony. Can't speak for Minolta, but I'm going to guess that in the merger with Konica, the scanner folks just lost their influence

If Nikon did re-enter the market, what would they do? Just keep on making the 5000/9000? Update them with USB 3.x? Faster scanning speeds? Improved batch slide and roll adapters? A batch feeder with a 200 (?) slide capacity?

MattKing · Jun 20, 2021

A purpose built large sensor digitizer that uses a single exposure or a small number of pixel shift exposures would be much more likely.
Something that uses some of the technology in the modern microfilm scanners - as an example: https://e-imagedata.com/scanproi9300-overview/

Smashed the Plustek with a hammer

Canon4me

brbo

Brad Deputy

Brad Deputy

PhilBurton

Brad Deputy

Rick A

pentaxpete

choiliefan

Down Under

choiliefan

KenS

Andrew O'Neill

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nerologic

grat

mtjade2007

PhilBurton

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Smashed the Plustek with a hammer

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