PlustekOpticFilm 135i - Automatic Film & Slide Scanner, Batch converts 35mm Slides & Film Negatives, Support 3rd Party Editing Software Export, Max. 7200 dpi

This is a super machine.Positives:Big upgrade from previous 135 in that it can do up to 7200 dpi and has an infra-red feature. (In practice, I scan at 3600 or 4000 as more gives you nothing much for a ton of extra space on your hard drive)Really good picture quality - I have compared scans on this to scans on units twice the cost and found it about as good or at worst 95% as good.Very fast. Ignore what some other fellow said here. I can scan 4 slides at 3600 dpi in 6-7 mins on batch and list scan (you need list to get it to do different file names and not confuse your filing system). Previewing would add to this about a minute or two...but considering some scanners take 7 mins for 1 slide and this is 4 slides for 7 mins, that is amazing! Plus you don't need to reload 4 different slides.Very solid slide and neg holders - you will need software to convert negs to positives without the orange cast -or be very good with curves.Very easy to use.Decent tech support (from USA) - live chat and email is better than phone, I found.NegativesVery poor quality plug with "adaptable@ Euro and Uk fit. Flimsy and dodgy. I bought my own for safety.The software you get is mediocre (but it is with most machines to be fair). I strongly suggest Vuescan, but many would suggest Silverfast.Why does the machine make the slide/neg container go all the way in and out for each slide on both scan and infra-red? Maybe a program update/new driver will make it more optimal for movement in and out for each slide - and probably knock another minute or two off of the scanning time.I use PhotoLab 4 for post processing and save on .tiff and covert to .jpeg. This gives you more control, less noise etc than .jpeg and for most scans, after post processing, you can then get rid of the .tiff and save space - if it is a very important slide or neg then keep the.tiff as well.I'd recommend previewing then cropping before the full scan - so you scan only what you want. I blower-brush the slides and then also set the infra-red to low and sometimes use the restore fading button which saves messing in post-processing. The restore color setting seems to be OTT and unnatural. I use color output on Adobe RGB as it is the most optimal.I also recommend Gerard Kingma's book, The Illustrated guide to Scanning, which is a short read but will probably save you hours of messing with some settings.

Fast delivery, general functionality and build quality are good. Scanning at 3600 allows me to print very good images at A4 probaly bigger on my Canon Pro 200. Detail is good and grain is still eveident and keeps the appearence of film. It's small footprint allows me to keep it on my desk at all times so it's very convienient, it's also fast even at 7200 and only takes around five minuets to scan 6 negatives. So far it has exeeded my expectations in terms of scan quality in both colour and B&W. As yet I can't comment on the scratch and dust removal option as I havent used it. Be aware that final image quality will depend on a number of things like the quality of the negatives and understand that if you put rubbish in you will get rubbish out, I did and print results were poor otherwise with decent negatives quality paper and inks and proper operation this little box of tricks works very well.!Iv'e been a photographer for most of my life and know a good print when I see one so I'm giving them 8/10 from my office printer and 9/10 on my Pro 200.Software is basic but does the job there is no silverfast with it, something I would have liked to try, but I have PS pro and it works well with that. Cheaper models are available but this batch scanner is worth the extra money to me as I can push the button and go do something else, It's not the cheapest in the line up but so far it's delivered the goods. I shall now go and burn through some more ink and paper and hope my wife doesn't notice...

I brought this as both sets of parents had lots of slides from the early years, we wanted to both preserve these and get them so that they can see the old photos as well as have them for our kids going forward. Had already done all the printed photos with a Scanner which I now use as a A4 multi page scanner so the cost for that one was easer to accept also we did this before we moved so allowed us to only keep electronic copies going forward. So went with this film scanner as I knew I had half frames as well as full frames.Set this up on our Mac Book Pro but I have also used this on a windows Laptop so the software that is linked is free to down load and works well, we have now completed the 5,000+ slides which does take some time and as these had been stored in lofts there are a few that have come out not so great but that is not the fault of the scanner more the storage method. while it takes quite a bit longer to scan slides than printed photos we are very happy with the results and these are now loaded so the parents can view on there iPads any time that they want to. very happy now looking to sell on as have no use for this any further.

This is the fifth device I have used for scanning my large collection of slides and negatives. The first was a Canon which was great but used a SCSI interface which became obsolete (I think the light source failed at about the same time). I used a flatbed scanner for a while until one cell on the sensor failed and lift a line along the scans. I then bought a Plustek 8100 which was awkward to use because it needed the film holder to be moved manually for each frame. Then that stopped communicating with the computer so I got another flatbed scanner which worked well but then the film scanner part seemed to give up.I was reluctant to get another Plustek because of my previous experience but they seem to be the only reasonable option. I was attracted by the motor driven film holder and so far (one afternoon and about 5 films) it has worked very well. It is slightly awkward to load films that are not flat (some of mine seem to still be curved seven after being stored flat for 20 years). I would have bought another negative holder as well but they are out of stock.I have almost finished scanning all my colour negatives and I had already scanned my slides. I am looking forward to the earlier monochrome films after that. Then it is a question of whether I rescan some films that are only scanned at low resolution at the moment.