The Cheapest Online Plustek OpticFilm 8200i Ai Film Scanner
Plustek OpticFilm 8200i Ai Film Scanner Review
OPTICFILM 8200I AI CLR SLIDE 7200DPI 64BIT 36.8X25.4MM USB 2.0 48-bit Color - 16-bit Grayscale - USB
Price : $491.99
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Plustek OpticFilm 8200i Ai Film Scanner Feature
- 7200 dpi resolution
- 48-bit color depth
- 64-bit hardware and software support
- Enhanced with Multi-Exposure Function for quality image
- Build-in Infrared channel
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Costumer review
61 of 63 people found the following review helpful.
Slow and complicated but works quite well
By Lon J. Seidman
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R35IUQ5LTNJEQZ If you're like me you likely have thousands of old photos around the house that need to get digitized and brought into the 21st century. Scanning prints with a flatbed scanner is one way to get the job done, but you're going to get much better quality out of scanning the original negatives. Why? Prints may fade over time and depending on the size lack the detail that's locked away in the negative.
The Plustek 8200i is a great way to get started archiving all of those memories. The scanner is well built, includes trays for both slides and film negatives, and has very robust software for both the Mac and PC included in the box. They also included a nice carrying case to store the unit dust free when it's not in use.
The process of scanning is slow and about the same as it would be with a comparable flatbed scanner. The included software is a bit complex and takes some time to learn. It's disappointing that the scanner won't work directly with Photoshop or Aperture. The scratch detection works ok, but is sloppy in complex images. You might be better off fixing things in a recent version of Photoshop which has more advanced algorithms for pixel replacement.
Those gripes aside, this is an excellent way to archive old photographs. I plan to use this quite a bit this winter to archive family memories.
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
"It isn't a spaceship. It's a time machine."
By Clovis
I purchased this scanner a few weeks ago. I agree that the instructions are almost worthless, but I was able to figure it out. First off, you need a robust computer to run this. My machine has an Intel i7 quad core processor and 16GB of RAM, yet it will seriously bog down if I attempt to run anything while scanning. I uninstalled my multi function printer/scanner before installing the drivers for this hardware. So far, I have scanned 65 Kodachrome slides circa 1940's and a couple hundred color negatives at various resolutions. Silverfast is very nice software for perfect manual color correction, but auto does a pretty good job MOST (but not all) of the time. I have found that the best results occur from scanning at 3600dpi, which shows enough detail to see the individual grains of developed image. Each frame is prescanned (about 15 seconds) then if any changes are required, they are applied. Then the final high resolution scan takes about 90 seconds per pass, noting that infrared scratch and dust removal requires its own pass. I was amazed at how effective the IR scratch removal was on even severely mistreated color negatives. Silverfast has a function called "negfix" that contains correction data specific to individual films. I was making very good scans right away, but it took me many hours of scanning to learn the special functions that allowed me to make great scans - I mean scans where the color is dead on and the image quality rivals fresh images out of my Canon 6D. That is amazing to see. I have had a very good experience with my scanner and the supplied Silverfast software. It is not fast, it requires a muscular computer, and the software has worthless instructions, but once you master it, the images it makes will take you "to a place where we ache to go again."
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent scanner, but beware of the 2-party bundle
By Kenneth Meyer
I'm a retired software developer who spent a decade the film biz. I took a lot of pictures. I'm anything but a dark room pro; I'd never used Photoshop or any other sort of image manipulation software. I have a Dell Latitude running W7 and 16G of RAM.
I purchased the Plustek 8200ai in March '13. I scanned a few hundred slides and negatives, both color and b&w, and was delighted with the results. The 8200ai seems like a very solid box. The bundled software, SilverFast (SF) which is developed by LaserSoft Imaging (LSI) has nice features but they are poorly documented. And although the SF user interface is highly idiosyncratic, it can be conquered. All in all, I *was* very pleased with the package and delighted with the scans.
I say 'was' because about 2 months ago, following a SilverFast upgrade, the system when south. Here's the dark side of the story.
LaserSoft upgrades the SilverFast software every couple of months. My first couple of upgrades were routine. A couple of months ago I upgraded SilverFast to Version 8.0.1r26 and, at their suggestion, upgraded the Plustek scanner driver (OpticFilm 8.0.0.1). Suddenly my scans were failing. I submitted numerous requests for help from LSI. LSI support is a best unresponsive--the problems from the upgrade were treated with a haughty indifference. Worse, there was no serious effort to solve the problem. The little support LSI offered was to blame the PlusTek hardware. It's a vulnerable position.
Fortunately, the PlusTek technical support is superb! They saved the day. Despite the fact the PlusTek support team did not get much help from LSI, they stuck with me until the problem was indentified. It took 2 months! They replaced the hardware until we were certain the problem was software. It appears that the application or the driver is now sitting in a memory area used by the network stack so that the network steps on application or driver memory. If I disable the network (wired or wireless, which ever is in use), the scanner works perfectly. I don't have a fix, but at least I can now use the scanner.
Note: I never heard a pejorative word about LSI from PlusTek, but it was clear they also had problems with the LSI tech staff.
If I was just rating the the PlusTek hardware and support team, I would rate the system 5 stars. The scanner is perfect for my uses. But, here's the rub: The PlusTek/SilverFast bundle is put together by two different companies. One company has great tech support; one has terrible tech support. You could get caught in the middle. I did. So long as the SF upgrades don't break something, you'll have a good package. Consequently, I'm rating 4 stars based on the scans produced and the assumption that most people won't get caught between LSI and PlusTek.
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