Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u Film Scanner

Comments about Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u Film Scanner:

It is all they advertise.Easy to set up easy to use and excellent product when finished. Only dig it is slow but I knew that when buying. So for the price I am very satisfied.

Comments about Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u Film Scanner:

After my friend's Konica Minolta scanner died and I was forced to buy one myself, I spent my fair share of time comparing one scanner to the other... then changing my mind and adding another scanner to the mix. Since I use a Mac laptop, I was restricted in terms of which scanner I could use (most of them are compatible with windows ONLY).

The price is wonderfully low for this little and powerful machine. Scan quality is great and the ICE dust removal technology isn't 100% effective but enough to keep you from spending more hours than you should on photoshop removing tiny dust spots.

The only thing to be wary of is the confusing selection of films for the scanner mode... Rather than simply choosing color negative/positive, etc. there's a drop down menu of different types of film, not all of which are covered. When I was trying to scan in a Portra 100f roll, there was only the option for Velvia 100 which I thought would be OK. It seemed that first few scans diluted the color and were far from the original negatives... turns out there's an automatic color balance/level control that you have to remove after the scan in order to see the real image.

So far, no major problems... Just working on getting used to the machine :)

Comments about Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u Film Scanner:

I have a lot of mounted slides (two generation} to sort and scan the keepers. I previously tried a flat bed with transparency cacabilities. This produces far superior results. It is slow, but I knew that. A trade off for the price.

Comments about Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u Film Scanner:

I've been scanning a lot of my back catalog with this. The Grade A stuff goes to the pros, but this works fine for my desktop printing (13-inch format printer), some of which I do plan to sell.The setup is pretty easy as long as you remember to install the software *before* connecting the scanner. It will tell you when to plug it in. It's not fast, especially with high-resolution scans, and it's manually loading, one image at a time, so put on the tunes and do some web surfing while it's scanning. Note to Mac OS X 10.5.x users, the Photoshop plug-ins DO NOT WORK, so you will have to scan from the Cyberview software. It's OK, but adds a step in the workflow. I checked online for a patch. None yet; don't hold your breath. Also, the ROC and GEM software seems to be missing some profiles for older stock types, like for my Kodachromes. The ICE feature works pretty well, but seems to miss straight-line scratches and only reduces some of the larger pieces of gunk. I still have to do a little healing brush work, but not nearly as much as I would without it. It's worth the money. Finally, as for the scan quality, it's generally pretty good. It rocks on the lighter areas of the frame. It's revealing more flaws in my old technique and archiving than in the scanner itself. Its biggest weakness is in the dark areas of the frame. Instead of the rich shadow detail that can be pulled out of good slides, this scanner picks up a good amount of noise, like bad digital camera noise. Especially annoying is that it has a lot of blue channel chroma noise. These scans can not handle much shadow/highlight adjustment on the shadow end. Out of the scanner, they don't look bad, but even 10% shadow adjustment will show clear noise. Basically, if your slides are excellent and evenly exposed to begin with, they will be excellent. If you exposed to keep detail in the clouds, you can't expect too much out of the shadow areas.I've also had some minor problems with the scanning software returning bad images. I haven't pinned down the problem yet but I think it may have to do with the fact that the software allows you to save a 16-bit scan to an 8-bit jpeg. It may also be that the software allows you to select multiple film types at the same time. It doesn't automatically de-select previously chosen film types. There is better software available which may help several of these problems, but it's as much as the scanner itself, and probably isn't for anyone who would want to buy this scanner. It's listed in the recommendations below, though I'm not personally familiar with it. This is probably best for someone who wants to scan a few keepers per roll, but the lack of automatic feeding and its slow speed keeps it from being a real archiving tool. Also, the noise performance really prevents it from being a serious professional tool. Then again, what do you expect for under $300? Buy it, scan some of the old slides from when the kids were young and you'll love it. If you need a better scanner, move up to the Nikon.

Comments about Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u Film Scanner:

Purchased this scanner for mostly negs, color and some B&W. I wanted a basic unit, with fairly high res and ICE. Thisis exactly what this unit is. Simple, fairly well made,software is smooth to install and works well. The onlyinconvenience is no auto film feed, but it is no real bigdeal. I do like the film path as I was able to make my ownadapters for scanning 110, 126 and APS films. I wanted abasic scanner, and that is what I got. I.E., does the jobexpected, basically its a chevy belair w/o air, PS or PB.but he auto transmission is nice!!

Problems Encountered: None at all

Previous Equivalent Items Owned: HP flatbed w/TPA for slides/negs

Items I Recommend: none, comes complete

Comments about Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u Film Scanner:

I purchased this film scanner about 3 months ago and have scanned in Countless negs and slide photosit is a Good scanner for its price and has a vary wide scanning range and its Scratch and dust remover is vary GOODi have not seen any scanner remove dust like this oneid recommend it to anyone wanting to scan in there old and current memory'sand Film has a benefit that digital cant touchaccidentally delete a scanned image just re Scan it you cant say that about a digital only image i have burned myself with digital files so i still USE film cameras Got a film camera dont throw it away use it for those memory's you wan to keep for a few generations

Problems Encountered: no problems but if you are just learning to use this read the instructions it has a wide ability to scan and great for beginner to professional film shooterwhen i shoot digital its a bit risky because the many digital photos i have hard drive crash,viruses worms and spyware, Hackers:theft and other crimefilm photos have far fewer its subjected my film to heat water and mold and they still hold there composure cant say that for the CCD they hate heat water and Mold

Previous Equivalent Items Owned: Dimage film scanner

Items I Recommend: pair of white film gloves and small litebox liike the tundra light box