Plustec 7200

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 Rob Exile Ward 01 Sep 2018

I'm really keen to digitise my own slides and get rid of them. There seem to be a number of Plustec scanners around, does anyone have personal experience of using them? Are they any good?

 Andy Johnson 01 Sep 2018
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

I've got a Plustec 8200 and have used it to scan a lot of my dad's old slides. The results seem to me  to be pretty good and the hardware build quality is fine. It came bundled with some software called Silver Scan which I didn't use - I went with VueScan instead (https://www.hamrick.com/),

 greg_may_ 01 Sep 2018
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

8200 here as well, works well, can't argue with the results. 

 timparkin 01 Sep 2018
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

7200 and 8200 are pretty good. If you want to save some money, buy a Minolta Scan Elite 5400 which is higher resolution and possibly better quality at a fraction of the price. You might have to play with drivers etc but it could be worth it. 

I run a drum scanning service (http://drumscanning.co.uk) and would highly recommend keeping a handful of the best of your slides so that you or your descendants can get a proper high-resolution scan at some point in the future. The difference is illuminating - especially for dark slides For reference, we scanned all of Alan Hinkes' slides for his 8000m book.

p.s. you can see the level of detail available in a 35mm slide at the bottom of this article where I show a couple of Alan's images and zoomed in sections

https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-velvia/

and here from a 1600 speed print film taken hand held

http://static.timparkin.co.uk/static/tmp/35mm-OM2-Fuji-Superia-1600-6000dpi...

Post edited at 15:43
 y2keable 20 Sep 2018
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Hey bud. I've been using a 7400 for the past 8 or 9 years, I havent't fully converted to digital yet and so it gets a lot of use. Any dedicated 35mm plustek scanner comes highly reccomended by me, they're capable of such high quality scans. Of course though, the quality has to be there in the slide first and it helps to know your way around Lightroom as the scan is likely to require a little adjusting if you want the colurs perfect. The Silverfast scan software which comes with the scanner has some colour presets but they're crap and there are some manual tools for adjusting levels, curves and basic colour correction but nothing beets pro software like Lightroom or Photoshop. The pull & push tool is quite handy, pre scan the frame for a preview and you can use a slider to either pull or push the exposure so that when you hit the scan button to do a full res scan, you have perfect exposure. Handy for pulling out more detail from a shot thats a bit over or under exposed. Also, I normally scan with the contrast set to rock bottom, that way the image that's saved (I always reccoment .tiff format) is nice and flat and so the coulers are easier to correct in LR and some proper contrast can be introduced.

Here's a typical example of a scan...

http://jk-photo.co.uk/pictures/climbing/john_nedkelly.jpg

I've just joined Instagram and I'm in the process of uploading some of my favorite photos, look for @36_frmes_later if you'd like to see more scans

Also, if you do end up getting a Plustek scanner, I'd be happy to jump on a Skype screen share with you to show you how to get the best out of it

 

 Colin Wells 21 Sep 2018
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

If you've a decent high-resolution digital camera with a good macro or close-focus lens and a light box, then you can digitise slides and produce copies that are as good as, if not better than, images produced by expensive scanners - and much more quickly.

Was finally convinced by this when I did a comparision with a drum-scanned image that had been done for a magazine article a few years back.  Surprisingly the 'photographed' slide was actually superior to the drum scan (sharper and better res).

Since then an image from a slide digitised in this simple way has been used on the front cover of a magazine - the editors didn't seem to realise - or mind - it hadn't been drum scanned or reproduced using a slow expensive scanner.

There's quite a lot about this revelation on t'Interweb if you search around - including quite a few professionals who now use cameras instead of scanners.

 


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