Powerslide 3650

by Pacific Image Electronics

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 11.4 x 4.9 inches ; 5.5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 12 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000G72TMY
• Item model number: PS3650
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 8, 2006

Product Description

Efficient Batch Scanning with the included slide magazine, the PowerSlide 3650 is capable of non-stop scanning up to 50 slides at a time. Single slides can also be scanned easily as well. The PowerSlide 3650 has built-in a mini light panel (Picture 3) which allows you to conveniently view the slide image before scanning.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finicky, but couldn't have done without it!, February 18, 2008

By 

Dale Dellinger - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Powerslide 3650 (Office Product)

Our family has slides. My parents have over 6,000 slides, I have reels and reels of slides that my grandfather took, my brother has a few thousand, and I have probably a few thousand myself. This device is a lifesaver! Yes, it sometimes jams. Yes, the software has it's problems. Yes, it's slower than slow. However, in the end it does a good job and best of all it does the scanning mostly without any help. We got this in Fall 2007 and my parents have finished their 6,000, and I'm working through mine and my grandfather's.

This scanner comes with a straight tray that holds 50 slides. We wanted the ability to pack one tray while the other is running so we bought two circular ones from the manufacturer that each hold 100 slides. We highly recommend doing this -- the circular ones jam much less than the included straight one. The scanner does about 9 or 10 slides per hour.

We're using this scanner on Mac OS X using Firewire -- haven't tried it with a PC or using the USB connection. We've used it on both Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard) -- make sure that you download the Leopard update from the manufacturer's website if you're on Leopard. The software itself is quirky, and it has a very unintuitive interface that I suppose shows it's Windows origins.

The typical process for setting it up
--------------------------------------------
1. Close all unnecessary apps (My mom needs to do this on her system with 1GB of RAM. I have 3GB and don't have to do this.)
2. Turn on scanner (takes a minute or two)
3. Start CyberView X software
4. Load tray into scanner. Use arrows on scanner to line up with notch on circular reel showing #1 slide.
5. From Scan menu, select Scan, then select Multi-Scan to File
6. Enter the number of slides in this batch.
7. Select where you want to write the scan files.
8. Select file type (TIF or JPG), and if JPG, also select output quality (Good, Better, Best).
9. Click Ok

There's two types of jams: 1) the slide didn't make it into the scanner, so the scan is of nothing! 2) more serious jams when it can't move the slide. In this case, it just shuts down. We have yet to have a slide damaged by this machine.

When we finish a batch, we check for any duds -- scans that turned out like white frames because of a jam -- then we rescan just those duds. The scanner has the capability to let you feed individual slides in manually, and we have to do that on rare occasions.

Tips to reduce jamming
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1) Put 'em in straight. Take care to put the slides straight into the slot in the tray.
2) Unbend. Make sure the slides aren't warped or tweaked. If they are try making them straight again. We had some 40-50 year old cardboard mounts that had been in Honeywell trays for about that long that were bent.
3) Trim the mounts. We had some old cardboard mounts that weren't mounted correctly -- the two halves didn't quite match. This made the mount a bit larger than it should be so we used scissors to carefully trim the extra edges. This made the slides fit better into the tray without bending or going in crooked.

As for the image -- we've seen some banding, and the colors don't seem as rich as the original slides, but that can be fixed with post processing. See the examples I uploaded.

Summary
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This scanner takes some getting used to as it whirrs, grinds, and make other noises, and you'll probably need to rescan some that got jammed, but over all it's a great time saver!

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great product if you have lots of slides, January 22, 2008

By 

Michael Buhrley - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Powerslide 3650 (Office Product)

I have scanned nearly 3,000 slides since buying the scanner in November. I have not had any major problems to speak of - 2 or 3 jams out of 3K slides is not bad. The images come out clear and crisp, Colors look good as well. The software that comes with the scanner is not that easy to use and I had a hard time getting good results so I spent an extra $79 and bought VueScan from Hamrick Software - this made all the difference! I also bought a Braun Paximat carousel from B&H so I can load 100 slides, come back in 9 or 10 hours and see the results.

After some experimenting with settings I am getting great results every time. I have great results with the ICE but not so much with the ROC and GEM settings. I have ICE set to the lowest setting and all the dust and scratches are gone.

If you are looking into scanning many thousands of slides this is the way to go. Also go ahead and buy VueScan, a couple of the Braun carousels and a external backup drive. Make sure you have a computer you can dedicate to scanning - does not need to be new or fast but should have at least 1 or 2Gb RAM and a large (100GB+) hard drive. Also make sure you backup the files daily.

This product looks an awful lot like (and has identical specs to) the Braun slide scanner that sells for nearly twice the cost. I debated whether to go with the trusted name or the lower price product - No regrets on going with the cheaper product - the performance has been stellar.

I would have given the product 5 stars if it had come with good software.

=== Update December 2010 ===
Scanner still turning out great images over 9,000 slides later! Only issue I have run into is that it tends to jam a lot lately, but I found that if you put a short pencil or some legos on the dark emergency slide release on the top then stack some heavy books on top and weigh down the release (not the button but the part where the slide actually would come up) then it will run without a single jam unless the cardboard was really mangled to begin with.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A few tips for using the Powerslide 3650, January 13, 2010

By 

Douglas Braddock (Fairbanks, AK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Powerslide 3650 (Office Product)

This scanner produces excellent scans, but has a few problems. Here is a list of them along with workarounds I've discovered through trial and error:

1. Included software is antiquated and difficult to use: The CyberView scanning software included with the scanner is of arcane design and has crashed my Vista (SP1) machine several times (it runs without crashing on my Mac running Snow Leopard). I recommend using a third-party scanning package such as VueScan (which I use) or SilverFast. When using such a package, you will still have to load the scanner driver, but the scanning experience will be much better.

2. Misfeeding and jamming: I've had numerous slides (both plastic and cardboard mounts) jam the machine. If you have these problems, try these workarounds: (1) apply a SMALL AMOUNT of silicone lubricant to the slide tracks and metal parts throughout the feed mechanism, (2) place a stack of heavy books on top of the scanner (apparently the top on my sample is slightly distorted upward, which skews the scanning bay into a parallelogram - the weight apparently corrects this), (3) Pacific Image sells something called a Universal Slide Tray that has wider slots for the slides and is therefore much longer than the tray that comes with the scanner. Pacific Image says that this tray works much better for cardboard mounts and that the tray that comes with the scanner is really made for plastic mounts. See [...] to order this tray. Frankly, that is the tray that should be included with the scanner! I've got one on order.

Now that Nikon has discontinued the Coolscan 5000 with its automated slide scanning adapter, this is the only scanner still on the market - of which I'm aware - that can batch scan 35mm slides.