Customer Reviews

Plustek Opticfilm 7300

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've been using this scanner for a couple of days now, and have scanned approx. 50 negs.

Pros: Works as promised. Installation is quick and easy. You can get the software installed and ready to work in minutes. I tried both Quick Scan and Intelliscan. If you are trying to preserve your treasured memory recorded on your negs, don't bother with Quick Scan as its result is quite poor. Intellican, together with SliveFast software, on the other hand can produce very good results. I'm now using Intelliscan exclusively to scan all my negs into digital photos. SilverFast software is powerful and feature rich. There are many switches and knobs you can turn to adjust your scan result. The build quality of this machine is also very impressive.

Cons: I consider these things minor, but they do affect user experience.
1) There are 3 Quick Start guides when you open the box, how will you know which one to go first? Well, let me document it here so everyone else can save some time. Follow the Quick Start guide for hardware and driver installation first. If you don't want to bother with Quick Scan that generates poor result, skip the guide on that. Follow the guide on SilverFast software installation guide. Once finished, you can start scanning your negs and slides using Intelliscan.
2) The learning curve for SilverFast is steep because its documentation is not very well organized. The CD does contain QuickTime movies that explain various features in the software, but there is nothing to connect them together to give you a bigger picture on the work flow that you will go through. But I still find that to be more useful than the doc.
3) The film holder is not the easiest thing to use. I wish it had "teeth" that can quickly and easily hold your neg strips in place.
4) If you plan to scan all your negs accumulated over the years in one weekend, it won't happen.

Conclusion: Overall, it's a very good machine that gets the job done. Result is good, and price is reasonable. For all the memory recorded on your early pictures, spending a bit time to preserve it is well worthwhile.

I'm going to review this scanner in relation to another film scanner I have used, the Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED. Why don't I still have the 5000? With the scanner and all the attachments I had, I had about $2K invested in the 5000. I finished a project I had with it almost 2 years ago so I sold it because I didn't want $2K just sitting around unused. Then a few weeks ago another huge project involving negative scanning came up. Unfortunately, I no longer had the $2K to re-invest in the 5000 setup so I went looking for other options. This scanner seemed to have the best performance in a budget film scanner based on reviews so I gave it a shot.

Image Quality: I can't tell the difference between the two. Now, I need to mention that I don't scan at the full DPI that the scanner can do. With every film scanner I have tried (I have tried 3 different ones at this point; the other two I mentioned already and the third was a high end Canon flatbed scanner with filmstrip holders) I have found that full DPI results in an extreme loss of my time (takes way too long) as well as adding a lot of grain but adding no additional detail when pixel-peeped with Photoshop. So, I never scan at the highest DPI. On the 7300, the 7200DPI setting is indistinguishable from the 3600DPI setting in terms of detail so I use 3600. Again, I find no difference between the quality of the two scanners.

Software: This, as it turns out, is the most important part of the scanning process. I have now used 3 different scanning software programs. I have used a Canon one, I have used the one that came with this scanner, and I have used a program available online called VueScan Professional. I have found that the worst thing you can do is use the software that came with this scanner. Do not use it! Really poor processing with this bundled software. Trust me on this, buy the Vuescan professional software online. It's not prohibitively expensive by any means and if you ask me it is essential to getting the most out of this (or any other) film scanner!

Speed: Well, yes, the Coolscan 5000 does blow this scanner out of the water when it comes to speed. You do get something for your $1200 (with no attachments; up to $2K with the full compliment) If you are going to be doing this permanently, yes you will probably want the 5000. If this is a one time deal and you are on a budget, then the 7300 is probably the way to go at 1/5 the price, which brings me to the next bullet point...

Price: The 7300 is 1/5 the cost of the Coolscan 5000 ED. Hey, you really can't beat that ratio.

Build quality: 7300 is actually better than I thought in this respect. I was expecting a tiny and flimsy machine. It iss actually larger and more solidly built than I expected. That said, it is no 5000. The 5000 is a piece of military hardware compared to this--it's built like a tank.

In summation, you will have to weigh your own personal preferences as far as speed and cost goes. To me, these are the only two variables. As I said I have found the quality to be indistinguishable. You are going to have to make your decision based on how much money you have and how much free time you have. It is a slow inexpensive scanner vs a fast expensive one. Please take my advice and read online reviews of the Vuescan software. Don't take my word for it on that; see what professionals say about that product. Just please don't waste your time with the bundled software that comes with this machine.

Yes, It's slow but worth the wait. I left film photography several years ago to get "into" the digital era. But I missed the quality of Ilford and Kodak B&W film. Plus I have tons of Negatives laying around. As a result, I've taken my old film camera's out from storage (Nikon fe, Nikon f100) and began shooting several roles. I then decided to have most of my c41/b&w film developed at the local mini lab and scanned on a disc for digital editing... The best of both worlds I thought.
But something was missing... I soon realized that taking film to get developed by others takes the fun out AND is frequently a hit or miss experience. So I dug into my storage room and found my developing/darkroom equipment and then began to do some research on quality 35mm scanners. Plustek was the best for it's price and was recently reviewed on Shutterbug mag. The downfall... Plustek Opticfilm 7200 wasn't MAC compatible. BUT... to my surprise this new model (7300) as well as the 7500 are now MAC compatible. Fairly quick and painless to set up and get started. And yes it takes some time to scan (especially at highter res) but I'm in no hurry especially since I'm so particular of results. I totally recommend this scanner to anyone looking to digitize old 35mm film or for those creative folks that want to use both analog and digital formats. Does the trick!

The Plustek scanner has been great so far after 700 slides is working great. I use it with OS X Leopard. The photos are looking great and get a color and brightness tweak automatically. there are shortcuts you will use when you get used to it. Obviously scanning one slide at a time is going to be slow to go but the quality is extremely high and the files can be very large if you choose to save them that way.
Installing the program was a bit of a challenge, I had to register it online first before it would work.
I hope this helped someone to choose this scanner, it is really a great buy for the money

This scanner is a marvel! It arrived less than 24 hours after I'd place the
order, and it has changed my life! I'd struggled with terrible name-brand
flat-bed scanners for years [they produced terrible noise in the shadows and
were dead-slow at resolutions above 200dpi] in my efforts to digitalize a
collection of many thousands of treasured 35mm slides dating back 50 years.
Not only is this scanner incredibly fast compared to the my old ones, but it
does a triple pass for every slide, then averages the results to produce
images that are beautiful and have no noise in the shadows. I've succeeded
in making wonderful pictures from slides that were terrible! One set, very
important to family memories, taken in 1969 at a special occasion, had been
unusable due to inadequate flash technique [they made everyone look like
stainless steel; i.e., no flesh tones and gleaming highlights]. Due to the
capacity to try different resolutions [up to 7200dpi] and then use the
remarkable software to achieve optimal tones, I was able to resurrect the
entire collection, with the exception of a few that had been hopelessly
underexposed. Trouble with finding the detente position for the slide carriage
reported for earlier/other models has been eliminated on this model. While I
can't just set it and walk away the way commercial processors would have to
do, I'm thoroughly delighted with this unit. Thank you, Plustek & AOL.

after 2 weeks and over 700 negatives and slides scanned i find very little to complain about with this scanner. i am using this under osx leopard and have not tried the windows software.

pros - depending on the quality of the negatives or slides the results can be absolutely amazing. some well preserved slides i scanned, kodak of unknown film type, at 1200 dpi produce 1.3 megabyte files of approximately 7.1 megapixles - 3320x2240 pixels. color saturation and replication was excellent using the default settings. color negatives from kodak gold 200 also scanned excellent using the default settings. slight changes to the saturation and brightness were necessary on a few of the negatives but those were a result of the lighting when the pictures were taken. for black and white negatives the default settings for kodak tmax 400 and trix 400 work very well. the only items i have needed to change are the brightness for midtones and overall brightness depending on how the picture was exposed orginally. several negatives i scanned at 2000 dpi, both color and bw, and the size of the files grows to about 11 megabytes each, 5577x3763 pixels. still excellent quality scan, just about 3 times longer to actually scan the file. i have not used the more advanced featurse for automatic scratch removal so i cannot comment on that part of the software. if your negatives or slides have been stored in protective sleeves, the 3 hole punch style with 6 sleeves for 6 pictures each seem to have worked best for me, the results can be fantastic. a few color negatives i have tried that were loose in the packets ritz camera would return your pictures in have a had a lot of scratches on the negatives.

cons - 1. the software will not work without stamping a big DEMO text across the scans unless you register it thru the internet. this is lousy! especially as the software provided is an SE version. read Special Edition with less features than a full version. 2. user name has to be capital first letter of first name and capital first letter of last name. you cannot type your user name in all caps or all lowercase. registration fails otherwise but does not tell you why. 3. how do you this on a machine that does not have access to the internet? i.e. a dedicated workstation in an office would not be able to use it. 4. sometimes when scanning bw negatives the saturation will wig out and the displayed color will change to a purplish hue. turning the saturation setting to the lowest setting corrects this but i am not sure why it happens in the first place.

neutral - as stated by others scanning is a little slow. you will not scan your entire collection in a weekend. considering the amount of tweaking i have done on underexposed or overexposed pictures i can see automatic scanning might not be best for everyone.

final comments - on osx after the scan is complete the file is opened with preview so you can rotate it then if you need to. i would recommend this scanner to someone else who has the time, the collection, and the desire to scan a lot of negatives or slides. the only negative, pun intended, i have is the software registration - especially for an SE version of software.

This is the second one of these I have purchased. The first on was windows only, but didn't say so on the Amazon site. I bought it through AntOnLine via Amazon marketplace, won't do that ever again. Ant would not take the return because they said they don't take returns on things with optics. So I gave that scanner as a gift to someone who uses windows. I bought this new scanner, now Mac compatible, but NO mac instructions in the docks. The driver disc had no Mac software. I tried the Silverfast software, again no Mac instructions, but DID find a Mac instal, after really looking around on the Silverfast disc. It installed well, weird install but worked fine, and now Silverfast talks to the scanner and I can finally scan!! But just to prove the Mac software still has need to improve, there is no quit command. You need to use command Q or force quit. But it works, it works well, and that's all I really care about.

I was a professional photographer and photographic lab technician for a total of 17 years and find the Plustek 7300 a cost-effective and useful tool. I have approximately 8000, old slides and negatives to sort through, and I will probably only scan a small fraction of them, so a medium-priced,dedicated scanner like this Plustek makes sense for me.

It gives amazingly detailed scans of both slides and negatives, even at just 3600 dpi. You can go even higher if you like, but the files become huge, and unless you are going to print a 16x20, you don't need to go beyond making a 3600 dpi/50 megabyte TIFF (which will convert to an approximately 5 to 8 megabyte JPEG). You can send 4 or 5 JPEGs of this size via e-mail at one time, but if you go bigger, expect a lot of problems.

The Silverfast software that comes with it gives excellent control over color and contrast. Based on what I have read about flatbed film scanners, I doubt that I would have been satisfied with the resolution they offer as I have always been a high-definition hound. Neither am I worried about scanning every negative I ever shot, so I don't need the speed of a flatbed scanner. If you want to escape to your computer now and then to convert your best negatives and slides into a modern, useable format, this scanner will serve you well.

After getting back into 35mm film shooting, I was finding scanning with my Epson V500 very frustrating. Even with ANR glass inserts, it was still hard to avoid Newton Rings on my images. While the medium format scanning was great, something was lacking on the 35mm end. So I started searching for an affordable option that would yield acceptable results.
As far as a dedicated 35 scanner goes, the Nikon Coolscans are top of the food chain, and out of my price range. I searched Flickr for a couple of weeks and viewed images scanned with different equipment. I decided I liked what I saw with the 7300 so I ordered it up. Amazon's shipping was ridiculously quick, by the way.
What I get from the 7300 is beyond what I could have expected at this price point. The Silverfast software packaged with the scanner is $120 by itself. It is a very powerful piece of software with a tremendous amount of control. Once I got the basic understanding of the software suite down, the very first scan was amazing. It was the same sized tiff that I would get from the V500, but the detail in the grain was so sharp! I'm still blown away at the sharpness that this little scanner is able to read. When enlarging a file in Photoshop, it's just like looking through a grain magnifier in the darkroom. The negative holder holds the film very, very flat. Most film would have to be flattened under the weight of books for a day or two just to get a half way decent scan with the Epson.
While it is missing some features, such as digital ICE, and auto-feed, it works perfectly for my needs. I also wish I was able to scan 100% of the image, borders included, but it's pretty close. The actual footprint of the scanner is tiny too, easy to fit on a desk.
I love it and wouldn't hesitate to buy it.

I hope this review helps out any MAC / OSX 10.5 people out there.

My criteria was to buy a decent 35mm film scanner that fell within $200 - $300. Had to be OSX compatible and create scans around 5 megs each I believe it can go up to 12 meg scans.

At first I thought I would be stuck with buying a really expensive scanner but did read some reviews of this Plustek. As others have described the instructions are lacking.

Installation.
Based on the my installation experience of the software this improved compared from the past reviews. I installed the silverfast software SE software and and started scanning within 10 minutes. I recommend that you also go to their website for the latest update. I received this in November 08 and was several revisions down. Everything went smoothly after the update.

Experience
Depending on the quality you are looking for this unit did go beyond my expectations with old 35mm film. The speed to scan is not bad. If you are using single pass. You can use up to 16 pass scans but that does take much longer (Noticed the Silverfast app would crash after first installing the sotfware. To fix this I ran disk utility to repair permissions and everything is working fine). A single pass scan take about a minute to show up on my macbook pro. Dust removal does work but really depends on how much damage was done to the film. The more damage, the more you will need to retouch using photoshop.
Finally, the filter presets for the type of film does work great. Use this!

Final Impressions
As I am writing this I dropped this down from 5 to 4 stars. For the price this is a great scanner. Works with my Macbook Pro and and does excellent scans. It is a manual feed scanner. I am taking one star away because it does not include the best documentation and the web site support is rather lacking. The Silverfast software is not as intuitive as other OS X applications but isn't too bad after getting used to it. If you have prior experience with scanning and retouching this is a great film scanner.