Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Finicky, but couldn't have done without it!, February 18, 2008
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
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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!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great product if you have lots of slides, January 22, 2008
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.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Scanner, July 24, 2007
Although limited to only 35mm slides, this scanner does what it was designed to do beautifully. I've scanned about 1000 40 year old cardboard slides so far, and haven't had a jam. It's slow (like most other slide scanners), and it takes about 5 hours for 50 slides, but with the batch capability, I can set a batch going in the morning and another when I go to bed at night. The scan quality is better than most I've seen handling both over and underexposed slides well. The software it comes with is pretty good, but I've switched to SilverFast AI Studio with it's multi-scan technology to help remove noise from dark images.
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