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Review Date
June 22, 2003
Overall Rating
 3 of 5
Value Rating
 5 of 5
Used product for
Less than 1 month
Visitors rate this review
5.00 of 5, 1 votes
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Reviewed by
8bit Barry
, Beginner
, from UK
Price Paid
$120.00
Photography Experience
0-1 years
, Other
Summary
It scans stuff, I have only tried slide yet as that is the only format I use. Dinky little box of tricks, quiet and seems to produce very good images with a few problems (read below)
Strengths
Resolution - fantastic detail, you have to zoom in past the film grain to even start to see pixelation.
Speed - does a picture in one minute at highest res, although the transfer rate will probably be much better with USB2 or Firewire on newer scanners.
Weaknesses
After a right run around trying to find leads and SCSI 2 cards (which are all becoming abselete) I finally got it up and running. Biggest problem is - It scans too dark. Every picture is the bloody same, you have to enter Photoshop and raise the curves with literally every slide. I also have my doubts over the actual focusing. It seems nearly spot on but some shots lack the clarity of the original. I only have prime lenses, the original slides are crystal clear, but scans just dont have the impact the slides do. I bought this to enter competitions etc by sending burned cd's to magazines, but the results do leave me looking like a novice. Colours seem a little flat, but really it is early days yet. I just feel al little bit annoyed that I cant just scan the image in and get a fair reproduction of the original without manipulation. But I have seen a lot worse on peoples bedroom walls!!
Similar Products Used
None ever
Customer Service
Who knows, but the software is awful and they havent updated it in years!
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Review Date
December 26, 2002
Overall Rating
 4 of 5
Value Rating
5 of 5
Used product for
Less than 1 month
Visitors rate this review
5.00 of 5, 2 votes
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Reviewed by
fkocer
, Intermediate
, from Ann Arbor, MI
Price Paid
$100.00
at 47St. Photo
Photography Experience
6-10 years
, Outdoor
Summary
After reading the reviews here,and finding an incredibly good deal on this factory refurbished scanner with 6 months of warranty, i decided to go ahead. It is $100 anyways.
Surprisingly, I am quite content with the performance i am getting from it. I was not expecting whole a lot, to be honest, with the money i am spending. But so far it exceeded my expectations.
The resolution si enough for my needs. It is not a good idea to print 35mm bigger than 20*30 (best is 8*10). And this resolution would give you enough detail to print on 20*30 on imagestation.com if you scan the whole slide.
The most important problem is the color accuracy, but could be fixed if you are comfortable with PS.
Strengths
1. Very sharp. I used to use sprintscan 4000 at school and always had sharpness problems. This scanner is sharp, very very sharp. I rarely use unsharpmask, which i used to use when using sprint scan 4000.
2. Fast, quite. Takes less than a minute, to preview, crop and scan a slide.
3. Dynamic range is incredible. I am not getting any noise at all on darker areas. And if you use a software with multipass viola.
4. Very nice for this price range. I am sure there are better ones for $1500, but hey, i only paid $100. You could hardly get a flatbed one for this price.
5. Did i say fast?
Weaknesses
1. Color accuracy. Very very bad especially with very saturated films like velvia. The output could be green cast, or yellow cast, or red cast, with every picture. You have to spent some time on PS to fix this.
2. Software. Bad bad bad. Get vuescan for $40. Windows 2000 is trying to reinstall it everytime you reboot. The cure: disable it when it tries to reinstall. It will still work, but stop bugging you.
3. No batch scanning. You have to relocate the holder for each frame.
4. Does not come with scsi card, you have to buy seperately. Ships with LD50-DB25 scsi cable. Which means you have to buy a new cable also, for new scsi cards. Would cost around $100, if new. I got mine from ebay for $20. Works fine.
Similar Products Used
SprintScan 4000
Customer Service
none needed
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Review Date
September 5, 2002
Overall Rating
4 of 5
Value Rating
 4 of 5
Used product for
3 Months to 1 year
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Reviewed by
keith taylor
, Intermediate
, from cambridge uk
Price Paid
$299.00
at jessops
Photography Experience
11-20 years
, Outdoor
Summary
good scanner for the price, had one or two problems setting up minolta software. i'm now using vuescan which is much better.
Strengths
speed & quality of scans very good colour depth.
Weaknesses
minolta software.
Similar Products Used
primefilm 1800u
Customer Service
none
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Review Date
October 26, 2001
Overall Rating
4 of 5
Value Rating
5 of 5
Used product for
More than 1 year
Visitors rate this review
5.00 of 5, 1 votes
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Reviewed by
ThePrintedPixel
, Expert
Price Paid
$0.00
Photography Experience
11-20 years
, Outdoor
Summary
After reading reviews of the ScanSpeed on this and other forums it is obvious that the default scans leave something to be desired in terms of colour accuracy. Here are some tips to help in getting very satifactory results from this excellent piece of hardware.
1st. Choose 16 bit and turn off auto exposure in the preferences section.
2nd. Perform any cropping and complete the scan. ( do not colour correct in the ScanSpeed software ). If you have run the software outside of Photoshop save the file as a Tiff.
3rd. Open the file in Photoshop. Bring up the curves dialog box (control + M). The fastest way to remove any colour cast is to use the 'grey point' eye dropper. Find a middle value in the image and click with the eye dropper. You can keep doing this until you get what appears to be the correct colour. Adjust the diagonal line by dragging it into an 'S' shape until you get the brightness and contrast you like. Once you have the image to your liking click on the save settings button and save to a folder someplace. Click OK to commit the adjustment. I can assure you that once you have the hang of using the curves in Photoshop you'll never go back. By saving each sucessful setting you can build up a library of quick and easy fixes. A little time spent will save a lot of time down the road. By contrast using the levels command quickly degrades and clips the image quality and is a far less flexible tool. Just run some tests on an image to see the difference. The ScanSpeed in a great scanner giving very deep, smooth and noise free images. I hope this helps some of the frustrated users out there.
Strengths
Bit depth. Speed. Ease of use. Image quality. Photoshop LE
Weaknesses
Software.
Similar Products Used
None
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Review Date
August 16, 2001
Overall Rating
4 of 5
Value Rating
5 of 5
Visitors rate this review
4.00 of 5, 1 votes
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Reviewed by
Antonio Castanheira
, Intermediate
, from Portugal
Price Paid
$400.00
at Minolta Portugal
Photography Experience
6-10 years
, Outdoor
Summary
It gives very good scans in colour and resolution first time using Vuescan that I prefer to the Minolta soft.
Very good value for money compared with Nikon Scanners !
Strengths
fast enough !
good resolution for the price !
Weaknesses
no usb interface
included software is not great !
Similar Products Used
Minolta Scan Dual
Customer Service
Very good in Portugal !
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