Pacific Image Electronics PowerSlide 3600

Review Date
August 22, 2005

Overall Rating
 1 of 5

Value Rating
 1 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Visitors rate this review
4.20 of 5, 5 votes

Reviewed by
tlianza , Expert

Price Paid
$639.00 at B&H photo

Photography Experience
21+ years , Other

Summary
This is a terrible product. The slide feeder jams more than 20% of the time using kodak mounted paper mounts. I can't understan how this product ever made it to the market place. The image quality is also bad. Even when it manages to feed a slide, the image quality is well below scanners of equivelent price. Don't let the auto feed fool you. This scanner is a waste of money. How did this ever get out of manufacturing...?

Strengths
None, poor dynamic range, horrendous feed issues. Jammed slides actually are damaged... Absolutely unacceptable.

Weaknesses
Constant slide jamming with subsequent damage to jammed slide.

Similar Products Used
Nikon 8000 nikon 4000

Customer Service
Not even listed in the instructions. The website seems good and they may actually make some other products that are good...

Review Date
December 7, 2003

Overall Rating
 3 of 5

Value Rating
 3 of 5

Used product for
0-1 years

Visitors rate this review
4.00 of 5, 8 votes

Reviewed by
dantheband , Casual

Price Paid
$699.00 at B & H Photo

Summary
This product just plain doesn't cut it for what I had in mind. I've taken on the job of scanning my parents' 35mm slides (literally thousands of slides on probably 30 - 40 circular carousels). Product information says it will work with carousels. It doesn't. If all I had to do was flop in a carousel and use 'scan to file' then I probably might have kept it. However, when I have to take the slides out of the carousel to put them into the magazine and then screw that process up by putting them in the wrong way, well, that adds way more human intervention than I wanted to provide.

Strengths
Works pretty well with the slide magazine provided. The slide quality is pretty good at the highest setting (3600). I didn't have any trouble installing the software or getting the device to interface properly with the computer.

Weaknesses
Like I said it don't work with the carousel. The software is pretty limited. One thing the software does is analyze and flip the image on its side (90 degrees) if it thinks it needs to. Sometimes it makes this call correctly but more often it performs this operation on images that don't need it (i.e. images with a 'landscape' orientation). When this happens it truncates the sides of the images. It does this automatically and it is not something you can just 'turn off'.
Using it at the lower resolutions, while faster, produces results that just plain suck. Filling up the 50-slide magazine and scanning all 50 (using multi-scan to file) will take a minimum of 2.5 hours assuming nothing goes wrong (like a slide jamming).

Review Date
September 16, 2003

Overall Rating
 1 of 5

Value Rating
 1 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Visitors rate this review
4.44 of 5, 9 votes

Reviewed by
mlogan , Expert

Price Paid
$608.00 at thenerds.com

Photography Experience
11-20 years , Other

Summary
Bad product. Software doesn't work. Doesn't feed slides properly. Company support is bad. I am attempting to return this product currently after wasting a great deal of time trying to get it to work.

Strengths
None.

Weaknesses
Everything

Similar Products Used
Nikon slide scanner

Customer Service
Bad.