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Review Date
October 29, 2008
Overall Rating
 1 of 5
Value Rating
 1 of 5
Used product for
3 Months to 1 year
Visitors rate this review
2.75 of 5, 4 votes
Battery Finder >>
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Reviewed by
marcello
, Expert
Price Paid
$250.00
at micro anvika
Photography Experience
21+ years
, Fine Art
Summary
This scanner is an absolute pain in the neck.The sofware crashes very often,the machine jams in the middle of the scans.Between troubleshootings it may take 6/7 hours to scan 6 slides because of the troubles the machine causes in between.And...guess what,there's no support.A new version of the software supplied on line resulted being a semi blank page of 35 kb.These people are real danger ,the scanner is heavily overpriced and once sold,the company support disappears like in every good mafia deal.This is more sneaking than stealing money to people with a gun .I fell in the trap,iI lost the money and now I have to buy a real scanner.Is this the world we want ?
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Review Date
July 20, 2003
Overall Rating
 2 of 5
Value Rating
 2 of 5
Used product for
3 Months to 1 year
Visitors rate this review
3.00 of 5, 2 votes
Battery Finder >>
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Reviewed by
NJPhotog
, Expert
, from Northern NJ
Price Paid
$499.00
at B&H Photo
Photography Experience
21+ years
, People
Summary
Avoid this scanner. It is over-priced for the mediocre quality it offers. It does do some nice scans when it works, but that isn't often.
I have had problems with excessive warm-up times, inability to initialize the hardware from Adobe Photoshop Elements and with the quirky drivers.
The scanner takes forever to warm up and the initializing process takes forever and a day. Often the scanner just sits there blinking. The scanner does not work well with Win XP and my computer often hangs. Lately, when it does initialize and a scan is done, the output will not properly load into Adobe Elements and I get error messages and lose my work. No idea why or what to do since the manual is inadequate. A complete uninstall/reinstall did not fix the problem.
The scanner can produce some very nice scans, but has difficulty with dark scans, which tend to be noisy. Pre-scan adjustments and color corrections are difficult with the tiny viewing screen. The fruity color renditions which sometimes come from the scanner don't look like the original slides. The 2 "bonus" color correction plug-ins are useless spam: they print a company name over your pictures.
This dog don't hunt. Buy something else.
Strengths
1 - Can produce some very good quality scans at larger scan sizes.
2- The bundled Adobe Photoshop Elements is a nice software package.
Weaknesses
1- Excessive scanner warm-up time, blinking lights.
2- Scanner often fails to initialize from the Cyber-View Scan Driver, requires repeated rebooting.
3 - Inadequate manual and documentation.
4 - Inaccurate color balances.
5 - Difficulty with dark slides, noisy.
6- The plug-ins are commercial spam.
7 - This dog don't hunt. Get another hound.
Similar Products Used
HP Photo Smart
Customer Service
Not used
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Review Date
July 2, 2003
Overall Rating
1 of 5
Value Rating
 4 of 5
Used product for
Less than 1 month
Visitors rate this review
2.00 of 5, 1 votes
Battery Finder >>
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Reviewed by
John
, Intermediate
Price Paid
$0.00
Photography Experience
11-20 years
, Other
Summary
Product Scans are OK, but not easy to use. Support is poor. Software is poor. Not for commerical use since WinNT/2000 must be administrator to scan.
Strengths
Price.
Weaknesses
Software is not for Office Environment.
Customer Service
No response on email. On hold for long periods, and when someone does answer they can't help.
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Review Date
June 13, 2003
Overall Rating
 3 of 5
Value Rating
4 of 5
Used product for
1 to 3 months
Battery Finder >>
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Reviewed by
bigdog867
, Intermediate
, from FW, TX
Price Paid
$400.00
at Provantage
Photography Experience
2-5 years
, People
Summary
Great film capture quality for the money. This unit is far superior compared to scanning a 4X6 print at 1200 dpi. Takes film and mounted slides. Firewire and USB.
Strengths
It takes about 45 seconds and you get an impressive digitized image. Color appeared accurate and pictures were clear. If you have all of the editing, adjusting and capturing software then this is a bargain. Twain compiant drivers.
Weaknesses
The trial software is useless. Company name stamped on image after applying effects. Comes with Photshop Elements 1.1... need to upgrade to 2.0 trial to get good scans. Had problems with firewire...had problems on Mac. Loading mechanism inconsistent..could damage negatives if not careful. Focus controlled entirely by software and tricky...not good for 1-4 at a time cut film(autofocus usually good, a pain to improve). Difficulty with underexposed/dark film...have to correct with software, manually unless you buy the trial software which seemed to correct old washed out film slides. Need to manually clean slides and correct scratches because it will pick up every little piece of lint, dust or scratches that weren't there before you loaded you film.(no ICE) Compressing images to a workable size reduced image quality too much....but that is a software problem...how big of a file will your printer take??=limitation on file size to printer unless seriously compressed. No autofeed capability for mounted slides.
Similar Products Used
My previous scanning was with lower end Epson flatbed scanner.
Customer Service
No customer support. Not one returned call or email. I Returned the item.
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Review Date
April 21, 2003
Overall Rating
 4 of 5
Value Rating
4 of 5
Used product for
1 to 3 months
Battery Finder >>
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Reviewed by
Lee Hardy
, Intermediate
, from Richmond, VA
Price Paid
$380.00
at Best Buy
Photography Experience
21+ years
, Other
Summary
First thoughts; a lot of "bang for the buck". I really like the negative strip feed capability that allows the system to automatically scan and save multiple scans. Scans are of high quality, but a bit slow. The Scans are often a bit off center allowing the negative edges to be less than perfect, but this is easily edited out with the included Photoshop Lite software.
Strengths
Quality scans.
Strip feed.
Good software.
USB interface.
Weaknesses
A bit slow.
Scan edges not perfectly alligned.
Similar Products Used
Microteck and HP scanners.
Customer Service
No experience.
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