For my birthday, Mrs Saturn decided to contribute to my slide scanner fund. After faffing around with entirely the wrong model, I bought one of these and never looked back.
Background *********
I have taken slides for years and wanted a way of recording them for posterity. Also, many of my ancient relatives have huge libraries of slides gathering dust and slowly fading away. I decided that at some point I might like to borrow them to make an electronic family history. I forgot that slides are like gold dust in my family and no one will part with them, but that's another story.
Having moaned about it for years, Mrs Saturn decided to contribute to the fund, so I bought a Microtek Filmscanner 35 from Jessops and it was useless. I took it back and swapped it for the Acer 2720s and haven't had a problem since. As an aside, Jessops were extremely co-operative about the whole process.
Specification *************
The 2720s is a 2700 bits-per-inch scanner which can take slides or 35mm negatives which it loads from cartridges. Three cartridges are supplied, one for negatives, and one for each of thin and thick mounted slides. It will scan up to 36bit colour, but I have only used it at 24bit and that is plenty good enough for me. Scans take about a minute at maximum resolution and a full size, 24bit slide-scan uses up about 36Mb of disk space. The dimensions are approximately 15x15x70 cm. It connects to the PC via a SCSI 2 connection. When I bought mine I had to supply my own card but now it is supplied with the card in the box according to Jessops' website.
The supplied software runs on 95/98 and Windows 2000 and according to Acer needs a minimum of 32Mb of memory. That last part is wrong, the scanner driver may work with that but you will not be able to edit your pictures easily. I use paintshop pro, and I upgraded my PC to 64Mb. That is barely adequate.
The scanner comes with Ulead Photo Express and Photoshop LE. I prefer paintshop, but Ulead products have always been good in my experience.
My *experience* of the product ******************************
I had to upgrade my PC, first to put in a SCSI card which cost me about £35 and then to upgrade my memory to 64Mb. I should really have put more memory in than that. Note though that my PC is quite old and isn't as fast as it might be.
The time that it takes to scan a slide stacks up if you are doing a whole 36 exposure film. It usually takes me about an hour. That is OK if you are scanning films as you take them, but if you are trying to scan dozens of old films it is a major chore but certainly worth it.
The scanner works fine with all types of film, including black and white negatives. Its autofocus is excellent and the scan quality is always top notch. Colour balance is good and there are fine tunings for each major make of film, which is a nice touch, but I have never needed to use them. The newer version of the scanner autocorrects for scratches and small defects. I don't have this version and it cost an extra £100 (April 2001). I don't think that it is worth it, honestly.
My prints from slide scans are usually excellent. Using 24 bit colour and a maximum resolution scan, I can usually make a passable A4 print onto photo-quality paper that will pass as a photographic enlargement, costs about 90 pence instead of £5.00 and has better colour. If you look closely you can tell that it's a scan. Some types of photo's don't work well as prints from scans, but there is no formula, you will have to experiment.
Websites ********
There are a couple websites on this subject.
Acer's official page is at http://www.acercm.com/imaging/scanwit.html.
There is a third-party review and a technical guide at http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Review.htm
Comparisons ***********
I believe that the Acer at £300 is excellent value for money. Other scanners which perform in its class are the Canon Canoscan FS2710 (£350), Nikon Coolscan 4 at £600 and Minolta Dimage at £380.
Summary *******
An excellent buy and a superb way to turn slides into high quality electronic copies.
More details
Ease of use
Easy
Design
Excellent
Range of extra features / functions
Excellent
Instruction manual
Good
Manufacturer Support
Good
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