Microtek FilmScan 1800

Advantages: Cheap as chips
Disadvantages: Family ask you to Scan their old photos too

...Do you have boxes of old 35mm film or slides from before you bought that shiny new digital camea? This is the perfect gaget for transferring old films onto your PC and it is one of the cheapest that I was able to find. The FilmScan 2700 can scan 35mm positive and negative film. Once scanned, images can be saved, printed, shared, enhanced and published. The accompanying software contains several image adjustment tools allow scans to be fully optimized with maximum image detail and color accuracy. The unit is able to scan 35mm exposures in slide or strip format with a reasonably high 2700dpi optical resolution. Each top quality scan is complete in arounf 1 minute 10 seconds. So if you have a lot of images it does take some time, but the scanner does not take a lot of attention and you can watch TV or even write a review on Ciao... Read review

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Advantages: See List
Disadvantages: See List

...Summary: This scanner for the most part has done very well for my 120 film scanning. It scans film and slides very well, although I did notice some noise in shadow areas in a few slides that were very contrasty, with very bright highlights and very dark shadows, but the midtones were okay. These same scenes were also shot with film (I am talking about Velvia and Reala), as I was testing 2 identical cameras. The Reala scanned very well, with no noise, however the Velvia samples were somewhat difficult because of the contrasty nature of the exposures. The software has prescan editing tools for setting gamma, shadow detail & highlights, color cast removal, a somewhat quirky curve tool, and an automatic button setting exposure brightness. For me, the colorcast tool is helpful, and I just recently experimented with the automatic button... Read review

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Advantages: Ease of use, speed, low price
Disadvantages: None

...I bought the Microtek Scanmaker X6, aftter being a previous owner of a Mlcrotek scanner. I have an iMac with USB ports, this added to the ease of set-up of the scanner; a simple case of plugging it in and running the installer CD that it came with. It comes bundled with an excellent software package, including Adobe Photo Deluxe and the wonderful Coloult - one of my favourite budget graphic programmes. Scanning is simple and quick for the price, whilst also being quieter than rival models. Photo and colour reproduction is ver,v good. An all round excellent buy.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful