Scanners > Film scanner (35 mm) Scanners > by Manufacturer

Advantages: Excellent scans, little competition at this price range.
Disadvantages: Dreadful manual, cumbersome software, poor build quality.

...I recently bought a SmartDisk SmartScan 3600 slide scanner for my grandfather's birthday. He has a collection of over 3500 slides that will probably never be viewed again unless they are digitised so it seemed like a worthwhile thing for him to while away the hours with! I researched extensively what was available in terms of slide scanners before deciding on this one. I knew they existed, but to what extent and in what price range I really wasn't ...
...install the driver off the SmartDisk CD, the CD interface is poorly designed and very slow but gets there in the end. Then you connect the scanner which is recognised by XP and installed off the CD. Then you're ready to go. The scanner's controls are accessed by opening Photoshop (which can be quite slow given the size of the program) then choosing to 'import' from the CyberView program (the scanner's driver software). Am I the only one who thinks ... Read review

Advantages: 4000dpi,speed,ease of use,price,versitile, dust off feature
Disadvantages: negative film carrier hard to insert sometimes, colour control, software

...some consideration I bought a Polaroid SprintScan 4000. After producing a few hundred scans with this equipment I have come to know the scanner's strengths (many) and weaknesses (few). The Sprintscan 4000 offers a lot of features for the retail price (around £890.00 incl VAT): 4000dpi optical resolution, high dynamic range (which means it can cope with over-exposed/developed film much better), cold cathode light source (like the ones used on the ...
...(which is not). However, the Polaroid software is reasonably good and allows a good degree of correction and control of the final scan. Colour correction is not so easy and I have had to adjust the colour balances of scans quite regularly in an image editing program afterwards. The colour manipulation interface could be better, but it still produces very high quality images after some tweaking. One other criticism is that its not possible to scan ... Read review

Advantages: Inexpensive, very fast, high resolution good quality output
Disadvantages: Unreliable and low quality construction

...minutes per full-resolution scan, the Plustek takes a minute. In fact I spent more time fiddling with the slides putting them into the mount than actually scanning. The resulting scans, while slightly noisier than other lower-resolution scanners I have used are wonderfully high resolution. Colours are also perhaps more subdued than the Canon, but of course, a few adjustments in Photoshop or Gimp soon fixes that. The bad news however is that it turned ...
...noises and something inside jamming (not sure what, but turning off the power usually fixed it) that became more frequent as time went on, eventually resulting in it being unusable. I returned it and got my money back in full. Would I recommend this scanner? At this price I probably would if you only want to scan a few of your favourite negatives or slides, but not if you are a professional. I am a very heavy user archiving my full back catalogue ... Read review

Advantages: Superb quality images and amazing ICE dust removal
Disadvantages: Poor user interface & price (especially for the optional APS adaptor)

...finally decided to get the Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED. All the reviews I read suggested a good balance between cost and performance, and I can confirm this. The scanner cost $1065 or about £600 from a US company called Cameta Camera who were selling the scanner new on ebay. When it arrived, it was very easy to install and get working, and came with the adaptors to allow me to scan both standard 35mm film and also slides. In order to scan APS films ...
...but it's around half what Nikon are charging for a brand new one! Unbelievable!! Anyway, 12 months later, and I've now scanned a lot of negatives (no slides though), and the scanner has been perfect. There's no point my listing all the technical detail about this scanner, the main feature is that it produces very high resolution scans (up to 4000 dpi) which can then be saved in a variety of file formats e.g. JPEG or TIFF. Some of the file sizes ... Read review

Advantages: Exceptional Quality of Image, Worth its money
Disadvantages: Takes time to get used to controls.

The Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED is a one of the highest quality slide/film scanners around at an affordable price. It scans at a maximum resolution of 4000 dpi (dots per inch; therefore the higher the resolution the better picture quality) and has many features, which we will look at in more detail. I ordered my Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED online at WarnersImaging.co.uk. At the time of purchase, which was February 2003, it cost me £958.81 inclusive ...
...unsure ask!) APPEARANCE The Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED is primarily silvery grey with a black plastic sliding “door” at the front, which is where the adapters are inserted. The device is very sleek and much smaller than I was expecting it to be. Photos on the internet gave me the impression that it would be the size of a computer tower, but far from it. You can pick the device up with one hand (although I don’t recommend it in case you drop it!) ... Read review