Now that I am a more or less happy Plustek OpticFilm 8100 film / slide scanner owner, I don’t have any excuses like “I don’t have anything to do!” during the winter: I need to digitize my dad’s 30+ years worth of 35mm slides (mostly Kodak Ektachrome), and all of my old films… Well, there’s no point in scanning them ALL, but it is a huge task anyway.
Speaking of the Plustek scanner, it is an extremely good piece of hardware. The scanning results are quite impressive. However, there are some minor flaws in the design:
- The design of the film holder is not the best possible; it does not always keep the film firmly in place. The slide holder is much better, though.
- The indexing of the film / slide holder within the scanner is quite bad; the spring loaded claw which should keep the holder correctly aligned and in place is way too weak, sometimes forcing me to align the holder manually by trial and error.
- The bundled Silverfast 8 scanning software is – basically – very good; however, it’s user interface is frustratingly clumsy. I prefer using the scanner via Vuescan.
