Some of you may remember that I've been looking for a while for an economical and effective way of scanning slides and negatives - more economical, in other words, than a Nikon whatever, but more effective than printing them and scanning the result on my flatbed scanner. I investigated the idea of a slim, 'panel' lightbox, but abandoned it when I couldn't find a way to disable my scanner's internal lamp. Just as I was resigning myself to a long wait, I happened across a review of the Microtek Filmscan 35 (http://www.zdnet.co.uk/pcdir/reviews/2001/01/microtek/), which retails here in the UK at GBP150 (about USD210), and began to wonder. The review said more or less what I wanted to see - it may not be in the Leica class for construction or the Nikon one for features, but it does a good job for a sum I could afford to risk.
So I did, and though I'm still learning to drive it properly, I'm delighted with the results so far. It's easy to install, and is small enough to tuck out of the way under my desk when I don't need it. It has no clever tools for handling film, but seating a negative strip or a mounted slide over the scanning area is simple enough. The only problem I've found with the ergonomics is that a plastic Kodachrome mount is fractionally too thick to fit comfortably under the clip - it takes some persuading into place to avoid a skew-wiff image or an unwanted black stripe down one side of the scan. The plastic mounts from the E6 lab I use must be slightly thinner, as they slot in much more easily. But the scans themselves - to someone used to the flat, muddy-looking results from prints on a flatbed - are stunning. Details of texture and colour leap off the screen, to the point where it's plain that the quality of the scan is no longer the limiting factor on the quality of my results. It does pay to use the full 1800dpi, though, even for on-screen use. I'd read somewhere that it's better to scan at your final resolution, but the FS35 would far rather you scan at 1800 and rescale to 450 - scanning at 450 can produce peculiar colours and jagged edges, whereas rescaled 1800 scans are bright, clear and smooth. Now I just have to get a photo printer to see how they look on paper! The software that accompanies the package has plenty of buttons, sliders and graphs that I can't begin to understand at the moment, and may not be to the taste of those raised on more sophisticated packages like Photoshop, but if you've got Photoshop, you can use it with the FS35 anyway. For my purposes, it's an improvement on what I've used before. I'm still in my first week with the FS35 but I'm delighted with it. Would I like slicker film handling features? Possibly. Would I like swankier editing software? Perhaps, but the hardware does the job I wanted it for and for anyone who, like me, has been wanting a film scanner, only to be deterred by the cost, this seems an excellent place to start. - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
