camera critter said:
My Plustek OpticFilm 7200 film scanner is sitting unused on an upper
storage shelf after being purchased during November 2004. Alas to the
siren song of inexpensive 7200 ppi scanning of 35mm film.
My 3.2 MHz Pentium 4 desktop computer (Windows XP Pro, ServicePack2) is
unable to communicate with it, although Windows' Device Manager
recognizes that the USB scanner is present. Plustek's printed
information states that must be a problem with my computer's
implementation of USB. My other USB devices function well. So, my
7200 sits in its box.
I had no problems getting my PC (also running XP Pro SP2) to communicate
with the scanner. I wonder whether you have tried all your USB ports, I
remember having this problem with a previous PC, some things only worked on
the front ports, others only on the back ports (don't ask me why).
Having said that, I ended up returning the scanner because it gave an
overall purple cast to everything. This I could fix in Photoshop but the
overall quality of the scans wasn't up to scratch even with those I made on
an old LS30 6 yrs ago at 2400 dpi (the Plustek claims to scan at over twice
this res).
I e-mailed several times to Plustek tech support during the beginning
of December 2004, but the webmaster bounced back everything as being
undeliverable. Really an innovative manner in operating its tech
support.
I just returned it to the company I purchased it from, they were very good &
made a refund on my credit card. Not being properly recognized on an
up-to-date system like yours should be enough reason to return it, although
now it's probably too late for that.
The very few magazine articles I've read about the OpticFilm 7200 seem
to damn it with very faint praise indeed, all the articles alluded to
its minimal performance at a very low price, suitable for a novice
wanting to "try out" scanning without spending big bucks.
It may be suitable for someone with only a few dozen slides/negs to scan for
online/e-mail use or printing at small sizes, I have several thousand slides
and need something that will do most of the work by itself, I can't spend 15
mins fixing every scan in Photoshop just to make it usable. However, if you
only have a few slides or negs and don't need top quality, there are many
flatbeds that can do the job for the same price.
A Google search discovers very few references to it in newsgroups
(again, damning with faint praise) although many merchants are trying
to peddle it. For some strange reason, the OpticFilm 7200 obviously
never set the world on fire.
It's not strange at all, this product was probably released too late for its
intended market, a few years ago you couldn't get a half-decent film scan on
a flatbed but these days there are many models that can do the job. Despite
the very high res, the quality just isn't there.
