If you are looking to buy a digital slide scanner, then there are a few particular brands that you should consider. Epson, Hewlett Packard, Canon, Microtek and Plustek are known for making quality digital slide scanners. The features in these scanners can vary ranging from the quality of the photos to their prices. Due to changing technology, companies keep coming up with new products and old models are discontinued.
You should choose from current models as it will be easier to find maintenance and support services from them. One of the latest Canon scanners is the CanoScan 9000F.A good yardstick of the quality of any scanner is the dpi or dots per inch. This is a measurement of the quality of the images that are processed by the scanner. The higher the dpi, the higher will be the resolution and quality of the scanned image. The CanoScan 9000F slide and film digital scanner processes images at 9600 dpi. While the lamps in most scanners require some time to warm up once the scanner is initially turned on, the lamp in CanoScan doesn’t need warm up time and it is good to go as soon as it is turned on.
Popular digital slide scanners from Epson like the V600 digital slide scanner are priced slightly higher than the CanoScan. It has similar features to the Canon scanners including no warm up time for the lamp, scanning at 9600 dpi and high speed and a USB 2.0 high speed. Popular scanners being produced by Microtek include the Microtek ArtixScan M1 which is priced at around $700, much higher that the scanners of Epson and Canon. The ArtixScan has one USB port and a resolution of 4800 x 9600 dpi. The scanner comes with an auto focus option which can be turned on or off according to the user’s requirements. The ArtixScan has additional features such as photo restoration and color management which greatly enhance the quality of the scanned image.
Plustek recently came up with a new scanner known as the Plustek OpticFilm 7600i. This scanner is dedicated to the scanning of 35 mm film. The price of this scanner ranges from $400 to around $550 and it is shipped in two software configurations, which are the SE Configuration and the Ai configuration. This scanner is meant to scan slides and filmstrips. It has an optical resolution of 7200 x 7200 dpi. The canner uses infrared scanning along with SilverFast’s iSRD or VueScan’s defect removal feature which help in removing any dust or scratches from the filmstrip. The OpticFilm is in a league of its own since it is one of the few scanners available in the market which are dedicated to scanning 35 mm film.
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