Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23358 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Plustek
• Model: A11-BBM31-A
• Released on: 2005-11-16
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 4.70" h x 10.70" w x 4.70" l, 2.87 pounds
• CPU: AMD Athlon 1 GHz
• Memory: 128000MB DRAM
• Hard Disk: 1GB
• Processors: 1
• Display size: 669.2913385827

Manufacturer's Description
The OpticFilm 7200 is a 7200 dpi film scanner capable of scanning 35 mm slide and negatives. High optical resolution, USB 2.0 connection and fast scan speed (48 seconds for a full 35mm frame at 3600 dpi) allow Plustek's OpticFilm 7200 to easily outperform other professional film scanners.

The OpticFilm 7200 is the perfect scanner for photographers and small office/workshop users, offering a variety of possibilities including high quality images for magazines and other printed material, photo enlargements, brochures, digitizing slides/negatives, web pages, as well as images to share with friends on the Internet, and more!

The OpticFilm 7200 provides 48-bit scanning capability that supports recognition of literally trillions of different colours. The result is extremely accurate colour rendition compared to the original film, retaining subtle details in the highlight and shadow areas of the scanned image.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Good value scanner
Good resolution and features for the price, ideal if you have a collection of 35mm negatives/slides that you want to digitise, but don't want to spend 4x as much for more robustly built scanner. Fine for light/medium amateur use. Silverfast software does an OK job of controlling the scanner but layout not too logical so it takes a while to get used to. Also I found that the software can occasionally "hang" necessitating a reboot of the PC to cure. Tried using the scanner with Vuescan (Google it) software and Polaroid's free dust and scratch remover plug in to replace Silverfast. Result, better, more easily customised scans and faster throughput.
Summary: Hardware performs well even though not too robustly made, software need working on or replacing with Vuescan but still good value.

Good product at a good price
This scanner is very good, producing excellent results from negatives and slides with final prints that appear better than the original Kodak prints (printed on a HP photosmart 8250). I would certainly recommend it to anyone wanting to digitise their collection of photographs. The only gripe is that the silverfast software is only the SE version - without the ability to use the iSRD of the scanner.

I reviewed the scanner above : here is an addendum about the software installation.
After installing the drivers and silverFast (minimal installation) I found that my Symantec (Norton) AntiVirus was broken - more specifically the Live Update no longer worked so I could not get new virus definitions. I have since traced this down to the Plustek scanner software containing a "LiveUpdate" DLL file and registary entries which changed the Symantec version - so the lookup for the URL was wrong. The easy fix was to re-install the LiveUpdate from Symantec as I have more concern with virus security than my scanner software being up to date. I have informed Plustek - but they take little interest in such things.

Compatability problems with Plustek 7200
Plustek OpticFilm 7200 Film Scanner

My system crashed when I loaded the SilverFast SE image handling software supplied with the 7200 scanner. The scanner operated correctly until the end of the preview scan when the system also crashed with the same error report. I have an HP Scanjet 6200C flatbed scanner as well.
Despite the promised reply in 24 hours, PlusTek UK needed two emails and a phone call before I obtained any advice which then came from Germany. This was "There is conflict between HP and Film scanner. Please un install or de active (go to device manager to de active HP) HP install only plustek film scanner". I had already stated that I had deactivated the HP scanner.
A further request for help resulted in replacement software on CDs being provided but as they were exactly the same version as the original this gave no improvement. I was then told: "I am very sorry to tell you that is a hardware issue. You should take it back to the place you have bought it ....... Please if you face any trouble, please feel free to contact us."
I found amongst other Amazon customer reviews of Plustek scanners the advice to use Vuescan software. A free trial copy was downloaded and it worked perfectly with the Plustek and HP scanners both online together.
Plustek management then insisted that it was nothing to do with their scanner or software at all and withdrew an earlier undertaking to pay for Vuescan software.
The message is you need to allow for the extra £20 you may have to spend to get this scanner working.

Stars:
a. Plustek scanner - 4
b. Software - nil
c. Support - 2

I have no connection with any of the companies mentioned above.