Hi, I am looking for a negative scanner to transfer a whole bunch of old negatives of mine. The lowest price I found so far is the Pacific Image 1800U scanner ($179 at www.netmarket.com). Did anyone use this unit? How is the quality? (Of course compared to the price).

Thank you.

-- Thushara Devage (t56@aol.com), July 16, 2000

Answers

There seems to be a deathly hush about this scanner, even though it's being sold worldwide under various different names. I'd like to see some feedback on it myself.

Best VFM on the film scanner market has to be the Acer Scanwit 2720s scanner. (2700dpi, 36bit @ $450 US or less)

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), July 17, 2000.

I currently own one of these but as they say "the jury's still out" on whether I like it or not. To begin with, this is my 4th unit -- the first 3 failed in the the first few hours in use. (Grinding noises, optical failure messages from the TWAIN driver, false color scans, drastically different color renditions of the same negative in successive scans. When they worked the scanned images were excellent.

The unit I currently have hasn't failed, but the color fidelity and image sharpness do not seem to equal that of the the first 2 units I had (both those were 1800i's; the latter two are 1800u's -- only difference is supposed to be the cabinet color.....) One of the online vendors told me most of the units they've sold in the past month have come back defective.

I worked with Pacific Imaging's tech support and they concurred these were hardware problems. (But make no mistake, the Page Manager software stinks and the TWAIN driver doesn't have a real-time preview for color adjustments; it's all trial and error -- mostly error)

On the whole, *if* (and that's a very big if) you are lucky enough to get your hands on one that works, you'll get very good scans from it.

Their website lists places where it can be purchased www.scanace.com

Good luck.. you might need it

-- Steve V (beamship7@hotmail.com), May 14, 2001.

I am taking mine back today scans much too light after the first scan, which is also to light. software wont let me reduce the exposure below 50%, and its the wrong way round, exposure should go up to darken not down and i used a kodak "standard neg" to try it out

bill Nixon Stafford England

-- bill nixon (mr.b.nixon@v21.co.uk), June 10, 2002.

well I swopped it for a micro tech 35, its the same scanner with a different colour case! and the same problems! I am now on my way to jessops again to move up to a dearer scanner as I have give up on this one.

Bill Nixon Stafford England

-- bill nixon (mr.b.nixon@v21.co.uk), June 15, 2002.

I've been using this scanner for about a week. This small device makes a surprising amount of noise, including some nasty sounding grinding. Apparently this is normal, so I guess I can live with it. As someone noted earlier, the TWAIN driver that ships with the scanner is garbage. So far I've had good results with the SilverFast SE driver ($49US), but if you are looking for a "1- button" solution, you will be disappointed. You will still have to fiddle with the tone curves, contrast, etc., which can be time consuming. Also of note, I sent a couple of support queries to Pacific Image Electronics about a week ago and I have received no reply, so their support does not impress me.

-- Paul H (bimmer@caliban.com), July 02, 2002.