For black and white: Plustek 7400 or 7600

[Speedfreak]

I was planning to buy a Scanner for 35mm black and white negatives.

Is there a reason to get the 7600 instead of the 7400? As far as I understand the 7600 adds IR dust removal which wont work for bw anyway.

Any other difference to be aware of?

Thank you + Happy new year 😛

 

[mdruziak]

If you are only scanning B/W and can live with the SilverFast SE features, go for the 7400! You can compare features here:
http://www.silverfast.com/comparison/scanner/en.html

The 7600i SE ships with SE Plus and the Ai ships with Ai Studio.

 

[x-ray]

A friend just purchased one of the 7600's. I've been doing scans for him on my Fuji Finescan 5000 and Lanovia Quattro for a couple of years. My friend and I were skeptical that a low priced scanner could produce acceptable scans so we compared scans from previous sessions using my Fuji and the same negs scanned on the 7600. The negs ranged from what I call normal with correct exposure and processing to the extreme over exposed and over processed to under exposed with normal processing. All images were on Delta400.

While the Fuji scanners were better scans the Plustek surprised us both. The normal negs scanned beautifully with a wide tonal range and very good sharpness. The under exposed scanned about as well and the over exposed and over processed were much better than expected. The Plustek came close to pulling all the information out of the most difficult negs. The biggest objection I had with the Plustek was higher contrast than I likein my raw scans. Also even though no sharpening was specified it did appear to sharpen the image slightly which was exaggerating texture in the image. I think this can be delt with through settings / profiles. My friend did the scans at his home so I didn't have an opportunity to work first hand with the scanner.

Overall the scans were very good even comparing them to a $30K Fuji scanner and the Imacon 343 that I previously owned. For the dollar the Plustek is a very good scanner. I was so impressed I ordered a 7400 to do smaller scans when I don't want to fire up the Fuji. I purchased the 7400 because I'm not a big fan of Silverfast and plan to give Vuescan a try when it arrives.

I'll post more when I get a chance to run some scans.

 

[Speedfreak]

Thanks for the report.

I ended up ordering the 7600 for the occasional color negative and IR dust removal.

 

[menthel]

I have been wondering the same myself. The 7400 is such a good price, especially as I already have Vuescan. Is the upgrade to silverfast available with the 7400- I have a mac running lion so that may be an issue.