Just received my Plustek 7500i

S

stephaneb

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First impressions:
  • higher definition than Epson V750 (not surprising)
  • much lower DMax than Epson V750 (surprising)
  • excellent for negatives (B&W and colour)
  • useless for slides because of DMax
  • very silent in operation
  • mounted slide holder very well made
  • strip film holder better than I expected
Using 8x multi-pass seems to improve the DMax, but not really enough. I have yet to try 16x. Multiple exposures in VueScan not enough either. Maybe combining 16x and 2 passes in VueScan? Would take forever, but rapid editing can be done on light table and/or batch scanning with the Epson. I have to try that.

The supplied Silverfast SE serial number is invalid, I am waiting for an answer from Silverfast support on this. It does not prevent VueScan from working perfectly.

Did I mention that negative scanning is excellent? 🙂
 
Plustek 7500i review at filmscanner.info

Plustek 7500i review at filmscanner.info

Knarxx said:
SilverFast should fix this. The Multi-Exposure Feature increases you scanner's DMax:
http://www.silverfast.com/highlights/multi-exposure/en.html
(Bad point: I think it's not included in your SE version, you would have to upgrade with costs to SEPlus.)
Click to expand...
According to this review : http://www.filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm7500i.html the multi exposure makes very little difference. It also rates the Dmax as being very good for the price, the effective resolution is rated at 3500dpi, way higher than the Epson flatbeds. Main issues in the review seem to be the auto dust/scratch removal (it's ordinary) and the speed (it's slow). They rate this model much higher than the previous Plustek models.
 
It's DMax could be higher, but it is not as low as to make scanning a big problem. I've scanned many hundreds chromes with Plusteks. Make sure you don't use Silverfast crippleware that comes with the scanner - it's only 8 bit per channel color (the scanner supports 12 in hardware). Also, avoid any adjustments in scanning software: the light source and the focus are fixed, so just scan into RAW and finish in full-featured photo editor of your choice.
 
I did not know focus is fixed. Had I known, I'd probably have been afraid to buy, because I had experience with a fixed focus Minolta and it was very soft. fortunately, the Plustek is plenty sharp enough the way it is.

regarding slides with Silverfast, it does not really help, even in 48 bits. VueScan and Silverfast have similar results regarding DMax and it is not good. I'll try to post an example tonight. Coulour is better with Silverfast, but that is probably a calibration issue. I have ordered an IT8 slide.

I concur with the filmscanner.info review regarding resolution. What I do is scan at 7200dpi and resize to 4000 with PhotoShop. Seems to give a tiny bit better resolution than scanning at 3600 dpi. I might switch to 3600 because it would be enough already.

Smoothness of gradients with B&W negs appears to be better than with the Epson as well. But I should redo some things on the Epson to be sure.

Infrared cleaning works very well, both with VueScan and Silverfast. Silverfast used to be so-so but they have improved it.

Speed is very reasonnable. I clocked a B&W neg at 7200dpi in 3'20". With VueScan speed depends on exposure, so lighter negs scan faster and denser negs slower.

There is no hardware multisampling, contrary to what I understood from the Plustek website. Both Silverfast and VueScan do it by scanning multiple times. The Epson V750 has true multisampling.

I did ONE colour picture in 10 years and it was digital, so the deficiencies regarding slides are of little concern to me. What I wanted was a better scanner than the Epson for my 35mm B&W negs and I got exactly that with the Plustek.
 
Calibration solved the DMax problem with slides. Nos, even with a very dense slide I get a usable scan. Not outstanding, but usable. And when I say very dense, I am talking a dusk scene bordering to under-exposure.
 
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