menos
Veteran
I have been through several scanners for quick first ingestion of 35mm negatives into Lightroom over the last two years.
The Plustek 7600 is not a good upgrade from your flatbed for the money.
I would recommend the Plustek for somebody, who has no scanner yet or an absolutely inadequate scanner, who has no scanning software solution yet (like Silverfast or Vuescan).
If you seek a meaningful upgrade in:
- image quality,
- speed,
- ease of workflow
for less than 500 USD, by all means, search for a dedicated Nikon, Canon or Minolta film scanner.
The Minolta 5400 for example absolutely murders the Plustek in all accounts.
You would pay a little more for a good second hand unit than for the Plustek, but the difference in quality (and the speed in use) is worlds apart.
Especially nice about the Minolta unit is, that it has a fully automatic transport, autofocus and a very nice light source, which solves dense negatives nicely.
If you can, get a second/third set of negative holders for it.
Vuescan can be set up, that EVERYTHING runs fully automatic during scanning - there are no button clicks or menu selections necessary during a batch scan run.
Vuescan scans automatically, once the scanner feed recognizes a new film holder - you basically only swap holders, until you are out of negatives and the rest runs by itself - fantastic workflow!
You can even set up scanning into a watched folder in Lightroom and directly start your post processing/ dust-spotting, key wording, etc …
With the Plustek you are stuck in low-tech - no autofocus, so you better hope, your negatives are flat (with TriX, I NEVER got even results across the frame with the Plustek - this is much, much better with the Minolta, which has also much better film holders - especially quick loading/ positioning of the negative strips is fantastic!).
I never did formal resolution tests, as I use these scanners only for initial ingestion and rescan with a more capable method, if big prints are needed.
It seems though, that if one or the other scanner is better, the edge goes to the Minolta as of better film holders and autofocus.
Really, really difficult negatives, that won't stay flat are impossible to get right in the Plustek, whereas with the Minolta you just place your autofocus point in the image preview, where it really matters and the Minolta-Vuescan combination delivers fantastic results!
I also find the initial look from the Minolta scans prior to post processing much better (I scan pushed TriX and Neopan mainly).
How sharp is the Minolta?
Here is a sample of a negative, that has been messed up in processing (dust hell and look at the definition of the kindly added scratches by the lab technician - you don't scratches that sharp with the Plustek):
I tried and tried, but somehow the JPGs from Lightroom look a lot worse than the same image onscreen in the development module (you have clear artifacts and obvious jagged lines, even when output is set to 100%).
This is TriX @ISO320 with Leica M2 + Konica Dual 21-35 (this lens has been optimized for digital use on the M9, so on film it suffers slightly in the center due to bowing film, which Konica normally counteracted by a slightly different calibration than needed for digital - on the M9, the lens is dead sharp into the corners).