plustek film scanners?

[jjanek]

Hi everybody
one and half year ago I sold Nikon coolscan V to earn money for DSLR (don´t tell me I´m stupid, I know it :bang🙂. But I really miss grain and everything, so I´m gonna return to film for my street work. Coolscan V is out of production now and ls5000 is pretty expensive for me. Does anyone have experience with Plustek (7200, 7300) for bw work? I use nearly exclusively tri-x (sometimes pushed to 1600), souped in Rodinal, and I liked very much sharp grain appearance of Coolscan. Is Plustek capable of something similar? Could someone post samples, possibly magnified crops? Thank you very much
Honza S.

 

[ZorkiKat]

I've been using a Plustek Opticfilm 7200 for almost a year now. It's a good scanner. It's fast, and easy to use. When set at(nominal?) 7200dpi maximum optical resolution, it takes less than 3 minutes to scan a frame.

However, its Density Range/Dmax is low. At only 3.5, it means that you'd have to compromise highlights or shadows. Not too good for BW work, though I use the scanner often with BW negatives. The middle values are OK, but the highlights tend to be clipped and a lot of the lower values often get pushed into the darker shadow values.

I noticed that the highlights in the Plustek scans appear to have more noise than in a similar scan made with an Epson flatbed. Over-exposed negatives are difficult to scan. Pushed BW with higher densities in the exposed areas are also difficult to scan at times.

Overall, given its low price and ease of use, I'd say that the Plustek scanner is still OK to have.

Enclosed, a sample scan from the Plustek. Film, Ilford Pan F developed in paRodinal:

 

[jjanek]

Thanks a lot, ZorkiKat , could you possibly show some 100% crop from the frame above?
Honza

 

[marke]

I've been using the plutek 7200 myself, and agree with ZorkiKat. I think it a great scanner, especially ofr the money. But I have only used it to scan for web use. For a long time I had considered replacing it with a Nikon. But when I realized that when I shoot film it's almost always b&w, and for that I still prefer wet prints over digital.

 

[cjm]

I've used a 7300 for 6 months and for B&W I am more than satisfied. Though, I have never been able to get color scans to my satisfcation. Here are some scans with Arista Premium 400, which is rebranded Tri-x:

at 800

at 1600

at random speeds

 

[ZorkiKat]

Honza, I don't have a full-scan file of the previous photo, so I'm posting another one, scanned at the Plustek 7200's "7200" resolution.

100% crop:

The full picture- the red box marks the portion shown in the 100% crop. It's "1874" embossed on the bell:

 

[jjanek]

Thanks all of you, it really helped me to decide, I´m buing. Wish you merry christmas and happy new year
Honza