Plustek Opticfilm 120 Pro

Ted Striker said:
Where can you buy the Opticfilm 120 Pro? That scanner was pulled from the market some time ago due to major quality problems.
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I can't find them for sale anywhere. Plustek's own website still shows it but says it is "Out Of Stock."

Quality problems do not surprise me. Plustek's 35mm scanners are junk. I tried last year to buy an 8200i 35mm scanner and it gave scans that were extremely soft on one side of the frame and sharp on the other. Like a decentered lens or the CCD or mirror was out of alignment. I exchanged it and the replacement had the same problem, though it was the opposite side of the frame that was soft on that one. TLDR I tried five of them and all were incapable of making sharp scans across the whole frame. Gave up and bought a used Nikon.
 
Pacific Image PrimeFilm 120 also exc. option, own it/scanned most 120 negs so far, great resolution with good output (with careful sharpening to bring scans into clear focus). Also have PI Primefilm XE scanner for 35mm negs, very good too (much better than flatbed Epsons). Vuescan is best software for these scanners in my experience, then finish in PS.

good article on the PF 120 here, what he says is what I found too:
https://www.richardmckenzie.com.au/words/hands-on-with-the-pacific-image
mine is working perfectly still 5+ yrs later, he says his took a dump 1-year later after he bought it.
I'd still buy it again, his was a lemon. I could never get the same resolution from Epson flatbeds i owned (and sold) w/120 film. (had Epson 3200 only useful for 4x5 film or very small prints from 120)
 
Ted Striker said:
That scanner was pulled from the market some time ago due to major quality problems.
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Source please? The scanner has been recently introduced and I've seen it for regular sale on Amazon UK and Amazon Germany, just to name a few. Restocking is irregular though, so it is true that it is out of stock for stretches of time. But I've not read reports of major quality issues, and I personally know a few people who use it with satisfaction.

Perhaps you're confusing it with the older model, the Plustek 120, which is OOP.
 
I own a Plustek 7500i which is definitely not junk. It's actually a fantastic machine, much better for 35mm than my Epson V550 flatbed, and 80% of the quality of my Nikon Coolscan. This is a 99$ machine I purchased used, learnt to use properly, and that completely blows away the output of these 'DSLR scans' that you get with setups costing 4000$ or roundabout that amount. I've replaced it with a Minolta Scan Dual IV, which has the advantage of being motorized (it'll advance automatically to the next frame in the negative strip in Vuescan), which makes it much faster than the Plustek. I'd be perfectly happy with the Plustek if I didn't own the Coolscan and the Minolta.

In my experience usually people who have this kind of opinion on Plustek scanners can't use them or do not ever bother learning to use them. It's usually not the scanner, though of course one can't completely exclude a particularly unlucky bad run of faulty units. Odd, but might happen. Again, my experience only.
 
albireo said:
I own a Plustek 7500i which is definitely not junk. It's actually a fantastic machine, much better for 35mm than my Epson V550 flatbed, and 80% of the quality of my Nikon Coolscan. This is a 99$ machine I purchased used, learnt to use properly, and that completely blows away the output of these 'DSLR scans' that you get with setups costing 4000$ or roundabout that amount. I've replaced it with a Minolta Scan Dual IV, which has the advantage of being motorized (it'll advance automatically to the next frame in the negative strip in Vuescan), which makes it much faster than the Plustek. I'd be perfectly happy with the Plustek if I didn't own the Coolscan and the Minolta.

In my experience usually people who have this kind of opinion on Plustek scanners can't use them or do not ever bother learning to use them. It's usually not the scanner, though of course one can't completely exclude a particularly unlucky bad run of faulty units. Odd, but might happen. Again, my experience only.
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I've been a professional photographer for 27 years and have been scanning film and teaching others how to do it for 20 years. Hamrick Software, the makers of Vuescan have featured my scanning tutorials in their newsletter and they recommend me to their customers. I know what I'm doing.

Plustek scanners are garbage. I had FIVE of those pieces of **** and every single one of them gave scans that were blurry on one side of the frame. I wasted a couple thousand dollars worth of my valuable time testing and sending back that garbage.

I was trying to replace a Nikon scanner that I had used for 19 years when it died. Since the Nikon stuff is all old and largely un-repairable, I hoped the Plustek would work; it didn't. I finally spent $1000 on another Nikon and I'm getting flawless scans. If it died today, I would happily spend another $1000 on another. I make my living selling my prints. I'm not a hobbyist, quality matters. If someone buys a 16x20 print from me, that print better be tack sharp across the whole image. Plustek just isn't professional quality. Sorry if that bursts your bubble, but it is the truth.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
I've been a professional photographer for 27 years and have been scanning film and teaching others how to do it for 20 years. Hamrick Software, the makers of Vuescan have featured my scanning tutorials in their newsletter and they recommend me to their customers. I know what I'm doing.

Plustek scanners are garbage.
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In my experience, none of the above provided references are an automatic guarantee that the person's opinions automatically trump other users' opinions.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Since the Nikon stuff is all old and largely un-repairable.
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I've just purchased a beautiful, fully refurbished+repaired Nikon Coolscan 8000 ED - this was CLAd by one of the world's leading Coolscan repairmen, Frank A. Phillips in the US - he has repaired and sold hundreds of these machines and sells them through his website or facebook. He does an exceptional job - and there's more like him elsewhere in the world (Graeme Hardie in the UK comes to mind).

My Coolscan works perfectly, comes with a 6 months warranty, and it's one of my best photographic purchases ever. My tiny Plustek, at 1/100th the cost of the Coolscan, closely follows behind.
 
albireo said:
In my experience, none of the above provided references are an automatic guarantee that the person's opinions automatically trump other users' opinions.
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If that doesn't, then nothing will. Your loss. I appreciated the experienced photographers who mentored me. The things I learned from them were not opinions; they were facts. The thing with photography is that it is a very technical form of art. Quality is measurable and processes are repeatable and testable to a degree that is not possible with other forms of art.

I stand by what I said about Plustek scanners. Perhaps you got a unicorn; but to blunt, I don't have time to keep testing and returning them to maybe someday find one that works correctly. In the last eight years, I have had a stroke and two life threatening antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in my lungs. I've had serious health issues all of my life. I need to use my time to complete my life's work to the degree that it can be completed before I have another stroke or something else that kills me. If amateurs want to waste time like that trying to make low-quality scanners work, its their time and money they're wasting. I would suggest, as someone who has nearly died several times at a young age, that there are better uses for your time.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
. If amateurs want to waste time like that trying to make low-quality scanners work, its their time and money they're wasting. .
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In general I believe people should be careful when flaunting credentials around and expecting that people automatically take their experience as more valuable just because they announce it should be.

The thing is, sometimes, our experience is not as absolute as we think it is.

Also, one might never know who's on the other side. Perhaps a lowly amateur doing low quality scanner work - perhaps just somebody more modest, who'd rather share some info on the understanding it is just one more data point to be taken in context.
 
albireo said:
davidswiss said:
Source please? The scanner has been recently introduced and I've seen it for regular sale on Amazon UK and Amazon Germany, just to name a few. Restocking is irregular though, so it is true that it is out of stock for stretches of time. But I've not read reports of major quality issues, and I personally know a few people who use it with satisfaction.

Perhaps you're confusing it with the older model, the Plustek 120, which is OOP.
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You can search worldwide and not find an OpticFilm 120 Pro for sale. I have looked for the past 18 months and they are never, ever in stock. Further, the reviews from confirmed buyers show horrific levels of poor quality. It is truly amazing that there are so few happy customers. I own the original 120 and am reasonably happy with it so was an interested potential customer. Seeing so many horrible reviews put me off that scanner forever.

I did read one film scanner web site that mentioned it was pulled from the market but can't find it.

Given that the scanner is simply not buyable leads credibility to that thought.
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Ted Striker said:
You can search worldwide and not find an OpticFilm 120 Pro for sale. I have looked for the past 18 months and they are never, ever in stock.
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I just did that, and you're right. It has completely disappeared from Amazon.de and co.uk. I stand corrected and you are right - it seems to have been pulled from sale. However, I do vividly remember searching for one only last June or so, and there were units for sale on at least one of the European amazon sites. Then I ended up getting a Coolscan and that was that.

Well, a pity and I hope that any issues are identified and sorted. Again, I can only share that my personal experience with their 35mm line of scanners has been largely positive.
 
albireo said:
I just did that, and you're right. It has completely disappeared from Amazon.de and co.uk. I stand corrected and you are right - it seems to have been pulled from sale. However, I do remember vividly searching for one only last June or so, and there were units for sale on one of the European amazon sites. Then I ended up getting a Coolscan and that was that.

Well, a pity and I hope that any issues are identified and sorted. Again, I can only share that my personal experience with their 35mm line of scanners has been largely positive.
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I too hope that they get their act together and get that scanner out and into service. The world needs a good 120 size film scanner and the original Plustek 120 was not that bad. I was hoping for a strong improvement with the new model and would have replaced it with that if it panned out. Unfortunately, the reviews from the 120 Pro are mostly awful. It seems like a horrifically botched launch. The lack of news about this scanner makes me doubt we'll see it again. A shame.
 
I acquired one of the last "new model" Plustek 120s before they sold out. It is great. No problems, no banding -- so far, none of the issues commonly complained of in the past. However, we will see if they pop up in the future.
 
f.hayek said:
I wrote to Plustek and they answered back that they are expecting to ship the upgraded units later this year.
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Did they mention if "upgraded units" means all Opticfilm 120 Pro issues have been fixed? I have owned the latest "Pro" version, right before it disappeared. Spent two months shipping it back/fro to Plustek dealing with various issues. Some were QC, others "by design".

The reviews you see online about them are all true: tray transport issues, focus adjustment issues, banding and noisy output. In the end they finally shipped me one without transport/focus/banding issues, but the noise was not acceptable.

Let's hope the "upgraded" means an upgrade over 120 Pro.
 
luuca said:
I just saw this on the Plustek site... does anyone knows something?
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I don't think it was ever released. B&H's website lists it as "No Longer Available" and the newest review of it there was written in 2018.

If my experiences with Plustek's 35mm scanners is an indication of the quality of the 120, they did the photography world a favor by dropping it. A few years ago, my Nikon scanner died and I was afraid to buy another since they're 20 yrs old now and no parts are available. I bought a Plustek 8200i, their top of the line 'pro' 35mm scanner. I ended up exchanging it FIVE TIMES and never did get one that gave usable scans. B&H refunded my money. The photos were always soft on one side of the frame and sharp on the other; and when I saw soft, I mean they looked like the corners of a Holga photo. Every scanner B&H sent me had the same problem, though the side that was unsharp was not always the same.

I gave up and bought another Nikon.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
If my experiences with Plustek's 35mm scanners is an indication of the quality of the 120, they did the photography world a favor by dropping it. A few years ago, my Nikon scanner died and I was afraid to buy another since they're 20 yrs old now and no parts are available. I bought a Plustek 8200i, their top of the line 'pro' 35mm scanner. I ended up exchanging it FIVE TIMES and never did get one that gave usable scans. B&H refunded my money. The photos were always soft on one side of the frame and sharp on the other; and when I saw soft, I mean they looked like the corners of a Holga photo. Every scanner B&H sent me had the same problem, though the side that was unsharp was not always the same.
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That's some seriously bad luck. I bought my Plustek (I forget which) in 2020. Absolutely beautiful scans, edge to edge. No fuss. If anything, my only complaint is that the included film holder doesn't quite sit straight, so all my scans are very slightly crooked. I thought it was wonky film transport in my cameras at first.

Leica IIIf - Roll 88 - Fomapan 100 - Rodinal (15).jpg

But yeah, fresh out the scanner last night, uncropped, unadjusted. Can't really complain at that; I'm not about to be shelling out for a 120 one, but if I did and it performed similarly to my 35mm Plustek, I wouldn't be complaining.
 
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