Plustek Opticfilm 120 Pro

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

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.

So the scanner is poorly made junk. Crooked film positioning is absolutely unacceptable. I'd have returned it in a nanosecond. Plustek depends on people passively accepting their complete lack of even minimal quality control to allow them to keep peddling this garbage. I scan too high a volume of film, film I make my living from, to accept bullshit like that. I need equipment that "Just Works." I have owned two Nikon scanners and have used a number of Nikon, Canon, and Minolta film scanners belonging to people who paid me to teach them to use them. Not one of those scanners gave scans that were crooked or had any sharpness issues; they were quality scanners.

 

[Coldkennels]

So the scanner is poorly made junk. Crooked film positioning is absolutely unacceptable. I'd have returned it in a nanosecond.

We're talking ~2º of rotation. I'm not losing sleep over that; I like to crop all my images to a standard 6x4 anyway to clean up the edges. Adding in a tiny bit of rotation to that process is nothing - and most of the time I don't even bother, as the slight rotation is normally not enough to be noticeable once the edges are cropped off.

Honestly, there's being critical, and then there's being picky.

I have owned two Nikon scanners and have used a number of Nikon, Canon, and Minolta film scanners belonging to people who paid me to teach them to use them. Not one of those scanners gave scans that were crooked or had any sharpness issues; they were quality scanners.

I guess you've never used a Canoscan, then; the 8800 and the 9000 were both the biggest pieces of hot garbage I've ever used. Nothing was sharp, and there was so little detail resolved on the Canoscan that I could get more detail out of a half-frame from a Pen F with a Plustek than a 6x7 scan from a Mamiya 7 with the Canoscan.

 

[nightlight]

I just saw this on the Plustek site... does anyone knows something?

I wrote to Plustek in 2022 and kept in touch with them since. The person there told me that a launch was planned in Jan 2023 - but that it had been pushed back 2 years due to a shortage of parts. So I guess I'll write to them next year again to ask.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

We're talking ~2º of rotation. I'm not losing sleep over that; I like to crop all my images to a standard 6x4 anyway to clean up the edges. Adding in a tiny bit of rotation to that process is nothing - and most of the time I don't even bother, as the slight rotation is normally not enough to be noticeable once the edges are cropped off.

Honestly, there's being critical, and then there's being picky.



I guess you've never used a Canoscan, then; the 8800 and the 9000 were both the biggest pieces of hot garbage I've ever used. Nothing was sharp, and there was so little detail resolved on the Canoscan that I could get more detail out of a half-frame from a Pen F with a Plustek than a 6x7 scan from a Mamiya 7 with the Canoscan.

Those Canon scanners you mentioned are flatbeds, right? I've never used any of them. The Canon scanner one of my students had was a dedicated 35mm film scanner. It was fully equal to the Nikons. Flatbeds in general suck for film scanning because they have fixed focus lenses and poor quality optics. Good enough for print scanning since scanned prints are rarely enlarged a lot, but a 35mm neg has to be enlarged 8x to make an 8x10 print, and that brings out any flaws in the scanner optics really quick!

 

[Coldkennels]

Those Canon scanners you mentioned are flatbeds, right? I've never used any of them. The Canon scanner one of my students had was a dedicated 35mm film scanner. It was fully equal to the Nikons. Flatbeds in general suck for film scanning because they have fixed focus lenses and poor quality optics. Good enough for print scanning since scanned prints are rarely enlarged a lot, but a 35mm neg has to be enlarged 8x to make an 8x10 print, and that brings out any flaws in the scanner optics really quick!

Yeah, it's a flatbed; I think I paid £150-ish for the 9000f brand new 15 years ago after borrowing an 8800f for a year previous.

This is a direct comparison of the same 35mm frame scanned with a Canoscan vs the Plustek:



They're slightly different resolutions/dimensions, but you get the point - and I'll spare you the 120 "scans" made with the Canoscan. It's embarrassingly bad.

 

[SWB]

It seems there's a lot of prejudice against the Plustek 120, especially coming from people who've never used one (isn't that a surprise). And although I don't use mine anymore having moved to digital camera 'scanning' it was a far better scanner than my Minolta Multi Pro, or my Nikon 9000, both of which died anyway. The Plustek 120 initially had a bad start when it was shipped with negative holders that were dimensionally incorrect due shrinkage in the injection moulding process (the wrong plastic was used), but teething troubles aside I've used mine for years and it has always been sharp and reliable scanning all formats from 35mm to 6x12.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

It seems there's a lot of prejudice against the Plustek 120, especially coming from people who've never used one (isn't that a surprise). And although I don't use mine anymore having moved to digital camera 'scanning' it was a far better scanner than my Minolta Multi Pro, or my Nikon 9000, both of which died anyway. The Plustek 120 initially had a bad start when it was shipped with negative holders that were dimensionally incorrect due shrinkage in the injection moulding process (the wrong plastic was used), but teething troubles aside I've used mine for years and it has always been sharp and reliable scanning all formats from 35mm to 6x12.

I don't believe that at all. There is simply no way that the Plustek was better than the Nikon. No way. I've used Plustek's products and...yeah, no way. Not even close.

There's a reason they quickly withdrew that scanner from the market and never brought it back: It was an even bigger piece of 💩 than their 35mm scanners.

Even if Plustek's quality control was good; even if they used decent lenses in their scanners (they do not), even if they didn't lie about the resolution of their scanners (which they do)...a fixed focus scanner will never equal one with a focusing lens that can focus on the film gran like the Nikon and Minolta scanners do. That's just physics.

 

[David Murphy]

We're talking ~2º of rotation. I'm not losing sleep over that; I like to crop all my images to a standard 6x4 anyway to clean up the edges. Adding in a tiny bit of rotation to that process is nothing - and most of the time I don't even bother, as the slight rotation is normally not enough to be noticeable once the edges are cropped off.

Honestly, there's being critical, and then there's being picky.



I guess you've never used a Canoscan, then; the 8800 and the 9000 were both the biggest pieces of hot garbage I've ever used. Nothing was sharp, and there was so little detail resolved on the Canoscan that I could get more detail out of a half-frame from a Pen F with a Plustek than a 6x7 scan from a Mamiya 7 with the Canoscan.

I never had any serious problems using the Canonscan 8800 and I've owned and used one for about 16 years or thereabouts. My main complaint is that Canon has dropped all software support for it. However, I think Vuescan still supports it and I occasionally use some older Canon software still installed on a legacy PC.

 

[luuca]

I am an early adopter of the first version of plustek 120 and I always got very good results.
just realized after some months that scans are really more in focus when the film is put upside down in the tray.
that's because I'd like a focus adjusting version

 

[yossi]

Instead of getting heated up over two scanners, why not we have a look at some detailed test reports of scanners from ScanDig.

I have used Plustek scanner (for 135 but not 120) before, and found its quality to be not so good (both build quality and IQ). I am using a Nikon Coolscan 9000ED currently and find its IQ excellent (but it is a very old machine, I just pray hard it won't die on me soon.) If ever Nikon were to launch another 120 film scanner (I know it won't happen), I would buy it in a heartbeat.

 

[SWB]

Instead of getting heated up over two scanners, why not we have a look at some detailed test reports of scanners from ScanDig.

I have used Plustek scanner (for 135 but not 120) before, and found its quality to be not so good (both build quality and IQ). I am using a Nikon Coolscan 9000ED currently and find its IQ excellent (but it is a very old machine, I just pray hard it won't die on me soon.) If ever Nikon were to launch another 120 film scanner (I know it won't happen), I would buy it in a heartbeat.

It is ScanDig who reviewed the very first Plustek 120 before new negative holders were issued and then never updated the review.

 

[luuca]

I only asked news about a new model... 😖

 

[zeitoun]

From my quick search of the Plustek site, it looks like there are no Linux drivers available. Anybody knows otherwise ? (I hope so)

 

[bwcolor]

Regarding the new version of the Plustek 120:

I stopped scanning a number of years ago. I use and have the Coolscan 9000ED and Epson 750 Pro. Both functioned flawlessly. I am considering getting back to scanning and was hoping to find a roll film scanner for 35mm and MF. B&H told me that the new release was the same as the old,so I asked Plustek. Mark replied:
“
First off, this version of the OpticFilm 120 shares very little with the original version except the cabinet and some mechanical parts. The sensor, lens and associated circuitry are new.

Regarding roll film. We hear that request once in a while and we actually looked into developing a roll feeder for the original OpticFilm 120. The issue was cost and potential sales quantity. When we surveyed our biggest film scanner resellers in the US, Asia, and Europe, they only thought they could sell "a few" roll feeders. I can't remember the exact numbers but I think that given the demand, the price of the feeder was going to be about equal to the price of the scanner. So the project was canceled.”

The Nikon uses a b&w sensor and takes multiple exposures through color filters. The Plustek uses a color sensor. Nikon uses autofocus whereas the Plutek relies on the scanner len’s depth of field. So, no way the Plustek equals a properly functioning 9000ED. I guess that I’ll get my 9000 out of storage and figure out how to communicate with it from my new MacBook Pro.

 

[Bolo Kukus]

We're talking ~2º of rotation. I'm not losing sleep over that; I like to crop all my images to a standard 6x4 anyway to clean up the edges. Adding in a tiny bit of rotation to that process is nothing - and most of the time I don't even bother, as the slight rotation is normally not enough to be noticeable once the edges are cropped off.

Honestly, there's being critical, and then there's being picky.



I guess you've never used a Canoscan, then; the 8800 and the 9000 were both the biggest pieces of hot garbage I've ever used. Nothing was sharp, and there was so little detail resolved on the Canoscan that I could get more detail out of a half-frame from a Pen F with a Plustek than a 6x7 scan from a Mamiya 7 with the Canoscan.

Agree! I had one of these when they first came out. It's the only piece of mechanical equipment I've ever thrown out to the scrap heap...

My Plustek 7600i isn't the best scanner in the world, but it suits my purpose. With a little TLC and some due care, I can get acceptable images from my 35mm Nikkormat negatives. B&W scans beautifully, color negatives less so (mushy mid-tones), slides good enough that I've sold an occasional image. Everything I've ever scanned needed post processing. Of late the Plustek has taken to throwing a band in the left side of all my scans after I've used it for about 30 minutes. Not sure it's worth the bother or the effort to try to fix, but if anyone has any thoughts, please share with me.

Chris Crawford (who often posts in RFF about his cat) authored an excellent article on scanning some years ago. I came across it by sheer luck, and all the tips he gave made my life much easier. It helped greatly to improve all my scans.

As for the OpticFilm 120, it appears to have vanished from the retail scene here in Australia. I reckon its ridiculously high price and our equally ridiculously worthless third world Australian dollar (65 US cents at last check), have made it unaffordable for most of us.

So for now my Plustek and an Epson 600 which basically does what it has to do for my 120 images but fails to excite the senses, will have to do for me.