Plustek OpticFilm 8300i SE - 35mm Negative Film Stripe & Slide Scanner with 38% scan speed increase, Bundle SilverFast SE Plus 9 + QuickScan Plus, Support Mac and Windows.

I have now scanned nearly 3000 slides with this and I am pleased I went for this one. The software with it was a bit daunting at first but I soon got the swing of how to process the thousands of slides I have. I have it down to a fine art now, place four slides into the holder, dust them off. Place the holder into the scanner and click the prescan icon. Two quick shortcut keys to reset the frame and auto settings. If the image needs fine tuning, there are numerous quick ways to do that. Then scan, usually about 10 seconds to scan and save. The auto numbering would be useful if you could define the names it used. I prefer to rotate to portrait in the file viewer separate to the software as it takes quite a few seconds to process, I have lost a few scans because of forgetting to wait. I now look through all the images in Windows viewer and rotate using that. These are minor niggles though. As I said, I am really pleased with this scanner, it has worked hard and well for a few weeks now

For many years I used to bring slides and negatives to our local photo studio for digitizing which was very expensive. This Plustek 8300i SE can produce much higher quality photos at far less cost than the photo studio. Additionally, I can easily see slides that I don't want to save whereas I would send some of these slides to the photo studio, increasing the cost. The quality, speed and ease of use of this machine is well worth the cost as it scans relatively quickly, depending on the quality that you want to acheive.

Mostly reliable & works almost every time, like all things though, an error happens & it doesn’t scan the whole slide, my work around is to switch modes & rescan the slide, not sure if I can blame the scanner or my laptop for this.The scanning isn’t a fast process, but it can recover something from all the slide’s & negatives I’ve put through so far, the editing software allows me to enlarge the subject too

Scan quality is very good and scan times are fast. Software that comes with the scanner allows good range of tweaks. Really happy with quality of scans and detail captured from the negatives. At max resolution scans are approx 250mb and capture good dynamic range.

Loved the ease of use but as everyone says, use VueScan from Hamrick not the bundled package. Scans a lot faster than expected thank goodness (15 minutes I read somewhere? What were people trying to do?!)

It does everything it says on the tin, but the supplied software is a little tricky to use unless you buy the fully licenced version of Silverfast. Using the supplied software, Quickscan plus, you have a problem that once you have set the image to your preferences, you cannot go back and change what you did once you exit the setting window. The image while capable of being up to a very high resolution, the resulting image is not as sharp as the original 35mm slides, which is a bit disappointing after spending so much on this scanner. Although capable of 7200 DPI the optics are not significantly better than cheaper scanners. It seems to be sturdily built so should be capable of a high throughput if you have a lot of slides, but it is not fast.

I plugged in my previous scanner, a 7600i, and it powered up briefly, and then died. I assume a capacitor had popped. I contacted the manufacturer, who refused to repair it, claiming it was no longer supported.I bought this one to replace it. I regret my choices. It is apparently identical hardware to the "no longer supported" model, which is makes the lack of repair all the more galling. Being identical hardware, it also doesn't offer any quality upgrade - the 7200dpi is imaginary. If you set it to 7200dpi (either with Silverfast or Vuescan), you get an upscaled version of a 3600dpi scan. This isn't just my imagination, a reputable film scanner site tested it and found an "effective resolution of about 3250ppi". Obviously, if the hardware is the same as the 7600i, that means the same surprisingly ineffective dust and scratch removal.I've found the best quality achievable with this scanner is with Vuescan Pro, using a lot of passes for high dynamic range, though it will take a while. I've only scanned negatives, I can't comment on the quality of positive slide scanning- but assume that it's broadly in line with what I've seen.At this point, with digital bodies scaling past film scanners, a camera scanning rig will actually provide better results in many cases, especially with 40MP+ bodies and good lenses. You'd need to use a good enclosed system with a decent mount on the end of solid tubes and a good-quality light source - but these things are no longer hard to find off-the-shelf. I'd recommend the Valoi easy 35/easy 120 ecosystem. A fully-loaded system would be a little more upfront cost while you're just scanning 35mm, but the quality will be better and it will be vastly better value if you find yourself wanting to scan 120.So, it's an easy option and it works. The manufacturer's support is poor and the promised resolution is misleading; all somewhat sketchy. However, if you only ever want to scan 35mm and don't have a modern high-res digital body, it's probably a reasonable option, as long as 3600dpi is enough for you (i.e. you're not a grain shape peeper - they just come out as tiny blobs).I don't think I'd buy another one of these if it dies unceremoniously like my previous one did, knowing what I now know. Whether it's suitable for you is a more nuanced question. Choose wisely.

Recieved as advertised, now setting scanner up!