Pacific Image PrimeFilm 1800AFL Film Scanner (35 mm)

Several years ago, I made the switch to digital photography and have never looked back. I have now have gigabytes of beautiful, clear digital pictures. Oh how I wished there was a GOOD, EASY way to take the years of film-based pictures and turn them into digital format...

Sure, I've tried flatbed scanners. I even bought a fancy HP model that did 4800 dpi, had a fast SCSI interface *and* it came with a film negative device. I figure that the best way (getting the clearest quality) would be to use the original film negative to create a digital version. But I found that it was a slow tedious process to line up the negatives on the flatbed scanner. It would take YEARS if I wanted to take all of my negatives and scan them!

In January 2002 at CES, Pacific Image released an update to their earlier product (PF1800U or PF1800S) that AUTOMATICALLY FEEDS IN STRIPS OF NEGATIVES AND SCANS THEM! The old model has a fairly decent price point below $200 street, which is not bad for a scanner than will ONLY HANDLE 35mm FILM NEGATIVES/SLIDE. I bought the new PF1800AFL for $279 at Fry's Electronics (it was the same price everywhere else on the Internet, except Pacific Image sells it on their site for $399). Time is money, so I think it is worth it to have the automation.

Setup was easy - I followed the instructions and installed the CyberView drivers and Adobe Photoshop Elements software BEFORE powering the unit up. WinXP detected it over the USB and made the device ready to go. The device is "TWAIN-compatible", which should mean that you can scan into any application. I tried MS Office XP, but for the most part I have been using Adobe Photoshop Elements, which is easier than the full-blown Photoshop, but more powerful than Adobe PhotoDeluxe that comes with so many digital cameras. I normally would not use a lot of features of something like Photoshop, but you really need post-scan features like scratch remover and color fixer depending on how bad your negative is.

So to create digital versions of my film, I fire up Adobe Photoshop Elements and hit Acquire, select the CyberView driver and up pops their application. I am not sure who CyberView is, but their driver has a lot of seemingly useless features - I could not select different DPIs (the unit supports 1800 DPI and below). Color depth was set at 8 bit, and I could not select the other setting of 14 bit? The first time, you need to go and tell it to scan the whole strip of negatives (why would you only want to scan a partial? you can always NOT select a picture to save)

You insert a strip of negatives - minimum of 3 and maximum of 6 per strip - into the top slot until it catches and sucks it into the machine. It takes some getting used to - it's just like a fax/copier machine. I have had to learn to handle the negatives by the bar edges and nudge it into the machine. It does a "quick" scan of the whole strip (preview mode), which takes about a minute for 4 pictures. You see the negatives appear on the screen, like a roll of film. These scans are not at the highest resolution. You can zoom in, crop, rotate and color. The best feature is to reverse the image, which is handy if you inserted the negative backwards. You then scan the image(s) you select onscreen into your application, OR WHAT I DO is scan them to a file. With the preview mode, you do not have select EVERY image. If scanning to a file, you can select a default base filename and filenumber (it increments). It takes another 2 minutes for the 4 pictures to be sent to a file. Choices of file format are TIF and JPEG. I am using the "best" setting for JPEG and the files come out on average around 2 MB each. You finish by hitting "eject" on the driver and the film comes out the bottom (or the top if you use "reverse")

One negative about this process is that the quality of your negative plays a big role here (naturally). It is very easy to see fingerprints on the negative and scratches can be annoying. Overall, negatives SHOULD hold up better over time compared to prints, which can fade more easily and get handled a lot more! If you're like me, my negatives have sat in their original envelope since I got them back from the developer. No one ever touched with them before this.

The other negative I mentioned above was that you cannot insert a strip with less than 3 pictures. I tried and the film got stuck, prompting me to take the thing apart to get it back out. I think they could improve this by using sensors to "know" that there is a little bit of film in the machine (even if they can't position it to scan).

I tried to scan a slide negative, but of course all of my parent's slides were before 35 mm film. I could not figure out how to made the slide adapter (which is a seperate slot in the front) work.

Sometimes, the unit does not align correctly with the boundaries of the picture, this is likely caused by either 1) faint borders around the negative image or 2) your camera screwed up the prints to start with. I don't know if the unit "reads" any of the film information (like numbers or film type) from the edges of the negative. That sure would be nice. The driver has a setting where you can tell it what kind of film you shot with (i.e. Kodak Gold 400, FujiFilm 200 max) For those that I did know the film type (it's printed on the edge of the negative), I tried it but did not notice a big difference.

That's it. I have scanned about 500 pictures from bunches of negatives so far. It has exceed my expectations, because I didn't think a small company could create such a good product.
p.s. There IS a "better" model, the PF3600AFL which offers 3600 DPI (versus 1800) AND A FIREWIRE/1394 interface (versus USB), but after reading the specs, what you gain in speed on the firewire you lose in the resolution. 1800 DPI is fine enough for me.