Digital BW, The Print

Alejandro,

here in the US, the scanner used to sell for around $1,100 a year ago. It now 
sells at BH New York for about $800. So, in that sense, the drop is more 
reasonable. 

I have used the scanner for about a year with very good results. The 
sharpness and autofocus are very good and so is the hardware in general. It 
is a little odd because it doesn't use a holder for the film strips, but the feed 
works very well.  The last frame on a roll will exhibit a soft edge, but not 
enough to notice if you are not looking for it. It's the curl at the end that can't 
be kept pefectly flat.

The software has profiles for color negs which seem to work well ( I only used 
a couple). It also seems to do a reasonable job in getting good dmax from bw 
negs.

The downsides are: it's very slow, and the preview is very small for precise 
adjustments. Also, there doesn't seem to be an alternate software for it (like 
Silverfast). It claims to do batch scanning but, in my case, that never worked, 
something about memory management always made it freeze. But that could 
just be my 9500 Mac (with a G3 chip), I don't know.

The other thing is that there may be an inherent sharpening that exaggerates 
grain in bw  - or it could be the light source. Depending on your taste, this 
could be an issue, though not a huge one.

I have since upgraded and have put this scanner up for sale (currently on 
consignment at a camera store). So, I don't have it here to answer more 
specific questions. My sense is that for about $500 or less it's a great way to 
get 35 scanned on a budget. 

Just remember that nothing is for free (!), and that  the more you pay the better 
it gets (that sounds very cynical, but true of at least digital equipment...). 

Antonis


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Alejandro Montiel 
<amontiel69@y...> wrote:
 
> I just picked up a local german magazine today and on
> the inside cover there is an ad for the Kodak RFS 3600
> Film Scanner selling for 499 Euros, that would be
> about $439 USD. The original price is listed at 1737
> Euros, which is about $1525 USD. This seems like a
> great offer to me, but I do not the scanner at all.