Digital BW, The Print

Hello all:

I hope someone out there can comment on this.

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. It
has always seemed to me that when a product that is
not that old sells for so little money (litte money
given the specs of the scanner and former price), that
it is due to it not having been accepted or that it
suffers from some known manufacturing or design
problem. Is this the case here? I want to know before
I take out my wallet....

Any comments are appreciated

Alejandro Montiel

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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.

I have had the Kodak RFS3600 for over a year now. It's still sitting 
on the shelf waiting for Kodak to deliver decent drivers and usable 
GUI interface for it. I was promised they would be ready in June. 
June of 2001, that is.  Now a year later, I just called them a few 
days ago and they still have not even entered into beta test yet with 
no idea when (if ever) they will be released.

The only solution the tech could give me was to try the Silverfast 
software.  According to their website, it does support the RFS now. 

I have had nothing but problems with mine. So many that it's sitting 
on the shelf and not being used.  IE: a very expensive paper weight. 
I was running it on a dual processor PC under WinNT.  The batch 
scan function never did work reliably, it scans AND numbers the 
scans backwards, (IE: in reverse of their correct sequence) and the 
grain on B&W scans is absolutely horrid.  Unless you like your 100 
speed film looking like ISO 3200 that has been push processed!

IMHO? Save your money and buy something else! I wish I had 
never bought mine. The specs look great on paper but in reality this 
scanner really sucks!

Greg

> 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.
> 
> 
> 
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