Slide Duplication and Film Scanning - Emora HD Digital Slide Duplicator and Plustek Opticfilm 7600i AI Film Scanner

Duplicating slides has been a bit of a dilemma for us in the digital age. It’s well known that costs alone make it prohibitive to consider even doing the entire family collection of those slides with those bonus wonderful colour casts. What’s the alternative? DIY. What’s available? Well further to the Kaiser Baas Picture Maker (already reviewed) there are a couple of items available in store which enables one to spend quality time away from actual picture taking.

Emora HD Digital Slide Duplicator
Similar in build to slide duplicators designed around SLR film bodies this little unit is quite a straight forward unit to operate. First and foremost one requires a length of a focal length of between 80-120mm in 35mm or Fullframe mode (50-80mm for non full-framed modes). ISO is then wound as low possible, White Balance left on Auto and then your choice what shooting mode you wish to use. Focussing is done manually. The thread size of the duplicator is 52mm so in most instances you’ll need a step down ring to get you going.

From testing the unit on a Nikon D300 (settle petal) I found the most effective results were obtained using Aperture Priority with the lens shut down to at least f8 with consistent results obtained between f8 and f22. I shot outdoors on a sunny day and colour consistency was evident across the board with earth and skin tones. Lenses used were a Nikon 50mm f1.8 and a Nikon ED35-70mm f2.8. Given the quality of both lenses and their respective pricing points no alarming differences in quality were noticed. Focal length used to obtain results was between the 50mm and 70mm focal length. 60mm appears to be the ideal focal length for non full-framed sensors.

Conclusion: Overall for a unit priced at $150 one gets surprisingly good results. It takes a little bit of adjusting of the slide holder to get a straight image, remembering you have to focus manually (otherwise it’s just another post production task!). The unit itself is capable of holding only 2 slides at a time, however I’ve already raised this with the distributors to determine whether a larger strip is available to carry more than 2 slides. I was little concerned by the presence of a magnifying glass built into the unit thinking it might detract from the overall quality of the image but I then had to hark back to the good old days of slide duplicators for the film SLR and remind myself that nothing is quite as good as the original slide anyway. If all you have to do is load a slide in, focus and hit the shutter and then download your card to the computer, then this is quite the effective unit for duplicating slides for the price.

Plustek Opticfilm 7600i AI Film Scanner
This is a dedicated film scanner designed to scan 35mm slides, negatives and monochrome images. I’m sitting typing thinking of what words to say about the unit and one thing keeps coming back to remind me.....it didn’t take long for me to convert fully to digital after buying my own film scanner!

OK being a bit more pragmatic let’s look at the positives. At an RRP of $689 the unit comes with software bundled in which can be linked to programs such as Photoshop for both the PC and Mac. There are 2 CD’s and strongly recommend loading both CD’s as the Silverfast bundled software is the program that drives one to a successful scan. Some things never change, they never tell you this in the packaging! The software doesn’t take up a lot of harddrive space however when coupled in with Photoshop can be RAM hungry. Loading the slides into the unit is straight forward with both a film strip adapter (6 negs) and a slide adapter (4 slides) included. There are 2 modes of scanning available one being a quick scan and the other being a full scan. Help is readily available via Quicktime Video Tutorials for all stages and there is a guide which allows one to do a step by step scan in the correct work process order. Scanning time is remarkably quick. Dust and Scratch Removal tools are also bundled into the package and one also has the choice of selecting which film types and brands have been used including Kodachrome. Sounds great hey? Read on!

Conclusion: As I said earlier the reminder why I went digital was made all too clear. I compared the unit alongside my personal Canoscan FS4000 unit, in itself a not bad unit when you can nut out how to get the best results sans a decent user guide! Samples trialled included both colour and monochrome negs as well as slides. Yes, the Plustek machine will produce a scan however the amount of work required to get an acceptable image means quite a bit of time fine tuning all the knobs and buttons from levels to curves to brightness and contrast and then individual colour channels. The alarm bells rang out for me when I was asked to select which film I was using. I was suspicious that there would be some sort of proprietary driver running the whole show. For me the standout dedicated film scanner on the market is still a Nikon and Epson’s flatbed units produce surprisingly good results straight off the bat with some minor tweaking. If you like to while away your hours in front of the PC playing around with all the buttons then by all means get yourself one of these units.You’ll definitely get a result however me thinks at times I could get a quicker result firing up the LPL enlarger and the Jobo Colour Processor sitting in the darkroom (yes some of us still have one!). I’m still undecided whether the invention of film scanners was indeed to make life easier. Given the choice to get out and shoot or sit in front of monitor all day to replicate what was shot I know what I’d rather do. The question you have ask yourself is what price your time and what you like to do with it!