The carriers load into the side of the machine, and are pushed straight through. Mounted slides clip firmly into place and negatives are easy to align. Mounted slides clip firmly into place on the slide carrier and holds up to 4 slides. Negatives are easy to align in the film holder and can hold up to 6 frames. Holders are loaded straight through the scanner from the either side. Three buttons are provided on the front of the unit. Being only 272 x 120 x 119mm in size, the scanner's footprint is quite small, although you will want to allow extra space either side for the plastic film carriers to slide through the scanner. The unit itself is constructed from high quality plastics attached to a metal sub-frame. GANE - Grain and Noise Elimination - As with USM and SRD 1:1 but then a choice of three presets: Light, Medium and Strong. Use the 'Mark' correction mode to display in real time.ĪACO - Auto Adaptive Contrast Optimisation - This has four presets, Low, Normal High and Maximum. SRD - Dust and scratch removal - As with USM, 1:1 and three sliders, Detection, Defect size and Intensity very much as the SilverFast 6.6 controls. Try it at a medium resolution for quicker reactions. Power, radius and threshold slider adjustors change the image in real time at a rate dependant on scanning resolution. USM - Unsharp Masking - This dialogue box has a 1:1 pre scan mode which re-scans the media at your pre-selected resolution. On SilverFast startup you can revert to factory settings if required from the 'Service Dialog' and selecting 'Software Reset'. I was not impressed with the product of any of the 'Automatic' features (apart from Multi Exposure) and resorted to custom format and changing the colour management profile (CMS) in 'Edit/preferences/CMS/' and selecting a personally preferred one is straight forward. The WorkflowPilot is toggled on with a click on the red icon at top left. SilverFast comment: 'Multi Sampling is not included in SilverFast 8 because all tests had the result that Multi Exposure is doing the same (not technical but in the scan results, they are better)'. With 8.0.1 the multi-scan has been dropped. Scans completed at 2400dpi produce 21.45 megabytes TIFF files. The resolution can be reduced in an effort to improve productivity and save on hard disk space. This is a lot of detail, and will probably exceed the requirements of most photographers, (unless AO size reproductions are required). Just as with previous Plustek film scanners, the Opticfilm 8100 can scan at a maximum resolution of 7200dpi, producing a 193 megabyte TIFF file.
Updates of SilverFast and the drivers were readily available online, and once installed worked well together. Installing the drivers on both systems did not happen smoothly first time round, and required updating from within device manager.
It was also tested on a Windows 7 64 bit laptop.
SilverFast was trialed first on a 32 bit XP system straight from the disk.
The 8100 was launched with this version of SilverFast in early 2012. SilverFast 8 has been around since August 2011, and adapted and available for the Plustek Opticfilm range since March 2012.
I would like to point out that the differences I have found from the Plustek Opticfilm 7400 are the extra. Unlike the higher end model, there is no infrared dust and scratch removal, though the algorithms that are available on this scanner are fairly capable. Enhanced support for Kodachrome transparencies, which are notoriously difficult to scan well, is also included.
Silverfast SE Plus 8 offers features that will be useful to both experienced users, and complete novices alike. It has to be noted that Presto! does not operate on a Mac. One CD contains Presto! PageManager and drivers the other Silverfast SE Plus 8 scanning software.
There is the scanner, a 1.5metre USB cable, slide and negative holders, mains adapter, two manuals and two CDs. Plustek report improved functionality and features to perform better than ever, but are they enough to tempt you?Įverything you need is in the box, down to a padded carry case for safe transportation. Plustek's latest film scanner is a mid-range model that costs around £200 offering resolutions of up to 7200dpi, an improved Dmax of 3.6, multy exposure support and advanced energy saving features. Plustek Opticfilm 8100: Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.