Name: Pacific Image Automated 35mm PowerSlide Scanner with 3600 dpi, USB Interface, Digtial ICE3 Technology, Mac & Windows.
Brand: Pacific Image
SKU: IPIPS3650
Price: 719.88 USD
Availability: Discontinued
Rating: 3.46 (13 reviews)

Pacific Image Automated 35mm PowerSlide Scanner with 3600 dpi, USB Interface, Digtial ICE3 Technology, Mac & Windows.

Pacific Image Automated 35mm Powerslide Scanner Mac/Win

Pacific Image

Adorama

Pacific Image Automated 35mm Powerslide ...

Buy: Pacific Image Automated 35mm PowerSlide Scanner with 3600 dpi, USB Interface, Digtial ICE3 Technology, Mac & Windows.

I am fussy but not a perfectionist. My slides are family pictures - some going back to the 40's. The PS3650 in combination with VueScan does work well. I am running windows 7, I7, 64bit, 8gig ram. 
The CyberView software that comes with the PS3650 did ok sometimes but other times gave awful results.  I made the investment ($40) in VueScan and am pleased with the results. There is a 5-10 hour learning curve with VueScan and the batch-list/frame numbering process is quirky especially if you have to restart in the middle of the scan process because of a jam. I scanned my slides at 3600bpi since file space was not an issue (1800 bpi takes the same time). At first I tried to fix the color/contrast etc. as each slide scan was completed but that took forever and I had 8000 plus 4000 for family and friends) slides to go so I finally decided to scan them all in first and then fix the ones I really wanted in good shape. I did not scan directly into Photoshop but rather to a file which I later imported into Photoshop. Each file was identified to a slide tray in case I had to go back a find a slide (which occasionally happened).

I used the Braun Round Tray 100S carousel for 2.2mm cardboard slides. At first I thought the 100S caused jams if the slide was not perfectly flat but later found out the PS3650 eject mechanism caused the jams. I also had big problems with cardboard slides that were thicker than the normal slide.   If a jam does occur, the jam can be fixed without damage to the slide.  Some of my slides had a curve to them after being in trays for 40 years.  To prevent jams (had plenty at first), I physically bent the slide in the opposite direction to straighten it. The scan process will sometimes skip slides for some reason so check the number of scanned slides to the number that was to be scanned. The Braun Round Tray 100(no S) (3.2) for Multimag does not work with 2mm cardboard slides. It constantly jams or does not feed the slide. The 1-50 slide holder that come with the PS3650 should not be used with cardboard slides because it frequently jams (not the PS3650 issue) and there is no way to fix the jam without damaging the slide. It also occasionally skips slides also but not sure if this is a PS3650 issue. In correspondence with Pacific Image Electronics (PIE), their position is that the only slide tray to use is the Braun 100 (3.2) or the universal tray both of which I had and I did not have success with cardboard slides.

To save time, I did a preview save-to-file (3 1/2 to 4 hours for 100 slides) rather than a preview first and fix then scan save-to-file (save time by having preview bpi same as scan bpi - since this configuration does not cause a rescan). I also set the color to White Balance and Kodachrome for all my slides even for Ektachrome again to save time. I am fussy not a perfectionist. The "Perf " menu item  "image memory(MB)" was set to 0 because I was doing a preview save-to-file. If you are doing a scan save-to file you could run out of memory (1000 mb is default) when doing 100 slides and VueScan stops in middle of scan (causing a reboot and losing all previous scans) - set the default "image memory(MB)" to a larger size (8000mb) to accommodate all the preview scans.

I did just finish scanning all 12,000 slides and overall am satisfied.

Does OK coping slides using VueScan

Scanning library of over 10,000 35mm slides.  Details above. Have an HP single slide feed scanner now.  The 50-slide magazine (versus single feed) is nice but the unit jams too frequently and eats slides on occasion.  There is little access to fix a jam. It can take over 15 minutes and damage the slide.  The ICE feature is great and works well.  Images seem to be dark and frequently need adjustment.  I wold recommend it but wiht a large caveat that it jams.

Nice Images but Frequent Jams

The device produces accurate, good-quality scans up to its 3600 dpi resolution limit, though you do sometimes need to adjust the exposure for individual or groups of slides based on the preview.  You can also adjust exposure curves and color, though I haven't used those features as often.  The included Cyberview software can optionally employ Kodak's Digital ICE for dust and scratch minimization, ROC for restoration of faded colors (sometimes nearly miraculous, sometimes not so good), and GEM to minimize grain at the expense of some sharpness.  It does not seem to have an automatic exposure adjustment, but that's fine with me because sometimes I want the picture to be bright or dark and I intentionally exposed the original slide that way.  You can adjust individual frames, selected frames, or all frames in the pre-scan the same way.  The package includes Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows and Mac, but I have not used it; I always scan directly to files and then do any needed editing.

The slide handling was fine with the default tray and plastic side mounts, but it quickly jammed with cardboard mounts even though the mounts looked fine to me.  I had to mangle a couple of cardboard slides to get them out.  The cardboard slides worked fine with the Universal tray, sold separately.  It even handled the slides mangled by my attempt with the default tray.  Get the Universal tray!

Unlike many hardware/software items, the scanner came with the most up-to-date software versions available on the Pacific Image Web site.  That's the good news.  Unfortunately, I could never get it to work with my Windows Vista 64 machine, even after contacting Pacific Image technical support.  It worked fine (though s-l-o-w-l-y) out of the box on an ancient laptop with Windows XP, and it worked fine with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.  Unfortunately, you can't use the scanner even with 3rd party software unless you can get the Cyberview drivers installed.  Even VueScan, which I have relied on to handle other scanners without drivers, requires the Cyberview driver.

In summary, I'm pleased with the scanner: quite good scans with minimal fuss.  It's a little noisy due to the scanning and feed mechanisms' stepper motors and it's not particularly quick, but with the 50-slide tray I can load the slides and walk away.  I like to run a preview and adjust exposure before the high-resolution scan, but it's not required.  Even at maximum resolution and the ICE enabled, a tray will process in an hour or two (with a fairly fast computer).

Works well -- with the Universal tray

This is a follow up from my first review.  The first unit we bought has worked great for the last 1 1/2 years and have run thousands of slides through it and just purchased a 2nd unit.  I would recomend using the Braun 3.2mm slide tray (SKU IMTBT10032).  The 2mm slide tray works OK, but we've found with the 3.2mm tray it seems to handle worn & warped slides better, and overall have less loading problems w/all slides.  I only gave this 4 stars because the software is quirky & the process is fairly slow, but the end result is very good.  These units have been a solid work horse for us and would recomend to anyone.

Good unit - Bought another !

My $90 5 year old Epson Flatbed Scanner provides a higher resolution slide scan than this thing does.  It fails to properly find the image area on the slide about half the time, resulting in many cumbersome re-scans.I scanned about 150 slides that I compared to the scans from the old flatbed.  The old flatbed, not designed for slides, wins hands down.

Boat Anchor, at best

We are converting old slides to CD. The scaning process is slow but good. We had some initial issues with setup, but only because the directions showed pictures from the back of the machine instead of the front. Out slides are in excellent condition, but we found out early that the slides needed to be as straight and evenly spced as possible in the cartidge.

The software is giving us a lot of flexibilty and really enhances some slides we were going to delete.

Overall, we are very happy with the purchase.

First time user

Within the last month I scanned more than 9000 slides (halfway through our collection from the last 20 years) with the Pacific Image PowerSlide 3650 slide scanner running all day with great quality and only 2 jams.
My setup: Windows XP SP3 on a 2 GHz Pentium laptop with the scanner in a closet (for noise reduction). I played around with different settings for the few initial days, but due to the volume of slides I cannot afford the time to tweak all of them manually in the included CyberViewX software and instead ended up scanning at 3600 dpi in 16 bit RAW using VueScan (3 minutes and 92 MB a scan) and loading it all into Adobe Lightroom for batch processing. I figured out my optimum settings which I am applying on importing the scans into Lightroom and only have to adjust individual images if the original slide was underexposed or needs cropping. Without this automated scanner and process I would never have invested the time to digitize our collection.

Excellent Workhorse

This product is JUNK!  I have one- It would not install on VIsta 64bit  Dell I7 920 system, not on Gateway Vista 64 bit laptop, not on Lenovo 32 bit Vista business laptop, after many many hours (days) of messing with old P4-3.0 system with Vista 32 bit business Ihad ti working for a moment, then it would not recognize the 'camera' when I booted up the next time, and after many install-uninstall attempts - is a useless plastic paper weight today -- I might as well hadspent the money on the lottery chances for satisfaction were better.  Manufacturer says will not run on 64 bit Vista, but two machines were 32 bit and still no success, asked about 64 bit drivers-- was like asking to get blood from a rock- In summary they subtly implied I got screwed for buying it.

Total Rip Off

This was one big disappointment.  It's Mac drivers(?) are not worth loading.  Mechanical it isn't.  Jams all the time until it breaks.  This should not be on the market, please do not purchase it...don't even think about it!  You would be much better off buying a single scan Nikon.  This is just inferior in every possible way.  JUST DON'T DO IT!

The WORST scanner ever made!

I've been scanning my history of slides for a couple weeks.  The machine jams about once in every 100 slides, but that may be because some of the slides are over 40 years old.  The machine clunks and whirrs and sounds as if it might cough up a hairball,and takes about 5 hours to do 50 slides (at high resolution), but it does an excellent job, and I'm happy with the results.[...]The instructions were written by a non-English speaker, and are occasionally unclear and sometimes hilarious.  Even the info on the Adorama site uses the word "digtial."I recommend this item to anyone who has a pile of old slides they want to bring into their computer.  The included Adobe Elements is a help, but I've been going direct to Mac Aperture.

Does What it Says

We've recently purchased The Pacific Image 3650, so far has worked great.  We've run about 1,000 slides so far and have had NO jams.  The scanner produces a great image, new users will need to take some time in determining what settings will work best for your application.  The software is not as intuitive as you would expect & a bit quirky, this could be better & takes some time to figure out.  We also found that the software will act strangely at times and varies depending what desk top computer or workstation we use (will shut down during a pre-scan, not scan all the slides). Once we close & reboot the software, all returns back to normal.  It appears this may be somewhat related to the fact these problems happened when we were testing & changing many of the parameters in the software - but not sure. In summary great scanner, the software could be better.

Good scanner

I have used this unit now for about 4 months, and in that time scanned some 15,000 slides (35 mm and 127 super slide).  Overall, the unit has performed very well indeed.  The colour rendition is excellent (even on badly faded slides and slides with some very odd colour casts); the resolution is excellent (although there is an odd tendency to produce what must be sharpening artifacts on very high contrast edges -- not a problem on any reasonable print size (say up to 20 inch on a 3600 dpi scan); the slide feed is very reliable (I have had perhaps 50 jams in 15,000 slides -- all with old mounts).

Only minor gripe is that the software (CyberViewX) lacks instructions or help, and is -- to put it mildly -- quirky.  Manageable, but quirky.

Highly recommended

Excellent results

I have been running this slide scanner continuously since I got it shortly after Christmas (it is now mid-February).  It has actually made it possible to scan a large heritage collection of slides for a local non-profit under an April deadline and with a considerable cost savings.  There has been about a dozen jams during that time, out of thousands of slides processed.  At first many of the slides did not fully load, so I slightly bent the push bar to better line up with the edge of each slide.  The scanner has loaded every slide perfectly since then.  Old style square edged slides have some tendency to jam, but the scanner gracefully attempts to clear the jam and then quits with an error message.  On one occasion I fished a slide out of the works with tweezers.  I found it useful to order two additional cartridges so that I can preload and keep the scanner working more or less continuously.  I am estimating around four hours to process fifty slides at 3600dpi.  It is good not having to frame each image - the scanner automatically detects the slide orientation and adjusts the scan accordingly.  I am using the Cyberview scanning software, reserving Photoshop Elements for image correction after the rush.  Photoshop Elements has resurrected some very bad images with "Auto Smart Fix".  Scanning causes a big slowdown on the PC but using the PC for other purposes does not affect scan image quality.  The PC software processes one image while the hardware is scanning the next, with a resulting speedup in batch mode.  Some of the noises that the scanner makes are alarming at first, but become soothing background over time.  Right now it is chugging away next to me.