What a great deal!
Written: Nov 20 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Price. Picture quality. Speed. Ease of use.
Cons: Hmmm... it's not a Nikon coolscan 4000.
The Bottom Line: I can't believe the quality for the price. The software is great, setup was easy, and my photos look great!
|
|
|
| J_McNew's Full Review: Acer ScanWit 2720S Film Scanner (35 mm) |
I couldn't be happier with my Acer ScanWit 2720S film scanner. Wanting to get deeper into digital photography, I was about to buy a high resolution digital camera when my brother stopped me. He works at a digital photo lab. Too often he sees the bad side of digital photography. When people bring in the latest greatest picture... a 1024x768 pixel image of their mother/father/friend/pet/car and want an enlargement made. Well, it looks good on the screen, but it looks like crap when you make a print. Even the higher resolution cameras don't come close to the sharpness of film. Most film has the equivalent of 15 to 20 megapixels. Try to find that in an affordable camera!
So I asked him what I should do. I had just bought a nice point and shoot 35mm camera (see my review of the Nikon LiteTouch 120ED), so he told me to get a film scanner. That way I get the best of both worlds. I have my high quality digital image from the scanner, but I also have the negative or slide to keep for enlargements, or in case the file gets deleted. If I end up getting a better scanner in the future, I can always re-scan the film for an even better digital image.
I looked into film scanners for a couple of weeks before coming across the Acer ScanWit 2720S. I found lots of reviews online and even a few web pages dedicated to it. Acer has lots of good info on their site. As well as 24/7 tech support and 48 hour replacement. No store in my area stocked them, but the reviews were enough for me to see that it was a good scanner. I bought mine directly from Acer for $325. Also, they will throw in an Acer dye sub photo printer (FotoPrisa) for $70, but I already have a Sony DPP-SV55 dye sub printer (coming soon as a Christmas gift), so I opted not to get it.
The installation was a snap. The included SCSI II PCI card goes into an empty PCI slot. Hook the scanner up via the included SCSI cable. Plug the power cord in and power up the scanner. Power up the computer. Hit CANCEL when the auto-detect stuff pops up. Insert the CD-ROM and install MiraFoto. That's it. I was up and running in 10 minutes.
The scanner supports 48 bit scanning if your software permits. I scanned a few into Adobe PhotoShop, but could not tell the difference between the 48 bit and the 24 bit. The file size difference is dramatic. 48 bit mode at full optical resolution (2700dpi) produces a TIF file of 54 megabytes. At 24 bit full-res, you get a 24 meg file. Much easier to handle and store. No noticeable difference.
Scans are quick. Less than a minute per scan for full res. Scanning a lower res for email or web takes only seconds.
The scanning software has tons of tools for color balancing and a few different filters. You will need to play around with these a bit, particularly with negatives, to get the proper color out of your film. Slides are much easier and require little effort to get good results.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the scans. So was my brother, who uses a Nikon CoolScan 4000ED at work. The Nikon has higher resolution and greater dynamic range, but he was impressed with this $325 scanner.
Combined with a good photo printer, such as the Sony DPP-SV55 that my fiancé is giving me for Christmas, this is a great way to get into digital photography without losing any quality or longevity associated with traditional film. You can get a much better film camera for your money as opposed to going for a digital camera. Just about everybody already has a 35mm camera anyway. With a scanner like the ScanWit, you can digitize all of your old slides/negatives as well as the pictures you have yet to take. And you'll always have the film if you want to make professional enlargements or if you want to scan with another scanner later. Truly the best of both worlds.
Incidentally... being that slides are easier to scan properly, I have switched to slide film altogether. Another thing that helped change from traditional negatives is a project I am currently working on. I have hundreds of slides taken by my father and his father. These date between the 1950s and 1970s. They look great! Images on slide film last much longer without losing color or detail. As for the notion that slide film is more finicky that negatives... remember that if you are using them to scan, you have plenty of opportunity to adjust the color on your computer. Most people only use slides for projection, and there is no way to improve the image through a projector.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 325
Interface: SCSI
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
J_McNew
|
|
Member: Jesse McNew
Location: Annapolis, MD
Reviews written: 38
Trusted by: 3 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.