Rehunn,
I visit this forum in part because it is nearly always civil. Lets keep it that way. If you took my statement as an insult, then I apologize, because no insult was intended. Let me explain.
You apparently have had a good experience with your Plustek scanner. Considering the price point of the Plustek, if it actually outperforms a scanner that costs three or four times the price, you really lucked out. I would take good care of it and immediately offer the Nikon 4000 on eBay while the prices are still high for them. A few went for about $600 lately.
Here are the most important
advertised numbers for the two scanners:
Dmax: (most important issue in most scanning situations-higher is better)
Nikon 4.2
Plustek 3.3
DPI: (dots per inch, or resolution)
Nikon 4000 DPI (actually measured 3900 DPI max)
Plustek 7200 DPI (actually measured 2700 DPImax)
SELLING PRICE:
Nikon approx.$1200 (Not sure the exact price then, but probably close)
Plustek approx.$300-400 (I'm guessing you paid something in this range)
Both scanners produce a 48 bit file, so things are the same there.
Looking at just the numbers, most would say the Nikon should be way ahead of the Plustek. I mention price, since in all things commercial, you generally get what you pay for. Not a normal case where a $300 scanner would do better than a $1200 one. The reviews on the filmscanner.info site back this up. Considering they deal pretty much in all available scanners, and had no problem pointing out the warts on each manufacturers products, I would tend to believe them. Hard to find other current reviews of either the Nikon or the Plustek since they are both no longer manufactured.
Scanner software can be very tricky to use. I have a long experience with Vuescan Pro and the number of choices and buttons to be checked is daunting sometimes. Nikonscan is not too hard to use, but can trip you up as well. Silverfast is very good software if you want to get their best (and very expensive) product. Their interface is not really intuitive. Having set the scanner up with a slight change and then found out later I had messed something up in the software was common enough for me that I can only assume others may sometimes do the same. I've rescanned
lots of images due to "operator error".
I have had five scanners in the time frame since 1996-7-ish. (I can't remember exactly when I bought the first) Two Umax pro flatbeds, a Nikon LS-2000, a Nikon 9000, and an Epson V750Pro. I used reviews and user recommendations (same thing essentially) to buy them all.
My intention by putting up the scanner-related post was simply to provide the best, most accurate information possible to those who might be interested. As I said, your opinion is at odds with the others out there with tested information and my 17 years of scanning my slide and negative collection. Perhaps you could submit your best efforts on a dense Kodachrome slide from each scanner so we can see the difference.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2014 07:02PM by jgunning.
