Somebody in the PR department of Plustek must have done a good job: three leading publications, the paper magazine Shutterbug (in the September 2010 issue) and the on-line magazines Luminous Landscape and Imaging-Resource just published detailed reviews of the Plustek Opic Film 7600i scanner.

Now that Minolta (a few years ago) and Nikon (very recently) lost interest in 35mm film scanners, the Plustek 7600i and Epson Perfection V750-M are two of the few remaining options for amateur photographers looking for quality results in the $500 to $1,000 price range. Simpler and cheaper models are more gadgets than photographic tools, and the Nikon Coolscan 9000 ED currently sells for more than $2,000.

I’m not going to paraphrase the reviews. The best is to click on the links and read what the testers thought about the Plustek scanner and its software dotation:

Luminous Landscape: a review by Mark Segal. Mark published a short summary of his review in Luminous Landscape, and made a much more detailed review available as a downloadable PDF file. In his detailed analysis, he included a very interesting comparison of the Plustek with the Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED and the Epson V750-M Pro. A must read if you’re looking for a scanner right now.

Imaging-Resource offers a detailed review of the scanner, and also includes a comparison of two scanning applications, Vuescan and Silverlight.

Shutterbug is primarily a paper magazine, available in kiosks and in libraries such as Barnes and Nobles or Borders, but the guys at Shutterbug also make their archives available on line. They regularly publish reviews of scanners and tutorials about scanning. I recommend a very interesting article on how to scan Black and White film, published two years ago. As recommended by the author, I’m using chromogenic film (Kodak CN400) when I shoot in Black and White, and I’ve never regretted it. Interestingly the scanner used by the author, David B. Brooks, was a older Plustek model, the 7200.

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