(Note: we are not affiliated with any of the products listed in this article—except Cura™, we are simply providing advice on how to best safeguard and leverage your non-digital media.)

• If you have not already read my article on general digitizing methods, please do so as it will give you the right context for my assessments below:
• After finding the flatbed scanner very effective but somewhat laborious I searched for a more productive solutions that still gave high quality results. After trying to find recommended solutions online I ended up trying these 4 products:
• Kodak Scanza Digital Film Scanner ($160);
• Plustek OpticFilm 8200i SE Film Scanner ($400);
• Plustek OpticFilm 135i Automatic Film & Slide Scanner ($400);
• Pacific Image PowerFilm Scanner ($500). 

  I tried the Kodak Scanza first and found that a) it did not directly connect to a PC and b) that you had to manually move each frame of the slide and press a button to save it on a SD card. Really ! . I returned that pretty rapidly.

  Plustek OpticFilm 8200i was next – It connects via USB and did scan with amazing quality (7200 dpi 24/48-bit depth). The included software SilverFast had many options to get the best out of your color or b/w negatives or slides. The “i” which means it has an infrared scan pass for dust and scratch removal was particularly good at its job.

  The big downside was once again you had to manually move each negative (6 in a holder) or each slide (4 in a holder), for each item you wanted to scan. I also found that SilverFast provided almost too many settings and options. This did not meet my desired  “bulk” or easy needs. So that did get returned as well after a couple of weeks.

  I replaced the Plustek OpticFilm 8200i with the Plustek OpticFilm 135i and found this to a more productive solution. It connects via USB and scans into a folder of your choice. It came with one of each 35 mm negative (6 frames) and slide (4 frames) carriers. This system is motorized so you load your single strip or 4 mounted slides into the carrier, place the carrier into the scanner, press either the negative or slide button and it started up the relatively simple included scan utility. You have 4 or 5 quality modes to select from the medium one was quick for 6 frames, about 4 mins, about 10 min for the highest quality with was almost on par with the 8200i which was excellent (7200 dpi, 24/46 bit output) and it also the infrared dust and scratch removal feature.

  I purchased an additional carrier of each type ($25-$30) and found that by loading the second carrier while the first was scanning and so on was quite a productive way to process a number of negatives or slides. The king of productivity in scanning for bulk negatives was however the Pacific Image PowerFilm Scanner. The tech spec on image quality were not as high as the Plustek ( 3600 vs 7200 16 bit depth) but it generally was very good. The software was quite simple to use – you could also set it up to auto tag the scan meta data with a date etc. Th productivity on this was really great. You could load up 2 sets of 36 negative strips (they say 60 but…). press the scan button and let it do its thing for 45 mins to 1 ½ hours. Depending on your quality and dual scan settings, yes it has infrared dust and scratch removal too. 9 out of 10 times – everything went super smoothly and you can just start the scan and walk away, and do other things. Sometime a strip would double up and you would have to rescan those. There was an annoying dirt alert almost always when you started to scan to make sure the scan area was clean. You could override this easily though. I ended up using this for the majority of the 4,000 + negatives I had, and I did have to go though their cleaning process a couple of times.

   

  Kodak Scanza Digital Film Scanner ($160);

  Pros:

  Cheap ?

  Cons:

  No direct PC link, had to scan to memory device

  Manual frame by frame

  Plustek OpticFilm 8200i SE Film Scanner ($400);

  Pros:

  Super high quality scans

  Lots of scan options –

  Cons:

  More expensive

  Manual fame by frame

  Complex software -too many scan options

  Plustek OpticFilm 135i Automatic Film & Slide Scanner ($400);

  Pros:

  Supports both negatives and slides

  Very high quality scans

  Auto scans 6 or 4 negatives at a time

  Simple operation

  Cons:

  Need to be there to scan in bulk

  Pacific Image PowerFilm Scanner ($500).

  Pros:

  High quality scans

  Can you 60-70 negatives

  Unattended scan mode – you can walk away for while and do other things

  Cons:

  Bit more expensive

  Only does 35mm film strips

   

  Summary

  Overall bulk scanning is possible and inexpensive, in the end the choice was for ease of use, bulk productivity and quality was the Pacific Image PowerFilm Scanner, I did like the Plustek OpticFilm 135i solution for both negatives and slides, but you can get similar results quicker from the  flatbed scanner as you can do 2 strips and a time, and if you get a second set of carries get quite a lot done for almost half the price.

  The Plustek OpticFilm 8200i worked if you really had the time and the need to try lots of options to scan. I really could not get any observable better results from it vs the OpticFilm 135i.

  Kodak Scanza (and other similar manual frame by frame scanners) really are not productive for bulk usage.

  If you have any questions or more information you wish to add please make comments below.