Scanners: The »Missing Link« finally arrived!

It's been a while since I used to use my own, now defunct film scanner. It was a flatbed Mustek Bearpaw with the transmission mode scan option. It wasn't a stellar scanner, but you could scan 35 mm images and get a decent quality 20x30cm prints from a Frontier machine, or a decent A4 inkjet contact negative to use with alternative photo techniques. But it died some years ago....well, it's performance did (and who will ever repair an obsolete scanner?). All in all, it wasn't a bad scanner considering the price at the time. For a couple of years I was actually relying only on outsourced scanning-be it made by a friend or by a photo lab. Fact is that I was shooting mostly slide film in that period and scanned only selected images. Fact is also that all that time I was toying with the idea of getting a »serious«, medium format scanner. MF scanner prices were never low (new or used ones), but looks like their prices even skyrocketed a bit in the past time (for respectable used models). Then, I was waiting for the (so long) announced OpticFilm 120-until its price has been disclosed...no, thanks, I said-for such an extra premium in price I can rely on outsourcing for scanning medium format film, for many many years. So I got annoyed of myself not being able to decide which scanner to get. And owning a good scanner is always a good thing....

Anyway, finally I decided to get a Plustek scanner, more precisely the 8200i SE model. Just arrived yesterday! I am still in the need to install it, can't wait for the weekend to test it!

I chose the intermediate model of this Plustek scanner line, since the 8100 model doesn't have the nice and useful feature of IR detection (and removal) of scratches and dust particles, while the 8200 Ai model costing over 50 % more than the 8200 SE (and more than double of the 8100), but having the auto IT8 calibration feature seemed to me way too much. Optically-sensor and lens wise-all 3 scanners are identical, save the mentioned features. While the IT8 calibration is surely a nice (and expensive addition), it can be compensated by a much cheaper solution: you can shoot a test image of a (reasonably priced) color-checker chart (yes, those which became popular among digital photographers, but they existed also before...) and then set and save you color curve values in an image editor for any given film type. You can even borrow from someone a test chart for a day or so and have the job almost done. That's it! Anyone who ever worked in the darkroom for a while can get a grasp of such a procedure. And, if you really want to go crazy, you can buy ready-made IT8 targets on specific film emulsions-check this link for these outrageous prices! If I knew before, that would be my best investment in a Kodachrome film....just kidding

Note: if you shoot only BW film, even the IR dust removal feature is useless, unless you are using chromogenic BW film. So in such a case you can save some money too.