Nikon SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder by Nikon
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Digital camera reviews of Nikon SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder
Digital camera Review: Unexpectedly satisfied
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading all the reviews, I was prepared for aggravation. I figured it would jam and jam and then jam some more. I have experienced some jamming, particularly with older cardboard mounts and groups of mixed format mounts, but on the whole, the performance has been stellar. I did no modifications at all. I scanned box after box of slides without issue, and I have now scanned over 3,000 slides. Even if I had experienced any significant problems, there really aren't any viable alternatives out there. But since I haven't really had any horrible problems, I give it 5 stars. Happy scanning!Digital camera Review: Very disappointing
Summary: 1 Stars
Try to rent one of these before you buy so you know what you're getting into.
The Nikon Coolscan 5000 to which this feeder is attached works very well, but the feeder is a huge disappointment.
The manual warns that feed reliability varies depending on the type of slide mount. I have slides on many different mounts from many different eras from the 1990's back to 1947, and none of them would feed well, not even plain old Ektachrome on standard Kodak mounts from the nineties.
Older, thin slides won't feed at all. It does best with thick slides with rounded corners, but even then I was getting a jam every 5 to 10 slides.
With thin slides, the most common jam would be the feeder trying to pick up two slides at once. With modern, thicker slides the most common jam would have the slide move about a half inch and then get wedged somehow.
To clear a jam, you must dismiss the application, physically clear the jam, cycle the power on the scanner, bring up the application, and reenter the number of slides left in the hopper. The software will not resume scanning after a jam unless you restart it, (the Scan button is greyed out) and the scanner will not pick up a new slide, even after you've cleared the jam, until you power cycle it.
Being able to scan in bulk is a good idea, and at current prices for professional scanning, owning a bulk scanner can be economical if you have hundreds of slides. But bulk scanning is only useful if it actually scans unattended in bulk, and this device does not do that. If you must have this device, be prepared to baby it.
Digital camera Review: Went back to my Minolta AF-2840
Summary: 2 Stars
The problems with jamming are insurmountable. I went back to the Minolta DiMage Scan Dual III, AF-2840 (bought on eBay for about 150, years ago), which can scan 4 slides at a time and never jams. The quality is brilliant, but you have to work in batches of four.Digital camera Review: Works for my type of slides, no single slide jam.
Summary: 3 Stars
I was worried by the numerous reviewers reporting on slides getting jamed before I bought this slide feeder. To my positive surprise, I have not experience a single case of jamed slides after scanning about 200+ slides. I exclusively scan comparably thick and stiff plastic slides, GEPE and similar, which I have framed myself. I would give this product even 5 stars if its price was more reasonable and if Nikon Scan would work better for me in combination with my LS 5000 scanner and the slide feeder:
In average NikonScan for Mac crashes for me every 15-20 slides making the slide feeder less useful than it could be. I am using Intel 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo 15 inch MacBookPro running the latest version of OS X Tiger. Unfortunately, Nikon's latest update to Nikon Scan for Mac (vers. 4.0.2) that I could find, is dated 06/17/2004 [...]
Addition 29JUL: The slide feeder continues to work well for me. I think I only had one jam ever and this one was my fault because I inserted a slide incorrectly into the stack.
The Windows version of NikonScan is more stable than the Mac version. I have scaned well over 100 slides in one batch without any issues, neither HW nor SW. Therefore, I have switched to NikonScan for Windows. I boot Windows natively using Bootcamp on my Mac.
Digital camera Review: Works great until the metal spring loses it's shape!
Summary: 1 Stars
The SF-210 auto slide feeder works great until you do 3 or 4 hundred slides then the little metal spring device loses it's shape and the feeder jams. You then need to reconfigure the little metal spring that handles the slide and get the four prongs back into the right shape where it can push the slides the right way again. Very frustrating because unless you manage to get the little piece of metal back into it's original shape it keeps jaming slides and shutting down.