Nikon SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder by Nikon
|
List Price: Our Price: $409.95 You Save: $90.04 (18%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $400.00 (click here) Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
|---|
Digital camera reviews of Nikon SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder
Digital camera Review: Works okay with good mounts- and some help!
Summary: 3 Stars
I've used a Nikon LS 2000 with a SF-200 for many years commercially. My first LS 2000 went back to Nikon about three times before they finally really fixed it- and they did as it's worked now for many years. The SF-200 needs help to work, though. We've found making the gate narrower with thin plastic- a leader card from my film processor- helps greatly in preventing the unit from pushing two slides into the scanner at once. The real issue is this older cardboard slides with bowed inner frames- they'll hook onto each other and cause jams. Inserting plastic between frames BEFORE they enter the scanner works, but does require constant intervention.
BUT- still haven't found anything that works better.
Digital camera Review: Works, mostly
Summary: 3 Stars
Having read the horror stories about the previous slide feeder (SF-200), it was with some trepidation that I purchased this for the LS5000ED. I have thousands of slides to scan, and feeding them one at a time doesn't seem like an option.
I was pleased to find that the first batch of Kodak cardboard mounts went through without a hitch. These were some Kodachromes from the early 70s, normally exposed. The scanner took the stack of 40 without a problem and completed the scans. However, my good luck didn't really continue. About every third stack manages to jam, normally just after I watch the first 3 slides go through without a hitch and I leave for my real job.
This slide feeder is just plain poorly designed. The feed path is designed such that each slide must pass under the stack, giving the possibility of catching the edges of the window in the mount above. Additionally, for some reason, the slide gate adjustment, which adjusts for the thickness of the mount, wants to move a bit on it's own. Failure to re-adjust after stack has caused a couple of jams, where the gate moved off of vertical and closed the opening too far. These problems all occurred with rather uniform stacks of slide in good to excellent condition.
I've had no problems with Gepe plastic mounts for slides I've mounted myself, but that is normally only a small fraction of slides that people need to scan.
One solution to the jamming seems to be to use a shim to put the feed follower pressure on the outside of the slide stack. This fans the stack a bit on the inside, which has allowed a balky stack to feed okay. Be careful how you engineer this, however, as if the shim gets caught in the feed mechanism you'll have another set of problems getting the feeder back to normal.
An additional failure I have had once was for the autofocus to go totally wrong. It managed to scan an entire stack of slides badly mis-focused. I put the single slide adapter in and the slides focused and scanned fine. I put the feeder back, only to find the problem persisted. I was about to pack it off to Nikon, when I power cycled the whole thing and found that correct operation had been restored.
The error handling on the batch scanning is broken, with the software thinking that scans have been completed which haven't. This is just a nuisance, resulting in the wrong file number part of the saved files if you don't catch it when you restart the scan. However, my software does detect that the slide didn't feed, and just shuts down, requiring exiting and restarting the scanner software to resume.
And then there is the general issue of software stability. On Windows 2000 with the SP4+ stuff, I cannot use USB 2.0 (scanner software looses communications with the scanner, and restarting the software leads to a blue screen of death). I also have to restart the software after each roll of film (approximately) or the application crashes. I'm going to try XP one of these days and see if it's any better. Hard to say if it's Nikon or MS that is screwing this up. Probably a joint effort.
Update: now running on a fast machine with XP Pro SP2, USB2.0 - after solving the XP ROC-GEM problem, I can report that the software is reasonably stable, typically going several rolls or sets of slides without crashing. There are no system crashes under XP, just application faults. Slide scans take around a minute to 90 seconds each in the stack feeded.
One drawback of the slide feeder over the film strip batch scanner is that there is no way to do different scan settings for the slides in the stack. With film strips you can tweak the settings for each frame, but there is no preview capability in the batch scan from the slide feeder. This is an oversight that they could correct in the software. However, the feeder reverses the slide order, so you would have to restack the slides between the preview pass and the full scan pass, or the software would have to be smarter than Nikon.
So I just use a default of ICE on and DEE of 30 and rescan manually any very difficult shots. With the 16-bit channel depth (actually only 14 unless you do multisampling - correction, the 5000 does 16-bit scanning with or without multisampling, the V is 14-bit) most exposure and shadow/highlight problems can be compensated in Photoshop afterwards.
All in all, I give Nikon a C for this effort - they could do some software improvements to raise the grade to a B- with a preview option, and possibly get a real solid B if they modified the pressure plate (needs to be adjustable where the pressure is placed). But the horizontal stack design will always have jamming problems. Why they couldn't use a tray feed with an open acceptance path like working slide projectors is beyond me.
Digital camera Review: don't be scared by horror stories
Summary: 4 Stars
Having read about all sorts of alterations (from switching springs to shaving off bits of plastic) that are required to get the SF-210 to function properly, I was expecting only headaches from it. Happily though, I've been through more than 1200 slides of the family archive so far (about 3600 to go) while it is true that the slide feeder does occasionally jam, I have found that it is very much a function of the age of the slides. Slides less than 20-25 years old scan without a problem. I'm often able do 50 or so (about the max which fits in the feeder tray) without a single jam. On older slides (dating to the 50s and 60s), I do have some jamming problems but they are still the exception rather than the rule. Bottom line---if you are tackling the job of archiving all the old family photos, this is a must have and it works much better than many of the reviews would lead you to believe.Digital camera Review: forget it.... try my idea
Summary: 1 Stars
I have been doing quite a lot of research to find a decent machine to scan my family's millions of slides. After reading all the reviews...I will plan to do what I have done with some old pictures.
the plan is this: have a slide show. Take digital photos with your "macro" setting (I use a Panasonic Lumix) of every slide...individually. It will take about 3-5 seconds each slide. Download them onto your computer. Play with color, etc on photoshop. Voila! You have all your slides in one place - in IPhoto or Picassa or whatever. You will be surprised how good they come out.
Why bother with a machine? Until a decent one is designed and made, that is.
Digital camera Review: necessary junk
Summary: 1 Stars
this slide feeder is a disgrace to nikon's name. it should cost about $50 given the quality engineering and flimsy plastic found in it. it has trouble with most slides, although heavy plastic mounts seem to do fairly well. cardboard mounts jam frequently. since on their return path slides bend the spring plate, you will find yourself monkeying with it repeatedly until you finally break it.
i have 15,000 slides. after some 2,500, it looks like i'll need another one. this is junk, but there isn't anything else out on the market that can offer the same functionality (when it works).