Super high quality scans. 100 rolls of film free.

buggie driver, scanner doesn''t show up under win2000 pro (have to do a hardware scan after boot) AWFUL twain interface. If you bought one before Nov. (which I did) you are out of luck with getting the Silverfast AI software without shelling out another hundred bucks for it! (This doesn''t compute considering I paid $1000 for without the silverfast software and you can get it now for $800 with the software. If that isn''t the biggest F You I have ever gotten from a company. Kodak even had the nerve to do a press release stating that current owners can also have all the benefits of Silverfast AI (If they pay $100 dollars for it). As if this is a gift from them. They DO NOT CARE ABOUT THEIR CUSTOMERS ONCE THEY HAVE BOUGHT THE PRODUCT) I have been in touch with Kodak 4 times and still have had no reply to all my problems with this scanner. AT KODAK CUSTOMER SERVICE DOES NOT EXIST!

This is a great scanner if you don''t mind the bugs and the absolute worst customer service on earth!

Customer Service

(read above) DOES NOT EXIST!

Similar Products Used:

Flextight II, Various drum scanners. Nikon Coolscan 4000 (This is the way to go)

Good dynamic range of 3.6, high scanning resolution and great control of image (scan) parameters using the new SiverFast Ai5 software. SilverFast also allows greatly improved prescans and much faster final scans as compared to Kodak''s software for this scanner. On my system (a Dell Pentium II 400 computer with 256 MB of SDRAM running Windows 98SE with the scanner connected via a USB port) a full frame final scan of a 35mm slide took 4 minutes, 15.3 seconds using Kodak''s software and only 1 minute, 53.3 seconds using SilverFast Ai. The final scan in each case was 31.4 MB in size. Scan times were measured from initiation of the scanning process to display of the finished image on the monitor. Prescans of the same slide were 34.7 seconds for the Kodak software and 56.3 seconds for SilverFast Ai. The longer prescan time for the latter probaly accounts for the much higher image quality (larger and less pixelated) of the SilverFast prescans.

Neither SilverFast Ai nor Kodaks native software for the 3600 are stand alone programs nor do they have provision for automatically eliminating scratches, dust particles, etc. as does Applied Science''s Digital Ice and Canon''s FARE. Optical resolution (as reflected by the scanner lens) could be higher as well but should be adequate for most hobbiest uses.

LaserSoft''s SilverFast Ai5 software is now available for this scanner and what a difference it makes. It hasn''t turned Cinderella into a Princess but it''s about as close as you can come given the inherent shortcomings of the hardware. You''ll find much faster final scan times, much larger and less pixelated prescans and greatlt enhanced control of image parameters, especially color and tone. I was ready to junk my 3600, which Iv''e owned since Decemeber 2000, before SilverFast Ai became available. It isn''t perfect and doesn''t turn the 3600 into a true professional scanner but it''s a major upgrade that should please most present 3600 owners who use the scanner for non-professional purposes.

Customer Service

Good but slow. I started bugging Kodak about the inadequacies of their software almost 10 months ago which finally paid off when they sent me the SilverFast Ai5 software reviewed here. If present owne

Similar Products Used:

HP S20 CSe

Scans up to 36 frames at once - enormously handy. Allows excellent digitally based proof sheets on 8X10 paper. Does competitive job on enlargments on grainier films to 8X12 in. Finally, since I am supposed to receive about $650 dollars worth of "free" film (Portra, etc.) from Kodak, this was a killer deal - the scanner cost me $820. With $650 in film and perhaps $100 in software, this was a steal. I''d give it a ''6'' on value if they had one. I only wish Kodak produced a similar unit for 120 rolls of up to 32 image scanned in one session, but I suspect this unit and similar units will become obsolete as digital cameras improve to replace first APS and 35mm and eventually even the larger format films.

Kind of noisy No trays to protect the negatives being scanned Pretty much ties up the computer processor. Not for enlargements of high resolution films

I''ve had this unit for about two weeks, operating with a 450 mHz IBM clone processor without 2gB of free hard drive space and 128 mB of RAM. I am using a USB connection since I''ve never used the SCSI type connection. I am printing on a Hewlett-Packard HP722 or 990 with either 300 DPI or 2400X1200 DPI, using Kodak Inkjet paper (glossy or extra glossy). I do my editing and printing from Adobe Photoshop Limited Edition or Kodak Digital Science Software that came with a Kodak Digital Point & Shoot. I have scanned about 15 roles of film and few slides, including Ektachrome, Ilford PanF 50, Porta VC400, Mitsibushi 400, TMAX 3200, TRI-X, and Funi Neopan 1600, developed in D-76. I''m sure I have a lot more to learn about the unit & optimizing its capabilities. I bought the unit primarily to scan entire rolls of 35mm film so I didn''t have to buy index prints and 4X6 guide prints for enlargment of images that I use to compete in local and state-level amateur events. In regard to this function, the unit has worked beautifully. I scan the role in about 15 minutes and do proof sheets on 8X10 paper. My only cost for color prints is for the film development (about $2.75/roll) and the 8X10 sheet on inkjet photo paper (about 50 cents). I''ve found a CD burner indispensable for carrying around copies of the images since they run from 5mB to 55mB each. The unit''s secondary function was to allow me to enlarge some images to 8X10 and 8X12 enlargements for competitions while minimizing wet darkroom work. In this regard, the 3600 has done well on color and black & white images from films with ASAs of 400 & up. I can match the output of my local rapid development store in 8X10 & 8X12 enlargements. The 3600 simply cannot match the quality of reproduction of the commercial units (10''s of thousands of dollars in cost) on high resolution black and white, eg. Ilford PanF 50. In that venue it is thus far, not even close, which is not suprising given the difference in cost of the two systems. By and large I am very pleased with the unit and have had minimal hardware or software problems. I did download the RFS 3600 manual from the Kodak website and read it before receiving the unit, which may have helped. I also read all the reviews on this website and others that I could find before ordering

Customer Service

None required

Similar Products Used:

Hewlett-Packard 5470 flat-bed/film hybrid scanner

Resolution...Picture quality

Wish it did medium format

Although I frequently read reviews, I rarely right them. I''m shocked at the negative reviews this product has received. Possibly I am fortunate to get a recently produced product as most of the negative reviews have addressed software and firmware issues. I installed the driver and software in 10 minutes and I am absolutely thrilled with the results. I shoot Canon..D30 and 1V HS and recently had a job where I shot Digital and film. As much as I love the results from the D30, There is no question images scanned via the 3600 are of much higher resolution and have fantastic color. Color management in your workflow is critical. If you have the 3600, Photoshop, and your monitor all speaking the same language, you will get images far better than any Digital SLR currently produced. One of the best investments I''ve made in a while.

Customer Service

Not needed

Similar Products Used:

None

None

None

I was excited about the features which the scanner has to offer. However, I could not get it to work because:

Once I turned the power on, it cries out a strange high pitch noise, which tells me immediately that the machine has some "unexplanable" problem.

Secondly, I proceeded with the software installation anyway. the driver installation process could not find the file it needed to install the proper driver. I tried to override by manually select the driver for the hardware but I could not succeed.

As the strange noise persists, I turned the machine off and immediately rewrapped the machine back to its originally wrapping. I returned to the machine back to the shop right after. What a diappointment.

Fortunately, the shop owner is a friend of mine who allows me to switch back to the Nikon LS-2000 (which I borrowed from a friend for a test run). In Hong Kong, there no such a thing as money back guarantee. Once you bought products which turns out to be non-usable, you cannot get your money back and swithce to another product. You can only have it replaced however with lost confidence.

I am not here to bad mouth the machine. Yet, I am merely stating my experience. I am writing to Kodak with the same account of experience.

Good luck everyone.

Cheers.

Similar Products Used:

None

None

See below

Chose the scanner because it has good resolution, high dynamic range, easy to load film, and will scan entire roll in one operation (2 actually, since must do prescan first).

Summation

I've worked with this scanner for three weeks now. Scanned about 30 rolls of film, about 80% B/W. My reference point is two years of work with the Nikon Coolscan III, scanning perhaps 5,000 images, mostly color slide.

From a workflow perspective, the Kodak RFS 3600 software seems too buggy to get anything done without experiencing a great deal of frustration. A "finished" product should not have this many problems, and I feel that the product testing was woefully deficient, for whatever reason. I have been intensively involved in numerous forms of software development for more than 30 years. I do not believe this product is ready to ship to customers for other that beta test.

Today, I returned the scanner to the camera store. I'm unhappy to do so. I thought that the RFS 3600 was the scanner with the greatest potential of satisfying my needs. In its current state, it does not.

These are my observations, and apply to the type of work I do and the way I do it. I shall not comment on what others might perceive or experience.

Details of my three weeks of experience are below:

WEEK ONE

Have had for less than a week, but have processed 2 dozen rolls of film with it. 90% of it has been B/W at max res. Scanned only a handful of slides.

These are my observations. Items 1-16 have been reported to Kodak.

1) Install book says Win2K is supported, but also requires Linksys EZ SCSI 5.0. Linksys does not support this on Win2K. Am running on Win2K with default SCSI drivers. Have encountered some SCSI problems that may or may not be related.

2) I'm set to scan in slides after prescan. Choose 5, 12, 19, 26, 32. Actually scans 5 & 12, identifies them as 26 & 32, then stops. Other times, all works fine.

3) When using incremental forward to position the film (I have 1/4" lead with roll number in it), software sometimes loses the SCSI connection to the device, and must restart appl. Why can't it do a better job of centering anyway? My solution to the SCSI drop is to hit the positioning key as follows: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, wait, wait, wait,......

4) Will not focus properly on some slides. (underwater shots in color) My Coolscan III image is crisp. The Kodak image is fuzzy.

5) Sometimes scan hangs, if I try to cancel, that hangs. Must reboot system.

6) Haven't figured out how to scan in an entire roll without the prescan operation. Slows down process and drags film back & forth too much.

7) Because roll is fed from back, not front, frame sequence is inverted. 1 becomes 36, 2 becomes 35, etc. Must be renumbered to correlate back to frame info logged in by camera. (I use Fileman S/W to renumber.) I feed from front of roll, would like to be able to auto select that each frame rotated for proper view perspective.

8) Software will number sequence images, great for scanning roll, but defaults to 3 digits, and must be reset for each scan. Default should be 2 digits. What percentage of users will scan more than 99 images on a single pass? Better, remember the change I make and use that as the default.

9) Something seems to deplete space on C drive, though it has 700 MB free when I start, the Appls are on a second (larger) drive, and the images are scanned to a (much larger) third. Must quit appl and start over. Nothing is run on this system but the scanning operation. May be swap space, but that seems like a lot.
Verification, is a huge swap file. Odd, as Photoshop is used only to access the scanner, and files are saved directly to disk. No other appls run. Reboot to elim swap file. Sys config is 320 mb.

10) Noisy little box

11) Previews of B/W images are sometimes tinted green for no reason. Although scan is also in B/W, 30 will have green tint, next 6 won't. This is the prescan, not actual scan output. However this makes it difficult to assess the images prior to scanning. I'm working with Illford XP2 Chromogenic.

12) Following the load of a fresh roll of film, have seen scanner attempt to read min density and never complete, grinding away like a broken blender.

13) On one batch roll scan, images 15 & 17 did not completely scan, cropping off the bottom 15%, leaving a black bar on the top. On a second roll, 7 scattered images are incomplete, but here it looks like the bar is inserted into the actual image scan, as there is a thin strip of image above it, contiguous with the image on the other side of the bar. The image piece varies in size, from 5 to 10 percent of full image height. A third roll exhibited both of these problems.

14) On batch scans, images do not always retain proper centering. Though the first image is properly centered, the very last image on the roll may be off 5 percent. Oddly, the film doesn't seem to slide, but creeps instead, and images shift right of center, not left.

15) In one entire roll that was scanned, there are two thick gray Vertical bars across every image. Not end-to-end, but top to bottom. Both bars are image overlay, and not solid black. By rotating the images, one can see that the alignment is identical across frames.

16) Will load a new roll. Prescan will stop at 87% on the first slide. Reboot to recover.

==> Kodak just posted new software and driver, downloaded. Reset troblem tracking and record incidents from scratch.

3) Positioning now seems good. This seems fixed, but see #20 below

4) My "problem" slide that was so fuzzy now scans clearly.

9) Still exists as problem. Happened after scanning in less than 20 slides.

16) Still exists as problem, cement mixer sound on scan. Status light drops on scanner, must power scanner off & on. This problem happens repeatedly. Can no longer scan anything at all. Dead.

18) Accidentally hit scan button on scanner. Get Msg "A preview scan has not been done, do you want to continue with the final scan?" I select "NO". This message sequence repeats itself over and over, and I finally cancel.

==> Will return tomorrow for replacement

==> New Kodak scanner from the camera store

WEEK TWO

16) Still problem, 600 mb free space. In one case, status light stayed on. Restarted Photoshop, tried again, same problem, but status light off. Reboot to get around.

19) Selected 5 slides for full scan. Scanned in the first 4 and stopped, no apparent reason. Reselected fifth slide, scanned ok.

20) For some strips (no blank leader), feeding in film positions frame about 20% too far to the right. Can incrementally shift left (back), but sometimes system drops SCSI connection doing this.

21) While roll scanning, get runtime errors in Photoshop, about halfway into the roll. This has happened a few times. Get out of space condition on "C" drive at the same time, has created 600 mb swap space. Seems impossible to scan an entire roll. "D" drive where appl is has multiple GB, but not "C". How can I target swap to work around? (but why should I have to?)

22) General comment. I'm doing far more work with much less output than with my Nikon Coolscan III.

23) New message. Little box, windows icon in Left corner. Says "Kfilm", then line below it is all special characters. Cascades about 7-8 of them. Try rescan, cannot connect with scanner. System too messed up now to do anything but reboot.

24) Scanning strip of 3 images, loses connection to scanner (SCSI) in the midst for the first image scan (which follows prescan)

Have my current backlog of images scanned. Using less than first week. In initial editing, I'm beginning to see the differences of not having digital ice, in terms of light scratches and dust. Photoshop 6 has filters, but my results don't seem as good. Not able to comment on effects of differences in dynamic range and resolution, but my Coolscan III is not set up for some comparisons.

WEEK THREE

Primary focus this week is on editing images, no bulk scanning. Rescan a handful of images that seem bad for one reason or another (usually me, not the scanner).

25) New problem I did not notice before. Decided to do some comparisons. In the process I scanned in the same image twice on the RFS 3600, two separate loads. Changes none of the camera settings. Image was B/W. Second scan was much darker than the first. Values were 20 points higher. Correcting the darker image to match the "correct" one required setting levels to 22, 3.03, 212. I say "correct" because the Nikon scan also created an image of similar values.

26) Talked to Kodak support about the fact that profiles exist for only Kodak film. I'm unsympathetic to the fact that it's a Kodak product. Kodak should actively solicit input from other film makers. I see this as a distinct negative, unique to Kodak's position of being, I believe, the only manufacturer who sells film as well as scanners.

27) Curious about the effect of the higher resolution and the greater density range over the CoolScan III. Resolution difference is visible, but only when zooming in the 10x range (on 1200x1600, default view is about 20% for a vertical, I would zoom to 200%). As for density range, in both slides and B/W, I felt that the Nikon was preserving significant detail that was lost in the Kodak scans (again, B/W). With respect to finer detail, the Nikon seemed to provide sharper detail, despite its lower resolution. I experimented some with the different sharpness options for the two scanners, but find that I prefer to leave these off. I do not view the Kodak RFS 3600 as a "better" scanner that the Nikon Coolscan III, in terms of image quality. In terms of the ability to get work done, the Kodak scanner is terrible, and highly unreliable.

Addendum:
Scanner used with Windows 98 Update 2, current maint applied
Updates from Kodak applied
Tested only SCSI connection
Used different processors, ranging from 266 to 550 mhz
Memory size 320 - 512 MB
Multiple hard drives varying from 2 - 40 GB. At least 800 MB available for swap space.
No other applications run concurrently.

Customer Service

Very Responsive, but have few solutions

Similar Products Used:

Nikon CoolScan II

None

None

I got almost same experiences as Ken who introduced his Kodak RFS 3600 scanner before me. I am lucky than Ken. After upgrading new v1.2 firmware and v1.1 twain driver, Almost problems gone. Now I can do my job well. And image quality is also good.

Customer Service

My scanner's dealer sent me the new driver CD after I told them some problems in my scanner.

Similar Products Used:

Nikon Coolscan III

USB & SCSI
Scan an entire film strip.
Excellent color accuracy from negatives.

Noisy(sound)
Software has bugs.
No digital ICE
Twain aquire software is very slow to open.

If you are looking to scan an entire roll of film buy have a small budget then this is the way to go.
My biggest impression of this scanner is the color accuracy you obtain from negative film.
There is next to no tweaking required in PS after the scan is imported.
My biggest peave is that it takes over 2 minutes for the twain aquire software to open.

Customer Service

Excellent

Similar Products Used:

Polaroid 4000

SCSI and USB
Process 36 strip
Easy to use

A Bit noisy, no digital ICE

In my first test of the scanner it installed (SCSI) with no problems. The new drivers as shipped with the scanner had profiles for most film brands. This addresses a major problem in the first release drivers.
I checked the firmware version to be sure that it was the latest.
Tested it using various film types including Agfa HDC-400 and Kodak Kodachrome transparency film, the colour balance was spot on (we thought the Agfa could be a problem but it wasn't..).
Auto focus on slides works a treat, preview times on slides seemed about twice as fast as the Nikon LS2000, scanning time seemed about the same. It does not have "Digital Ice" like scratch and dust removal as per the Nikon scanners, if your film is kept on the floor buy the Nikon!
Our results were in line with the Nikon and Polaroid for detail, dynamic range and colour accuracy. I wouldn't say the 3600 is any better, however being able to scan a 36 roll (and USB) is a real bonus.
The scanner was no nosier than a Nikon or Polaroid but I like the sound the Nikon makes better.. Now we have music in the background, so its no a problem anymore!
I haven't seen any scanner come out without the need to upgrade the drivers after real world use, I think some people may have expected too much from the 3600, they may have thought it would perform like a $40,000 unit..

[We sell a range of scanners and have no particular reason to recommend this product]

Customer Service

Not used

Similar Products Used:

P4000
LS2000
LS30
2710
Prime Film
Tamarack 2400

Ability to scan roll film, scanning mechanism relatively dust free, usb ability . Good quality raw scan, accurate colour.

must prescan roll, which took me an hour per roll to prescan, then select images to scan to file..Viewing port to check image alignment is in an awkward position, I had to set-up a mirror. Frame #s reversed, and re-numbering is a pain in the butt. Driver takes too long to load. Pre-scan image too small and lacking in detail to make informed decisions. Must quit scanner application to access other programs, and then wait to load scanner driver again.

I was thrown in at the deep end, with a job requiring ~450 images to be shot, processed scanned, renamed and burnt to discs in 4 days, I bought the rfs3600, the retailer helped me set-up and after a few early morning finishes, the job was satisfactorily completed.Prior to this my scanning experience consisted of about 100 or so scans over 2-3 years using an old LS1000 on a PC scanning to Zip and importing Zip into a Mac for processing, so it was a learning curve.
In spite of my inexperience the job was done, and the scanner worked.

Customer Service

Excellent service from retailer, they couldn`t be more helpful.

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L.S. 1000