Ease of use, Scanning quality, Build quality.

Suffers with dark positive slides, ( to be expected given the amount of light needed to pass through the slide. Also scanning times, 5mins for high res. Although I have nothing to compare with on this.

Absolutely fab scanner, with no real problems to speak of. Can be used with Win XP, but prefers 98. Quality of scans on 126 and 35mm slides fab up to 8x12 print size. My dad had nearly 1,000 slides over 40 years old from his South Pacific travels. I wanted to bring him into the modern age, so after a lot of searching found a bargain on E-Bay. I've not looked back. Yes scan times on the paralell version are up to 5 minutes each, and as others have said, forget dark slides. But these are minor points, compared to the smile on my dad's face, when I showed him the first 60 scanned slides. I use photo deluxe, or gimp for final retouching/colour balancing, but the supplied ES-10 software is a breeze to use. Sure there are better scanners out there, after all it is now 12 years old. But the likes of the Nikon come with a prohibitive price tag. The hardest thing was setting up a pc to use Win 98 effectively, as drivers for the motherboard were hard to find. ALL in all can't fault it. FAB!! Just looking to acquire the APS film gate, to add to it's versatility.

Customer Service

Web support is fantastic, from a dedicated Yahoo Group, and a specialist website. Never contacted Olympus direct, as I figured it's 12 years old, and they wouldn't want to know.

Very small footprint and quick SCSI connection, easy to set up on a PowerMac.

none

A very good bargain. Use it mainly for web pages and multimedia authoring. Must buy for those on a budget.

Customer Service

n/a

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Nikon Cool Scan

Very cheap, easy to operate, parallel - ideal for notebook, quick pre-scan.

Slow - because of parallel - takes 3-5 minutes per picture in high resolution

Would buy the thing again, made thousands of slide and negative.

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None

Very ease to set up and use.
Beautiful quality in price range.

Slow output (parallel version)

While this scanner, by today's standards, doesn't have high numbers in terms of resolution, I am always amazed at the beautiful color and clarity of the images it outputs. I find it to work superb with well-exposed transparency films such as Kodachrome. No one can tell the 8 X 10 inch prints are digital.

Customer Service

Fair

Similar Products Used:

None

Very inexpensive by today's standards with older parallel port hookup. Great optics from a venerable maker. For Web use and small printing applications, the ES-10 is all you need!

The software packaged with the scanner is bare-bones. I would suggest the purchase of another software package to go with the unit. (I have Microsoft Picture It! from a previous installation) There are, undoubtedly, sharper and higher res scanners on the market, but look at the cost!

If there was ever a bargain in film scanners, the ES-10 is it. It works splendidly for Web use and small printing jobs. Doesn't seem to handle underexposed slides and overexposed negs, too well, but this may be a shortcoming of most film scanners.(or the limitation of Microsoft Picture It!)

Customer Service

Haven't had any experience with Olympus.

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None - this is my first foray into ANY digital photography endeavours.

$$$

NONE

THIS IS THE LEAST EXPENSIVE SCANNER BUT IT IS STILL GREAT FOR E-MAIL. I HAVE ACCUALLY SCANNED SOME PHOTOS FOR ADS.

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COOLSCAN 3

Cheap in the UK when average scanner prices were 400 GBP, now overtaken by Jenaoptik

None whatsoever it's great for e-mail scans.

This scanner was cheap (by UK standards) to buy and easy to use, I've had it since my son's birth in 1998 and has been used to scan photos for e-mail to my parents abroad. Though this system must be relatively obsolescent by now, it's still giving good service. Simplicity is it's key feature though you'd be well advised to scan via a third party photo manipulation programme as the Olympus supplied interface has few adjustments available.

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None

Price
Easy to set up
Clear user interface
Quick slide preview
Very complete package.

Dark slides come out way too dark.
It has some trouble scaning slides with dark and bright zones. These usually come out on the dark side.

This is a GREAT scanner for the price. I highly recommend it to anyone that is not a professional photographer. If you make your living scanning slides, get the Nikon. Good luck!

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None

Easy to use, low cost, starting to be available second hand.

Slow by todays standards. and only 24 bit.

If you are thinking of getting in to digital and you dont want to waste your 35mm SLR kit, then this could be what you need. I thought that I would improve and by a Acer scanwit ( higher res ) but after testing it could not see the sense in spending several hundred pounds more on a scanner that did not produce better results.

Customer Service

not needed

Similar Products Used:

Acer Scanwit

inexpensive

negative holder isn't great, twain software poor quality, scans dark

Its a nice little scanner but I find that its a tad annoying at times. Some of my scans come out way too dark. The film holder is difficult to deal with sometimes as the negatives tend to slide around about 1-2 degs while closing it. Also, the holder doesn't always align 100% so two scans of the same negative might have differing detail on the edges. Overall I like it but i'm wanting to upgrade to a batch capable scanner. I have too much to scan to do it manually.

Customer Service

n/a

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