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Pacific Image PowerSlide Bulk Scanner - Jamming Issues?


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Hi there... I have roughly 8,000 slides I am wanting to scan. I am looking for a high quality bulk scanning solution. The Plustek 8200ai looks great but seems to require me to manually advance the slide holder, which will take me years to get through. I'm not particularly keen on a flatbed option either, I would prefer a dedicated film scanner.

 

The Pacific Image PowerSlide seems to be the only bulk film scanner at the consumer end of the market.... it will do 50 at a time so seems ideal, and I'm willing to spend the extra...if it works. But I've read a lot about it jamming. Some seem to say it is a minor problem, for others it is huge. The issue seems to be that the armature that pushes the slide in is quite thin, while the slots in the carrier are relatively wide, hence the arm may not connect properly with the slide, resulting in either it only going in part way, or jamming (there seem to be solutions involving bobby pins).

 

My hypothesis is that this is primarily a problem for thinner carboard mounts. My slides are almost entirely (thicker) plastic, so I'm hoping this issue will affect me less (or not at all).

 

I'm wondering if anyone can please give me any insight into use of this scanner, and whether my hypothesis is correct. In particular, if anyone has used this unit to bulk scan a large quantity of plastic mounted slides, I would love to hear of your experience. Also if anyone can talk to the bobby pin (or other) solution, that would be helpful... though am hoping that this won't be necessary if my plastic slide theory is right

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Any kind of 'automatic' advance when you do slides with a scanner is 'delicate', shall we say.

 

This sort of scanning almost always works best if it is done from a separate dedicated computer unless you are devoting your full, human, time to the process.

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All I can add is that you're right to dismiss the Plustek shoebox. It does indeed require manual advancement of slides. I owned one for all of 24 hours and was so unimpressed with it that I returned it for a refund.

 

The choice of bulk-loading scanners (new) is limited to that Pacific Image Primefilm as far as I can see. But surely a 'pusher' arm that's too thin can't be that hard to modify? Glue and a bit of fabric or card wrapped around it would possibly thicken it up sufficiently.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Years ago, I got a Nikon LS-1000, at least sometime after they were discontinued,

along with (separately) the autoloader for it. As well as I remember, the scanner

worked fine, though was slow, but the autoloader jammed about every slide.

 

It was more work to unjam than to manually feed the slides.

 

Besides that SCSI was already harder to find.

 

I also have a neat little portable slide viewer, with back projection and

auto feed, that jams often, though not quite every slide. I got that one

for $1, so I wasn't so sad about it not working.

 

But slide projectors, mostly, don't have a big jam problem.

-- glen

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