Pacific Image Electronics PS3650 PowerSlide 3650

"(The PS3650 scanner has been discontinued, but, from the comments I've seen on the replacement PS5000, The operational comments are still pertinent).

After 3 weeks of frustration, the 1st purchase was returned to PI as faulty! The replacement worked beautifully right from the start, and is still going smoothly after nearly 3500+ scans. It is absolutely mandatory to follow the instructions TO THE LETTER (and the supplied manual is not at all clear). I would suggest that any new user contact PI - the help group is helpful and courteous - before even setting the machine up, and ask for EXPLICIT directions for setting it up AND the startup and shutdown proceduers. Probably the most important note of caution being that THE SOFTWARE MUST NOT BE OPENED UNTIL THE MACHINE IS ON & WARMNED UP, AND THE SW CLOSED BEFORE SHUTTING OFF THE SCANNER!! If this simple precaution is followed, you should have no problems.

PI should rewrite the manual to make this VERY CLEAR to all who are primarily photographers and not necessarily computer gurus.

Scan quality is good at highest resolution (ca. 2min./scan, ~3hr. for a tray of 100 slides). Get less than 1% funky/blank scans, easily re-done. Noise is annoying but tolerable. Slide mounts must be flat and in reasonably good condition; cut/round off corners of square-cornered slides to ease feeding. Circular tray must be balanced (full, or part trays balanced with equal # of slides in positions directly opposite to scanned ones).

Tom B."

"I have been running this slide scanner continuously since I got it shortly after Christmas (it is now mid-February). It has actually made it possible to scan a large heritage collection of slides for a local non-profit under an April deadline and with a considerable cost savings. There has been about a dozen jams during that time, out of thousands of slides processed. At first many of the slides did not fully load, so I slightly bent the push bar to better line up with the edge of each slide. The scanner has loaded every slide perfectly since then. Old style square edged slides have some tendency to jam, but the scanner gracefully attempts to clear the jam and then quits with an error message. On one occasion I fished a slide out of the works with tweezers. I found it useful to order two additional cartridges so that I can preload and keep the scanner working more or less continuously. I am estimating around four hours to process fifty slides at 3600dpi. It is good not having to frame each image - the scanner automatically detects the slide orientation and adjusts the scan accordingly. I am using the Cyberview scanning software, reserving Photoshop Elements for image correction after the rush. Photoshop Elements has resurrected some very bad images with "Auto Smart Fix". Scanning causes a big slowdown on the PC but using the PC for other purposes does not affect scan image quality. The PC software processes one image while the hardware is scanning the next, with a resulting speedup in batch mode. Some of the noises that the scanner makes are alarming at first, but become soothing background over time. Right now it is chugging away next to me."

"I have only had the scanner for a couple of days, but so far it has worked as advertised. While I bought the Braun 100S circular magazine, so far I have only used the small tray that comes with the scanner. I'm scanning 35 year old slides, both plastic and cardboard encased, and so far, no jams. I will switch over to the circular tray in the next batch or two.



A couple of things to remember when you get the unit:

1) I'm using the scanner with an IMAC (MAC OS X - 10.5.4) and IPhoto. The manual mentions that you must use "twain" compliant software if you do not choose to use the Adobe Elements bundled with the unit (which is a Windows only version!). IPhoto seems to be ok.



2) Turn on the scanner and let it finish its calibration sequence before starting software. Otherwise, you may get a brief error message about not being able to find correct driver.



2) After loading the small tray and the unit finishes it calibration routine (1 - 2 minutes), check to see if it skipped the first slide. If so, use the arrow on the front of the unit to backup one slide. I also have had the problem crop up when the unit starts to calibrate before scanning. Again, using the back-up arrow works fine.



3) The unit does make a bit of noise while scanning - kind of a low velocity, whirring sound. It doesn't seem to matter.



4) I'm scanning at 3600 dpi, jpeg, quality "best" and it takes approximately 5 minutes per slide. The downloads are running, on average, between 1 and 2.2 mb in size (jpeg).



5) Before purchasing the unit, I called Pacifc Image's tech support line, with a couple of questions, and found them to be very knowledgeable and helpful. They are located in New Mexico, not overseas!



If I encounter any problems, I will update this posting. In the meantime, I would certainly recommend this scanner."

"Like others, I was not looking forward to scanning the 6000 slides that my parents had taken through the years, and the additional 1000 of my own. My Nikon scanner took over a minute for each slide, and I did not want to give up my life to doing this!



The best part of the PowerSlide 3650 is that you load up the tray, and it scans them itself while you go on with your other work. And that is what we all have been looking for!



I compared the results to the same slides scanned with my Nikon Coolscan V and I cannot see a difference. (However, I am not a professional photographer, and I did not look at the photos pixel by pixel. I just needed to archive all these family photos, and to my eye, this scanner does a good job.)



I started with a laptop with Windows Vista. This would produce a few random scans (~5%)with a vertical line. Pacific sent me a replacement scanner. It had the same problem. So I conected it with a Windows XP machine and the problem has not occured at all. Pacific did not seem to be aware of this problem and its cause.



Trays: the tray that comes with the scanner can cause jamming if your slide is not perfectly straight. The circular Braun tray is the best - I never had a jam with it, although if there is a really crooked slide the arm can miss pushing it into the scanner and you get a blank (white) picture. Be sure the tray is fully loaded. If it is unbalanced, the tray will not advance.

Pacific also sells the Universal tray. It is pretty good too, but if the slides are really crooked, it can jam also.



Here is how I worked:

setup: 3600 dpi, 16 bit color depth

I always selected multi-scan to file, so when the batch was complete, they were all in the directory that I had selected. I set the directory, naming and starting number and number format. This also means that I did not use Photoshop, but could invoke Cyberview X directly.



Always start by clicking the New Tray button - there is an internal buffer that only holds 100 pics and will stop when it gets to 100.



When a batch is complete, I review the pictures one at a time with Windows Picture Gallery. This is really convenient and fast. You can make a quick fix, color balance,(as good as Photoshop Elements) re-crop, rotate, etc. and when you move to the next picture, it automatically saves the picture if you have made any modification.



The auto-crop of Cyberview X works pretty well, but occasionally will crop a vertical picture as horizonal and vice versa. These are the only pictures that I have to rescan. (Maybe 1 in 500)



This works best if you have two trays. Keep the tray filled until after you have reviewed the scans. You can easily find any slides needing rescanning. In the meantime the next batch is being scanned with the other tray.



I found the single scan to be a pain. Half the time, the picture gets kicked out as it is calibrating itself. Maybe someone can tell me how to do that.



I would give this 5 stars if it came with the other trays, had a better single scan mode, and

if the support group were up on the problems that I had with the Vista OS. They did send me a new scanner without any fuss.



But I would never have finished all my scanning without this scanner."

"This would have been a very different review a week ago. I did NOT enjoy the experience of setting up the scanner. Now that I have it up and running, it is doing a very good job of scanning slides in blocks of 50. But boy, was it ever frustrating getting here!



The user's manual was among the worst I've ever encountered. It was worse than useless. The software prompts that came up (using a Windows 7 SONY laptop) did not match what the manual said would happen at all. The text was written by someone who does not speak English as a native language, and may not speak ANY language very well. I eventually ignored the manual entirely, and just started treating it intutively like my flatbed scanner. That worked.



Things to watch for: It took me a while to figure out that having ICE dust reduction turned "on" was the default. This produces hideous Kodachrome scans. Remember to turn it off.



At first, I would get a message that the computer "lost communication with the scanner" after scanning only 10-12 slides. Given the frustration I was experiencing with the software, I almost concluded that the unit was defective and almost returned it. It turned out that the laptop was deciding that it was inactive and was turning itself off. That's easily fixed using the Windows control panel, but it took me a long time to figure out that the problem was with the computer, not the scanner.



The unit is quite noisy, in a way that sounds ominous. It constantly seems to be moaning, a sound that makes me think it's poorly lubricated and about to fail. But I've run well over 1500 slides thorugh it now, so I guess that sound must be normal. I won't be running it overnight in the bedroom, though.



The only problems I've experienced with the feed mechanism so far are with slides that have already been cut open once for publication, and then taped back together. In these cases, the scanner has just stopped, without repeatedly trying to feed the slide.



With Nikon evidently out of the business (and with me not being able to afford Nikon prices) this is pretty much the only game in town for scanning large archives."

"I'm converting about 5000 35mm slides from the 60's,70's and 80's (mostly Kodachrome mounts)for non-professional use. I will mostly view the results on a monitor... or perhaps an occasional 5x7 print.



Nearly bought an Epson 700 because it could do 12 slides per setup but decided to get the PowerSlide because it was designed to run 50 or 100 slides automatically. I had considerable doubt because of comments by some buyers that it jammed a lot... along with various other complaints.



There have been fewer problems than I expected and I would immediately buy it again.



Setup was reasonably quick in spite of a lack of clear directions in one of the worst manuals I've ever seen. Basically, one loads 2 CDs, then plugs in the machine before removing the final CD. It installed and worked on both Vista and XP.



Previous reviewers said that the 100-round trays seemed to jam less than the 50-European tray (included), so I ordered 2... unfortunately, the wrong number (order #100, NOT #100S). B&H was very accommodating in making the return.



While waiting, I converted about 400 slides using the European tray, which worked very well. I had several jams but it was always with a cheap or warped slide mount... not the retail Kodak mounts. It appears that one must pay special attention to slide condition during loading. And, if not careful, it is also possible to insert a slide crossways which would cause a jam.



The PowerSlide has crashed twice (simply stopped mid-tray) but was easily restarted.



When set for BestJPG at 1800dpi, conversion takes about 1 minute per slide. I turned off ICE because it seemed to double that time. Dust is visible on 50% of blue-sky slides but I'll live with it. Alternatively, one could clean each slide with a lens brush prior to inserting in the tray... it removes most dust and seems faster than ICE.



While operating, PowerSlide takes over your computer so you can't do other work. I switched it to a backup computer.



Most of my slides are poor quality, needing color enhancement and other tweeking after conversion.



Overall, I'm very pleased."

"Thanks to Paciifc Image Electronics for filling a

product void with this batch mass Slide Scanner PS-3650.Also,Thanks to J&R on this one.

Ron"

"We've recently purchased The Pacific Image 3650, so far has worked great. We've run about 1,000 slides so far and have had NO jams. The scanner produces a great image, new users will need to take some time in determining what settings will work best for your application. The software is not as intuitive as you would expect & a bit quirky, this could be better & takes some time to figure out. We also found that the software will act strangely at times and varies depending what desk top computer or workstation we use (will shut down during a pre-scan, not scan all the slides). Once we close & reboot the software, all returns back to normal. It appears this may be somewhat related to the fact these problems happened when we were testing & changing many of the parameters in the software - but not sure. In summary great scanner, the software could be better."

"The PowerSlide 3650 scanner does a fine job, especially since I have about 10,000 slides to do. I wouldn't live long enough doing 4-6 at a time. I set it up and let it do it's thing. They should include, or at least oficially recommend the Braun 100s Slide Magazine instead of the 50 slide version. The 100s magazine requires a full 100 slide load to prevent imbalanced backup of the magazine. The user manual is virtually useless, especially with regard to the CyberView X software. Fortunately the use of the machine is intuitive, but it would be useful if the various settings and theeir results were discussed in detail."

"Am getting fairly experienced with this scanner now that I have had it for two months....



Here's what I've figured out so far.



1] Universal Slide Tray is the only way to go...only problem is Pacific Image can't keep them in stock...this is the only tray that will not jam...the below mentioned 100 slide carousels jam like crazy...the supplied 50 slide tray jams almost as much, though not quite...as above, the Universal Tray is the only one to use.



2] Annoys the hel out of me when scanning hundreds of slides and the "auto crop" feature misfires and scans way way way more than your slide image..so you have to "crop" that crab out of their in the post scanning process....I'd pay somebody a million dollars if they could solve this issue for me....Help with the Auto Crop...anybody out there have any suggestions...



3] As others have noted...after about 130 scans or so, the scanner just stops....that would be bad enough, but it gets worse...the only way you can get it going again is to de-power it..and have it reboot itself...this takes the better part of five minutes...and then you loose you place in the process...so you've got to do a test preview or two..to be sure you have the next slide in the sequence cued up...to be sure you don't either duplicate the last slide scanned or to make sure you don't skip the next slide to scan...this will also annoy the hel out of you...



As you can tell, like most of us...I have thousands of slides to scan..so #2 and #3 above are real issues....



If anybody out there can assist...please post...



Finally, I am scanning at 720dpi (a compromise of my time)...and I can do 50 slides in 22 minutes..but then I've got to re-crop 10 of them .. for an additional time issue...



Thanks to all that may have suggestions.."