Scanner Reviews

I have had this scanner for over a year and have scanned over 4000 slides. The scanner does an acceptable job on good slides. Dark slides, it does a very poor job or will not scan them at all. My flat bed Canon will scam most of the dark slides that this scanner just gives a black picture. I have also found that this scanner is a real pain to get it turned on. It makes no differance if it is powered up prior to the computer being turned on or after the computer. It takes 15 to 30 times of turning it off then on before it will work. Also if you take a break and come back in 5 to 10 minutes the scanner has stopped responding and requires the power on off many times to get it working again. Film seems to do better than slides but not by very much.

I purchased this scanner (PF3600Pro) because it offered a lot of bang for the buck. With 3600 DPI and a DMAX of 3.6 it seemed like a really great scanner for under $. Well my experience with this scanner is not so great.

My original scanner was sent back to Pacific Image for replacement because it was loud and had trouble scanning film. Plus it was scratching the film. You could see scan lines at 3600 DPI.

The replacement just ate one of my strips of negatives and is also has a problem seeing scan lines at 3600 DPI. So now I wait for my second RMA.

It has the option of feeding strips up to 40 exposure of 35mm film or single slides. Forget the slides. It's a lousy slide scanner. Scans are way too dark.

My suggestion is to get a Nikon Coolscan IV or 4000. They cost about $ and $ respectively.

I've had my PF3600 Pro for a year, and overall I'm very satisfied - enough to be planning an upgrade to a PF3650 Pro.
I scan primarily negatives, but have used it for slides, as well. This is an outstanding little film scanner, as long as it is used correctly. Proper use of the included software takes practice, and outside references on "scanning technique" are necessary due to the lack of included tips. Third party scanning software such as Vuescan or SilverFast can also be a great help (I use Vuescan).
The 3600 does *NOT* have hardware noise/dust/scratch/grain elimination, but attempts all of these with software - with varying results. It is fairly successful at smooting grain and noise, but scratches and dust have to be corrected with the included Photoshop Elements 2 software.
Color reproduction is excellent providing you set the negative type properly; if negative type is left at "generic", you will not be happy (as is the case with all film scanners). The scanning software (Cyberview X) allows fairly versatile tweaking of histograms, color hue/saturation values, brightness and contrast, and has a convenient "filmstrip" view of prescanned images. This is especially nice when scanning a negative roll of 36 photos at once! Cyberview X does not allow saving of raw scan data in addition to "corrected" and/or cropped scans, which is why I switched to Vuescan software.
My complaints: the scanner is finicky at times and refuses to finish its power-up diagnostics, etc. Recycling power once or twice usually clears it up, but it can get annoying. It also could use a good dust "shield" as it has several unsealed openings that can allow dust inside. Speed can vary wildly based on your settings, but I would subjectively call it "slow".
Overall, there's no finer scanner on the market for this price, and few at twice the price. For casual use, it's great. If you don't have the time to correct individual pictures (scratches and dust), I'd recommend its big brother, the PF3650, which has Digital ICE3. The PF3600 is not perfect, but it shows what a small company with a lot of drive can do!

Bought brand new out of the box, locking lever was broken , fell into printer when first set up, unit hopelessly broken,returned to seller for refund.

i actually wanted to buy an epson c43ux but since it was out of stock, i decided to buy the canon bjc 2100sp. the dpi is quite low for a printer these days and also the epson model had much higher dpi. but then since i am was only print color photos once in a full moon and most of my needs would be for text prints, i settled for a canon printer. the installation was a jiffy even with a parallel port and we were up and away in just over a minute. the text prints are nice but the super economy mode prints are too light and need good lighting to read but i suppose, that must be expected when you are printing in super economy mode. well the ink cartridges are cheap and there are no three color cartridges like in some epson and other brand models. there is only one cartridge for the color and one for ink. the color prints are not that good.
One other thing to note is that the printer is not that clunky or cheap looking as the epson c43ux model which i originally intended to buy.it is compact and saves desk space.
Overall a good prnter if your needs include heavy text printing and that occasional photo prints.

Price-4/5

physical durability-4/5

ink costs-4/5

print speed-2/5

design-5/5

We got this printer new for [...] so we did not expect much. This printer is one of the only printers that has the capability to plug into old and new computers with both types of cable interfaces. If you do your own ink refills, this type of cartridge can be refilled in about 30 seconds, with no mess. Other types take 20 minutes or more with a huge messy ordeal. We can count on this printer in emergencies when any of our 4 home computers fail. One word of caution, if you don't use it at least once a week, you will need to clean the cartridge in rubbing alcohol (place a Tablespoon of rubbing alcohol in a small dish and let it soak for 1 minute, dry it with clean paper towel). It will be good as new. We are still on our original cartridges - 7 years of abuse! Don't waste your money on new cartridges.