Perfection V800 Photo Scanner

Very easy to setup and use with an iMac. My primary use is for scanning 35mm and 120 film negatives; setup includes all necessary film holders to handle 35mm negatives, 35mm slides, 120 roll film negatives, and 4x5 sheet film negatives. My only complaint is that the included Silverfast software wouldn't install, so I opted to purchase the Pro version from the Silverfast website. If you're serious about scanning, I highly recommend the Pro version of the Silverfast scanning softwarethe dust/scratch removal is incredible.

I bought this in 9/17. I've scanned 2,600 Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides, and 1,500 3x5 colored photos, and 800 Kodachrome slide negative strips . I didn't install the photo editing software; there is no pressing need for it. If you read the scanner operating manual you'll do fine. It is an easy read. There are several different size film holders that handle various sizes of film negatives and of course there's one for slides. Before scanning my material I color corrected all of my slides with Corel Paintshop Pro since I've been using it for over 20 years and am comfortable with it. You can scan at various resolutions; I used 4,800 ppi, close to film quality. I was amazed at the color reproduction; the scanner reproduced the colors accurately, right on the money. I am pleased with the ""color restoration"" option the scanner has for very old and degraded photos. It does well for color and for black and white. It won't make it like new, but it's way better than the crummy old photo. I just did a 105 year old picture of my grandmother; the photo was yellowing badly. The color restoration feature made that black and white pop. The control panel is pretty straight forward and you don't have to drill down through menus to find the option you want. You can preview the scan which is a tremendous advantage for many reasons. You can also tailor the editing options for each slide, or photo during the preview phase. NOTE: The instructions are insufficient on how to do global changes; it took me forever to realize my ""global"" changes weren't going global. If color accuracy and resolution detail are your priority then this is the scanner to get. I'm one happy camper saving all my many trips to digital. ONE BAD POINT - When scanning slides the machine crops about 1/8"" to 3/16"" all around the picture; so if there is something very important in that border you'll lose it. For the most part I never noticed it until I did a scan of my dog whose feet were at the bottom of the slide. When it was scanned he lost a good portion of his legs. Scanning slides that are not in their paper holders presents NO cropping problems, so if you must you can always pull the slide out of its paper holder and scan the full picture.

In terms of hardware, the scanner works fast and is capable of auto rotating and cropping which makes going through large stacks of photos less painful. The main problems I encounter are with the software, which may be unique to only my computer. I seem to encounter crashes a lot after updating windows, and I find I actually spend more time restarting the computer (which fixes the problem) rather than actually scanning. More annoying is that it's hard to find a lot of sources for troubleshooting through google. That said, I should reiterate this may be independent to only me.

I'm impressed with the capabilities of this scanner and the SIlverFast software that comes with it. I've scanned in an assortment of prints, negatives, and slides with very good results. I especially like the ability to do batch scans and the digital correction of scratches and other defects in the various media. I know there is a lot more to learn and experiment with, but I'm happy with my purchase.