Home :: Cameras :: Printers & Scanners :: Slide & Photo Scanners  

Flatbed Scanners
Photo Printers
Slide & Photo Scanners

Tamarack Technologies 2400 FS Film Scanner

Tamarack Technologies 2400 FS Film Scanner

List Price: $199.99
Your Price:
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 >>

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: If you care for quality think twice before you buy this
Review:
In one sentence, in case you care just little bit for quality and you want something more than only satisfactory pictures for your web-site keep out of Tamarack 2400FS.

Plusses:
Price.
If you see this you already know it.

USB port.
Setup is breeze.

Minuses:
Terrible image quality.
IMHO it is due to 3 reasons. First reason is Tamarack 2400 FS poor dynamic range that is not capable to keep even with color negative! So the image is crisp however lacks details in dark and highlights. Second reason is very old drivers. Believe it or not now in the end of 2000 drivers are dated 1998! Well, it does not matter how old are they. What matter is that you do not have chance to tweak the levels to somehow compensate for poor dynamic range. BTW available drivers are only for Win95 and Win98 despite advertised NT drivers. Third reason of poor image quality is insufficient signal to noise ratio that results in white spots in the sky (color negatives) or speckles in dark (slides). Also do not get attracted by 4800 and 9600 dpi interpolated resolutions. These are absolutely useless.

Bundled software.
You'll receive Documan, Textbridge, DocuPal 1.0 and Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2.0 with Tamarack 2400 FS. Documan is nothing more than interface to your driver. Strangely enough splash screen say it is Documan 2.07 but info screen says it is version 2.06. So what is it? Ability of Documan to adjust settings for scanning is very limited. Textbridge is optical character recognition (OCR) software a little bit strange companion for slide / film scanner. Yes, you read it right, Tamarack bundles Adobe PhotoDeluxe version 2.0 when other companies bundle version 4.0.

Technical support.
Technical support? What technical support? Well, it is not for this forum. I would definitively exceed 1,000-word limit.

So when I was returning the scanner to Amazon.com I had to remind myself: "For pee-nuts you can buy only apes."

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Revised Review
Review: After having used this product now for three days, I wish to amend my previous review. This product is a piece of junk. I am returning it. It seemed marginally OK at first, but more extended use has proven it to be absolutely frustrating and inadequate for any purpose. I am rating it one star only because there is no provision for a lower rating.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Revised Review
Review: After having used this product now for three days, I wish to amend my previous review. This product is a piece of junk. I am returning it. It seemed marginally OK at first, but more extended use has proven it to be absolutely frustrating and inadequate for any purpose. I am rating it one star only because there is no provision for a lower rating.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Tamarack Technologies 2400 FS Film Scanner
Review: Great scanner but no drivers available for Windows XP operating system.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Does the trick
Review: I bought mine from Amazon for about three weeks ago for justunder $200. Considering that ProLab here in Seattle charges $3 perpicture scanned, it seemed like a good deal in the long run.

Myexperience with it so far: the scanner does a great job with photostaken in bright, even sunlight but has a tougher time withhigh-contrast pics -- especially those with big patches of black. Trueblack on a color slide often comes out filled with rainbow splotcheson the scan. (I haven't scanned any color negatives yet.)

On theupside, the scanner comes with Adobe PhotoDeluxe, which is a choppedversion of Photoshop. It's pretty good for fixing defects like theabove. A guy I talked to at Prolab said even the high-end scanner theyuse doesn't render slides/negs perfectly, and that you still need somesort of photo software. So the Tamarack's shortcomings may be commonto all analog-to-digital transfers. PROS:

* Scanner pays for itselfonce you get beyond 60 photos

* Small footprint; about the size of abrick

* Good choice for pics that will end up on the Web

* UsefulAdobe software

CONS:

* Doesn't handle true blacks well

*Documentation is atrocious, very badly translated from Chinese END

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Searching for HELP
Review: I bought the 2400 FS Film Scaner( Tamarack) two months ago, since very begining it hasn't work properly. I use DocuMan 2.07 and I'm searching for a version 3.0. I have scenned 300 slides with quite good result but negatives are unacceptable! Maybe version 3.0 will help? Where can I find it? I would be pleased with any help. Is the problem of dark edges tipical ?

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Searching for HELP
Review: I bought the 2400 FS Film Scaner( Tamarack) two months ago, since very begining it hasn't work properly. I use DocuMan 2.07 and I'm searching for a version 3.0. I have scenned 300 slides with quite good result but negatives are unacceptable! Maybe version 3.0 will help? Where can I find it? I would be pleased with any help. Is the problem of dark edges tipical ?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent value
Review: I bought the scanner several months ago and have used it to scan my family's negatives and slides for 'posterity'. Generally, it does a very good job. It scans quickly and automatically, four slides or six negs in a batch. Color renditions seem fine, although I haven't tested them formally. Compared to the desktop scanners that have a slide or negative option, this is far superior. Installation is simple if you have USB. It will also work off a parallel port, but I haven't tried it yet.

What would a review be without a few criticisms. First, Tamarack provides no jpg manipulation software. It will convert into and out of jpg, but you cant even rotate the image if its not bmp. You definately need other image manipulation software to get the most out of this scanner. If quality imaging software is necessary, buy something else. Second, it will only scan 35mm. We have some other format negatives and can't get them scanned. Third, despite that it is USB, I have had some trouble getting it to work properly if I turn it on after booting. No problems if the unit is turned on while booting. It seems a little loud and clackety. Don't try to do much else while scanning unless you have a very fast machine (maybe).

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Tamarack Technologies 2400 FS Film Scanner
Review: I bought this item a while ago and had a lot of trouble getting it to work and getting it to hook up to my computer. After calling their support service and getting no where I finally discovered that the problem was that they sent the wrong type of cable connector for the usb port that i had requested. After calling them back to tell them, four times, I still never got the cable so I had to hook it up to the parallel port and then it worked really great. Also came with a broken slide frame that thye never replaced for me either. But outside of really poor support service this is a good item for the value.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Tamarack Technologies 2400 FS Film Scanner
Review: I bought this item a while ago and had a lot of trouble getting it to work and getting it to hook up to my computer. After calling their support service and getting no where I finally discovered that the problem was that they sent the wrong type of cable connector for the usb port that i had requested. After calling them back to tell them, four times, I still never got the cable so I had to hook it up to the parallel port and then it worked really great. Also came with a broken slide frame that thye never replaced for me either. But outside of really poor support service this is a good item for the value.


<< 1 2 3 4 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates