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Rating: 
Summary: Good quality, very high price
Review: Despite dramatic improvements in digital photography, film is still preferred by many photographers. For them, the Polaroid SprintScan 4000 (...) combines the highest resolution in a desktop film scanner with fast performance, excellent image quality, and a remarkably easy-to-use interface. The SprintScan is a 36-bit film scanner with an optical resolution of 4,000 by 4,000 ppi and dynamic range of 3.4. By comparison, the top resolution of the Nikon SuperCoolScan (...) is 2,700 by 2,700 ppi, with a dynamic range of 3.2. Matte-black and compact, the SprintScan comes with a SCSI-2 interface, a cable, a controller board, and AdvanSys's Super SCSI setup utilities. Also included are two carriers for 35-mm strips and slides; an optional APS film adapter is available. The unit also ships with a quick-start guide and a single page with instructions for installing under Windows NT. The main documentation is a 74-page PDF file. Though useful for novices, the documentation lacks detailed explanations and scan tips for pros. Setup and installation are relatively simple, so long as you follow the recommended sequence of events. For instance, you must insert the film carrier after (not before) the driver loads, or the computer "loses" the SCSI connection. Although the Mac version can be installed as a Photoshop plug-in, the PC version is not Twain-compliant, so you can't scan directly into any application. Also, no provisions are supplied for creating scripts, saving images in 12-bit color, or preserving customized settings as default values. Scanning with the SprintScan is fast and easy. The PolaColor Insight interface is intuitive and offers an impressive variety of manual and automatic tools. The SprintScan took only 20.4 seconds to scan a 12.8MB slide. But this blazing speed is somewhat tempered by a 49.5-second auto-calibration routine and by the time needed to name and save a file and then open it in an application. Image quality is excellent and holds up even when magnified. Colors are accurate and tonality is very good. Though the Polaroid Sprint Scan 4000 has occasional limitations, its image quality is superb. The scanner leapfrogs over the competition in price, ease of use, and most important, high-resolution scans.
Rating:
Summary: Good quality, very high price
Review: Despite dramatic improvements in digital photography, film is still preferred by many photographers. For them, the Polaroid SprintScan 4000 (...) combines the highest resolution in a desktop film scanner with fast performance, excellent image quality, and a remarkably easy-to-use interface. The SprintScan is a 36-bit film scanner with an optical resolution of 4,000 by 4,000 ppi and dynamic range of 3.4. By comparison, the top resolution of the Nikon SuperCoolScan (...) is 2,700 by 2,700 ppi, with a dynamic range of 3.2. Matte-black and compact, the SprintScan comes with a SCSI-2 interface, a cable, a controller board, and AdvanSys's Super SCSI setup utilities. Also included are two carriers for 35-mm strips and slides; an optional APS film adapter is available. The unit also ships with a quick-start guide and a single page with instructions for installing under Windows NT. The main documentation is a 74-page PDF file. Though useful for novices, the documentation lacks detailed explanations and scan tips for pros. Setup and installation are relatively simple, so long as you follow the recommended sequence of events. For instance, you must insert the film carrier after (not before) the driver loads, or the computer "loses" the SCSI connection. Although the Mac version can be installed as a Photoshop plug-in, the PC version is not Twain-compliant, so you can't scan directly into any application. Also, no provisions are supplied for creating scripts, saving images in 12-bit color, or preserving customized settings as default values. Scanning with the SprintScan is fast and easy. The PolaColor Insight interface is intuitive and offers an impressive variety of manual and automatic tools. The SprintScan took only 20.4 seconds to scan a 12.8MB slide. But this blazing speed is somewhat tempered by a 49.5-second auto-calibration routine and by the time needed to name and save a file and then open it in an application. Image quality is excellent and holds up even when magnified. Colors are accurate and tonality is very good. Though the Polaroid Sprint Scan 4000 has occasional limitations, its image quality is superb. The scanner leapfrogs over the competition in price, ease of use, and most important, high-resolution scans.
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