Benq (Formerly Acer) ScanWit 2740S

I purchased this product because I had 2000 slides (from my parents) that I wanted to scan. I went witht the Benq because it was the only one that I could find at BestBuy.com (I am sad to say that I did not research it). The scanner does some amazing scans. I think that the ICE is great. The only complaint I have is that the slide holder is tough to work with. I already broke it!!!!! There has to be a better system than the one they have. Anyway, overall this is a good machine and I do not know how its slide holder compares to other machines. I could return it and go with another company but I like the quality of the scans and the ease of use (once you vanquish the slide holder)

Great scans!

Slide holder!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

flat bed scanner

I am working with them trying to get a new slide holder. I don't know yet.

I got my Scanwit 2740s today after a long wait ,originally it took two weeks to come and the SCSI cable was missing.I must say I had absoloutely no problems installing the card and software ,it all worked straight away,I''m using it on a PC.If you take a few minutes to set it up before you try any scans it works fine,a visit to http://www.photoscientia.co.uk is well worth the time.

Low price,great quality scans,and digital ICE what more do you need ?

Grain aliasing on high speed negative films,but that is a problem with all scanners CCD''s if you payed twice as much for a differant scanner you would still have grain aliasing.

Flat bed scanners

Price £300. After reading quite a lot of reviews online I decided to buy this scanner, mainly to work my way through vast numbers of negs and slides accummulated over the years. Installation of the scanner and Miraphoto went entirely according to plan and was quick. The other programmes are surplus to requrements. Miraphoto really is as bad as we have all been led to believe. There is a monitor gamma adjustment facility, which in reality only adjusts the preview in Miraphoto, but the control is so coarse that it cannot be made to match the final output. Enter Vuescan. This was part of the plan even before purchase. With Ed Hamrick''s software it is possible to fully exploit the abilities of the scanner. Kodachromes and good negatives all come up a treat, even if they are old scratched or faded but beware, if you have grainy old slides (Agfa?) and negs, or anything slightly out of focus all will be revealed. So to summarise. A very good scanner, capable of superb results with third party software. So five stars for the Scanwit 2740S hardware, none for Miraphoto. Before rushing out to buy any scanner be aware that to obtain good results does require a good understanding of photographic and image manipulation principals.

Excellent scan quality. IR channel. Easy instalation. Fairly quiet operation. Solidly built. Value for money.

Miraphoto.

Flatbed scanners.

Not used.

When operated with capable software, this is an absolutely awesome scanner. I''m using it with a G4 Mac and found the MiraPhoto software that ships with the scanner to be totally inferior to Ed Hamrick''s $40 VueScan software (http://www.hamrick.com). Unfortunately, the latest non-beta version of VueScan (v. 7.4.2) doesn''t do a very good job of managing the digital ICE feature of the 2740S (at least in my hands). So for now, I''m using the scanner without ICE. Hopefully, the next version of VueScan will resolve this problem. Personally, I found scans done at maximum settings (2700 DPI, 64 bit RGBI scan saved as 48 bit uncompressed RGB TIFF file) with the proper color, brightness, and saturation adjustments (this is VERY important!) to be more pleasing than 4000 DPI scans made using a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED scanner (perhaps VueScan would improve the performance of the Nikon scanner as well?). A word of caution—you won''t get maximum performance out of this scanner unless you spend some time tweaking the VueScan settings. Once you get the settings that work for you and the specific emulsions you are scanning, you can save individual settings (as many as you like) as uploadable files. In I haven''t made it clear enough yet, if you have bought or are considering buying the Scanwit 2740S, DO NOT judge it based on its performance using the supplied MiraPhoto operating software—you may be bitterly disappointed (perhaps it''s a different story for PC users, but for Mac users, this is absolutely true). The VueScan operating software is worth every penny of its modest $40 cost.

Scan quality (when used with VueScan software) Does a good job of handling color negative film (when used with VueScan) Speed SCSI PCI card included with scanner Price

Supplied software (MiraPhoto is pretty bad, at least for Mac) Current version of VueScan does not manage ICE very well.

Polaroid Sprintscan 35 Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED

Couldn''t answer some basic pre-purchase questions about SCSI issues

First let me say I''m not a practising professional, but I have been how''s that. Tonight I fired up the 2740s with great anticipiation, software compatibility was an issue. Currently I''m downloading MiraPhoto 2.0.

Early days. Very popular on ebay they are getting snapped up very quickly.

Early days. Software is my bet.

Only flat bed

Not Contact