Brand New Pacific Image PF 3600 Pro3 Film Electronics PrimeFilm Scanner

Description

Pacific Image Electronics might not be a familiar name to many over here in the UK. Their PrimeFilm 3600 Pro we're reviewing here is placed at the top of their range of film scanners. It is also, as far as we can tell identical to the Microtek 3600, other than a different colour exterior.
Main features
3600dpi resolution
36-bits
3.6D Maximum Density
Cold cathode fluorescent lamp
24.3mm x 36.5mm scanning area
Batch Scanning
USB & Firewire interfaces
Dimensions: 238x103x177mm
Weight: 2.2kg
Scanner installation
Despite the low price of the unit, it is built quite well and has the benefit of both USB and Firewire connections. There is no firewire card provided with the scanner, so check whether your computer has the necessary support before you get too excited!
At the back of the scanner, there is a switch to determine if the scanner is using the USB or Firewire connection. Making up for this minor inconvenience, there are two firewire connections present to allow the daisy-chaining of Firewire devices.
Film handling
The method employed by this scanner for scanning film strips is a rarely seen one. Most of the mid to high-end scanners provide holders for a strip of film, but this provides an auto-feeding slot through which you can feed a whole roll of film. This method has the drawback that unless you're very careful the film, it is going to come out of the scanner and land on a dusty surface. Film is fed in the top and comes out the bottom of the scanner and some care has to be exercised feeding the film inside.
Using slides, you can insert one at a time into the front of the scanner, there is no functionality provided for scanning APS films.
TWAIN
At a very brief first glance, the utility provided with this scanner is just an average scanning utility. However when you actually start using it, or trying to use it, you realise this isn't the case. Intuitiveness, stability and ease of use all seem to have been neglected by the designers. There's no clear text labels to most of the buttons, it crashed on several occasions and there is no clear help information at all.
On a more positive note, when you've got used to the quirkiness and often unreliability of this utility it is possible to get some scanning done. There's a reasonably high level of control provided through the
Colour Balance
and
Levels & Curves
settings.
Click on the small image above to load an animated, larger version of the TWAIN software.
Performance
In terms of the figures below, especially for the Firewire times, the PF 3600 PRO appears a fast scanner. What these figures don't show is the time wasted waiting for the scanner to recover from crashes and this really damages any appeal the fast speeds could have offered.
Size (Pixels)
Dpi/bits
File size
Time
Prescan of slide
NA
NA
12sec
800x600
72
1.3Mb
28sec
4032x2688
3600/8-bit
50.3Mb
2min 22sec
4032x2688
3600/12-bit
101.3Mb
5min 7sec
Prescan of slide
NA
NA
9sec
800x600
72
1.3Mb
23sec
4032x2688
3600/8-bit
50.3Mb
1min 8sec
4032x2688
3600/12-bit
101.3Mb
1min 53sec