I needed a reliable film scanner at a good price and I have to say the Optic 8100 does the trick. It's not the fastest scanner on the block but I've never hurried my photography work flow. This scanner is free of the confusing bells and whistles of others. That has to be it's appeal. I use it to produce an archive TIFF file of selected frames that I then post in Lightroom. I do not need anything getting in the way of being able to do that. The included software is quite powerful but I have chosen to apply minimal processing at the scan stage and this package allows that. I see complaints regarding the film holder. As with most things in life one needs to understand how it was designed to work and then use it accordingly. I did purchase the two pack of extra film holders and this allows me to pre load a holder while the other is processing and empty one that I have already been through. It's all about work flow and if you're running fast to get through in a hurry, well maybe you should just find something else... this scanner does all I need it to do.

Having returned to film photography, I have been searching for the best way to get my images from negative to digital. The lab scans are usually good but never high enough resolution and expensive. The cheaper sub $100 scanners are too limited and unless you get on that is in focus, they can be junk. DSLR scanning with Negative Lab Pro works but is very labor intensive and if the focus isn't bang on, all the work goes for nothing.
However, this scanner does an excellent job and while some complain about Silverfast software, I found it no more obtuse than most photo editors. The results at 3600 DPI and in TIFF format for color negatives are excellent. Scanning times take several minutes per image but since it is hands free, other tasks to prepare or work on other images can be done.
The carrier for negatives is a bit challenging but I don't see how it can be made much better. It is the nature of the medium that negatives are hard to align. However, this is really no issue at all.
I had read other reviews about Plustek scanners that put me off and since I got this one, I feel that I was misled. This is a good product. I now feel that I can move on to creative photography instead of spending hours or lots of cash just to get the images on my computer.

For a manual image advance 35mm film strip or mounted slide scanner it produces great high quality scans. The Silverfast software can produce a usable scan from under exposed or overexposed as well as faded original images

I have been using a Nikon Coolscan V since 2004, but it recently developed a weird problem that is outside the scope of this review. Since Nikon stopped supporting its film scanners around 2016, I decided to get this unit as a replacement. Based on my first 10 scans, it appears to be doing nicely. Advice for people still using film scanners-consider picking one of these up before the market dries up.

i tried both the epson perfection v600 and this one and definitely the plusrek wins by a small margin for the resolution/ image quality. i just wish this scanned more than 35mm but it’s all i need for now so it’ll do!

My old scanner is a SCSI Interface Photosmart slide scanner from HP. This scanner worked well when new; but is showing its age. The interface required that I keep an old PC in order to use this product. To replace this scanner I have tried several scanners most use a CCD to copy the slide. The others did not produce the results desired (Poor Color and Poor Resolution). Other scanners where extremely expensive over ($1000). This scanner produced excellent results with low cost. The scanning speed is slow but at over 1/4 the cost of a faster scanner it is a great deal.

After 44,000 scans with my old Minolta Scan Duel IV (circa 2004) it was time to move to a new scanner. I first tried Opticfilm 135. I had trouble using that on Mac OS X (native software and/or Vuescan), and the image quality was lesser than the old Minolta. I replaced it with this one (OpticFilm 8100) and I never looked back. Image quality is excellent, much better than 135 or the old Minolta, very sharp, good tonality, and works out of the box on Mac OS X. Very simple to use. Highly recommended.

This works perfectly with vuescan. I didn't have to download anything just connected it to my mac and vuescan recognized it right away.
The scanner itself is definitely an upgrade from my epson perfection v600 when it comes to 35mm film.
Very happy with this little machine.

I got this to scan some 1,000 (selected) slides from before the digital age. (My old Minolta Dimage Elite 5400 scanner went on the blink.) The Plustek scanner is reasonably priced, and produced excellent jpg images from slides taken as far back as the early 1960s. After some initial hiccups in installing the enclosed software (Silverfast 8), there were no glitches of any sort, and it was smooth sailing. Silverfast 8 is easy to use, and is quite powerful (although I didn't do much with its capabilities, since I use Nik Software for post processing). The few times I did use it to control color cast and others did not require a trip to the manual.

I had a little trouble at the beginning and had to install the program from the website vs the disc that was included. Once I figured that out things worked well. There is a learning curve. I appreciate the ability to adjust the images individually.