Reflecta film scanner RPS 3600 Professional

What kind of device is this? It looks like a children's toy, as a kind of futuristic vehicle with 4 wheels and a small cockpit at the front. Is that supposed to be a filmscanner? And additionally, the word Professional is written on it. I was pretty stunned when I held this upbeat device for the first time in my hands. Nevertheless, it is a slide scanner with promising data of performance on the paper.

In fact, the design of this filmscanner is unusual. Only few producers in the whole data processing market dare to provide some life and variety with some colours and stylish designs to the dull and monotone computer desk. In fact, such a device does loosen up the unwanted office atmosphere on the desk at home. But if a real professional puts this device on his working place, it will rather appear as a toy that is out of place.

Irrespective of the question of the design; with the RPS 3600 Professional, one obtains a high-quality filmscanner that according to the specifications is supposed to produce some very good scans. Thus, the inside is essential.

Equipment, accessories and performance data of the scanner

The Reflecta RPS 3600 Professional already indicates its maximum scan resolution of 3600 dpi in the model description. With this high resolution, the RPS 3600 is only curtly below the top-filmscanners that digitalize the originals with 4000 dpi, but far over the standard filmscanners that scan with nearly 3000 dpi. In the model description, there is also indirectly the colour depth of 36 bit mentioned; this means that per each colour canal (red, green, blue) 4096 colour shades are distinguished.

Also the range of density is with 3,6 indirectly mentioned in the model description (is all this coincidence?). With these three basic values (3600 dpi, 36 bit colour depth, range of density 3,6) there are high quality scans to expect and this is the reason why the demand can be set very high.

With a price of a little more than 400 €, the RPS 3600 is located in a price level of, for example, the Minolta Dimage Dual Scan III. For this price, Reflecta provides a filmscanner with a notable equipment: the RPS 3600 can be either connected to the PC by an USB cable as also by a SCSI cable. The private user will prefer the simplicity of a USB connection, the professional user will prefer the high data transfer rate of a SCSI-interface. The software equipment is specially good: with SilverFast (version 6) and Photoshop^® Elements, the filmscanner is delivered with practically the best of the best of the scan software and image processing software.

During the unpacking of the 1,5 kg weighted device with the measurements 200 x 105 x 290 (width, height, depth), one is first surprised about the lack of accessories except some cables and software. This is due to the reason that the RPS 3600 works completely without frames and adapters. The slides are inserted straight into the front part of the scanner, the filmstrips are sidewise fed into the scanner of negatives. Of course, the advantage of this is that on one's desk, there is only the mere device and one can start scanning at any time.

The RPS 3600 Professional does not only differ from other filmscanners by its funny exterior, but also by a small viewing window and a front appliance. Through the window, one can straight contemplate the inserted slide or negative; also during the scan processing, the stepwise scanning of the image can be observed. With the front appliance, one can comfortably fast-forward and rewind an image of a negative strip and accomplish a fine adjustment in tiny steps.

The detailed test report of the Reflecta RPS 3600 is only available in German language. The test report of the successor model Reflecta RPS 7200 is also available in English.

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