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Rating  - Good but not great
Through no fault of the SF-210, some slides (mostly thinner cardboard type)will catch on each other's film window as they slide past each other. It worked better on the plastic sleeve slides. I seldom had a group of 50 slides that went entirely through without a jam and I did about 2000 scans. I believe the SF-210 could have been designed to prevent the slides from catching on each other but it would be a more expensive piece of equipment if that were the case. The software requires you to restart it if a jam occurs, (that was frustrating). There are definitely improvements needed on the software. Having said all this, I don't think there is a better product on the market for the average home user, and overall I'm pleased with the scan quality of the slides. The experience I had with this product was good, but not great.
Rating  - Not Up to Expected Nikon Quality
The Nikon SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder could be a great product if the engineers would address a few possible design flaws. First is the spring pressure of the pressure plate which appears to generate excessive surface tension with the adjacent slide and possibly compresses the slides below the minimum thickness tolerance of the feeder ram. This can cause dual slide feeds and resultant jams. Second is a ridge on the slide track that tends to grab a feeding slide, also causing jams. The spring tension can be changed by adding a paper clip (ideally one should use a strain gauge to measure the actual pressures and replace the spring with one of less tension). The ridge can be camfered or radiused to eliminate the grab. After doing the above, it has worked fine without a jam in over a 1000 slides. That said, one should not have to pay $400+ for a Nikon product that provides sub optimum performance without user modifications. I am trying to contact Nikon to see if they too believe the above to be a problem and if they will provide a retrofit kit with better components. When it works, it works great and the ICE software does a remarkable job.
Rating  - don't be scared by horror stories
Having read about all sorts of alterations (from switching springs to shaving off bits of plastic) that are required to get the SF-210 to function properly, I was expecting only headaches from it. Happily though, I've been through more than 1200 slides of the family archive so far (about 3600 to go) while it is true that the slide feeder does occasionally jam, I have found that it is very much a function of the age of the slides. Slides less than 20-25 years old scan without a problem. I'm often able do 50 or so (about the max which fits in the feeder tray) without a single jam. On older slides (dating to the 50s and 60s), I do have some jamming problems but they are still the exception rather than the rule. Bottom line---if you are tackling the job of archiving all the old family photos, this is a must have and it works much better than many of the reviews would lead you to believe.
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Customer Reviews for Nikon,SF-210,018208092406,0018208092406,B0001AVVRA, |
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Electronics : Nikon SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder Customer Reviews
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