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I got mine about a month ago. I graduated from a CanoScan 8800f Flatbed Scanner with slide attachment (a scanner I still use, just not for slides).
If you own a PowerSlide 3650 and you are like me then you probably read the same handful of online reviews -- the only useful ones I found were at Amazon, and I have to say that those user reviews did give me a sense of what it is like to use this thing.
This is not an automagical product. It can and will scan through 100 slides in a row, but after scanning a batch of 100 slides it has become routine for me to browse through the scanned images and then go back to certain slides and re-scan them. Sometimes a scan is off-center or completely black. In those cases the individual slide either needs to be re-scanned or else re-positioned in the scanner and then scanned again.
Jams. Jams happen, and the first time I saw one I thought the machine itself was going to break. The scanner jammed on a slide makes an unpleasant noise, and of the 2000 or slides I have scanned so far I have sacrificed a few -- one slide got jammed and when I pulled it out it looked like it had been crushed inside someone's fist. Another slide got jammed and then shoved into the inside of the scanner. I can see that slide but evidently opening the scanner will void the warranty. So inside the scanner that slide sits until I don't need the scanner any more. I imagine quite a number of slides might accumulate in there.
One upside to the slides that got sacrificed is that, strangely enough, the scanner jammed on them *after* it had already scanned them. So at least the image was not a total loss. If (like me) you are scanning slides that are not yours you might want to issue a warning about the slight possibility of mangled slides to the people whose slides you are scanning.
Jams seem random to me. The 3650 might jam on a particular slide, but if I move that slide to another slot in the carousel it will not jam. Similarly arbitrary jams occur with slides that are basically in perfect condition, while warped or bent slides get scanned without problem. Jams are a mystery to me as they seem to occur, as I said, at random.
Many in the online reviews said the supplied 50-slide magazine is more prone to jams than a 100-slide Braun carousel, but I have found no greater occurance of jams in the 50-slide tray versus the 100-slide carousels. I did take some reviewers' advice, though, and purchased 2 of the Braun 100-slide carousels, and I am glad I did. As described by others, you can load up a carousel while the other one is being processed.
Speaking of differences between the 50-slide tray and the 100-slide tray, I had a minor revelation the other day. When using the 100-slide carousel it appears that the carousel needs to be filled or close to filled to capacity -- as in 95-100 slides, not just 50 or 60. Otherwise there will be unexpected and seemingly random errors. Here is what happened: I put a 100-slide tray with only 50 slides on the 3650. The first slide scanned fine but then I watched as the carousel spun like a carnival ride, skipping a dozen slides at a time, then swinging back to scan the 6th one it passed, then swinging forward 7 or 8 and scanning that slide 17 times. (I think that carnival ride it reminded me of [a ride which swung back and forth at random] was called the Puke Bucket.
)This might seem obvious enough to the more mechanically inclined but it did not occur to me that the carousel sat so loosely in the 3650. When the tray is only half full it gravitates toward its center of weight. I guess I imagined that the scanner clutched the carousel, firmly guiding it one slide at a time.
Lesson learned: when scanning 50 or less slides, use the supplied 50-slide magazine. The 100-slide carousels work best when they are full or nearly full.
That's all for now, I hope some folks find this board. I get the feeling the PowerSlide 3650 is not a very commonly used product.
Tomorrow I will add some images to this discussion, including straight-from-the-scanner 90mb TIF files, so you can see what this scanner did with some 50+ year-old Kodachrome slides. If anyone who has used the "competitor" Nikon slide scanners and is willing to share one or two raw scans from those devices then I think some folks would find that very useful. In deciding between the Nikon and the PowerSlide I could not seem to find any one-to-one comparisons of what a Nikon scanned slide looks like versus a Pacific Image PowerSlide scan.
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