Nikon SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder Reviews

• Works, mostly

  
  By A2LBCULYQQIVVS on 2005-02-02
  Having read the horror stories about the previous slide feeder (SF-200), it was with some trepidation that I purchased this for the LS5000ED. I have thousands of slides to scan, and feeding them one at a time doesn't seem like an option.
  
  I was pleased to find that the first batch of Kodak cardboard mounts went through without a hitch. These were some Kodachromes from the early 70s, normally exposed. The scanner took the stack of 40 without a problem and completed the scans. However, my good luck didn't really continue. About every third stack manages to jam, normally just after I watch the first 3 slides go through without a hitch and I leave for my real job.
  
  This slide feeder is just plain poorly designed. The feed path is designed such that each slide must pass under the stack, giving the possibility of catching the edges of the window in the mount above. Additionally, for some reason, the slide gate adjustment, which adjusts for the thickness of the mount, wants to move a bit on it's own. Failure to re-adjust after stack has caused a couple of jams, where the gate moved off of vertical and closed the opening too far. These problems all occurred with rather uniform stacks of slide in good to excellent condition.
  
  I've had no problems with Gepe plastic mounts for slides I've mounted myself, but that is normally only a small fraction of slides that people need to scan.
  
  One solution to the jamming seems to be to use a shim to put the feed follower pressure on the outside of the slide stack. This fans the stack a bit on the inside, which has allowed a balky stack to feed okay. Be careful how you engineer this, however, as if the shim gets caught in the feed mechanism you'll have another set of problems getting the feeder back to normal.
  
  An additional failure I have had once was for the autofocus to go totally wrong. It managed to scan an entire stack of slides badly mis-focused. I put the single slide adapter in and the slides focused and scanned fine. I put the feeder back, only to find the problem persisted. I was about to pack it off to Nikon, when I power cycled the whole thing and found that correct operation had been restored.
  
  The error handling on the batch scanning is broken, with the software thinking that scans have been completed which haven't. This is just a nuisance, resulting in the wrong file number part of the saved files if you don't catch it when you restart the scan. However, my software does detect that the slide didn't feed, and just shuts down, requiring exiting and restarting the scanner software to resume.
  
  And then there is the general issue of software stability. On Windows 2000 with the SP4+ stuff, I cannot use USB 2.0 (scanner software looses communications with the scanner, and restarting the software leads to a blue screen of death). I also have to restart the software after each roll of film (approximately) or the application crashes. I'm going to try XP one of these days and see if it's any better. Hard to say if it's Nikon or MS that is screwing this up. Probably a joint effort.
  
  Update: now running on a fast machine with XP Pro SP2, USB2.0 - after solving the XP ROC-GEM problem, I can report that the software is reasonably stable, typically going several rolls or sets of slides without crashing. There are no system crashes under XP, just application faults. Slide scans take around a minute to 90 seconds each in the stack feeded.
  
  One drawback of the slide feeder over the film strip batch scanner is that there is no way to do different scan settings for the slides in the stack. With film strips you can tweak the settings for each frame, but there is no preview capability in the batch scan from the slide feeder. This is an oversight that they could correct in the software. However, the feeder reverses the slide order, so you would have to restack the slides between the preview pass and the full scan pass, or the software would have to be smarter than Nikon.
  
  So I just use a default of ICE on and DEE of 30 and rescan manually any very difficult shots. With the 16-bit channel depth (actually only 14 unless you do multisampling - correction, the 5000 does 16-bit scanning with or without multisampling, the V is 14-bit) most exposure and shadow/highlight problems can be compensated in Photoshop afterwards.
  
  All in all, I give Nikon a C for this effort - they could do some software improvements to raise the grade to a B- with a preview option, and possibly get a real solid B if they modified the pressure plate (needs to be adjustable where the pressure is placed). But the horizontal stack design will always have jamming problems. Why they couldn't use a tray feed with an open acceptance path like working slide projectors is beyond me.
  
  

• Necessary but poorly designed.

  
  By AWYDQUQY3NWYU on 2004-10-25
  This is a great item that will enable you to batch scan 50 slides - something that's necessary for my business. The problem is that I'm scared to leave it unattended. It simply WILL jam. I've had a few jams so far: a couple actually causing the slide to get stuck in the unit requiring manual removal and running a separate little software app to get the unit back to normal. Once it wouldn't get back to norm and I had to send it back to Nikon. They were great but it's a nuisance... will it happen again?
  
  The other problem I have is that when it jams, it keeps trying to scan so that your hard drive fills up with big blank white TIFFS which is just silly, why doesn't the software look out for this and pause the process? If it finds 5 or more files with no colour info just stop!!!
  
  FYI all of the slides I have put through are in very good shape, all the same size and with no bits of tape etc. on them. Imagine how it would jam with slides in bad shape!!
  
  In short, the Nikon Coolscan series is a great product. Unbelievable quality at that price. And the SF-210 is a great workflow addition. But... it WILL jam and I think Nikon could go all the way to 100% and sort that out in the design.
  
  

• Feed problem solution

  
  By A2DGNM4AXCVTG on 2006-02-03
  I have been scanning about 3000 family slides over the past year with a Super Coolscan 5000 ED and an SF-210. For the first 2000 slides I often had trouble with slides jamming during a feed especially if I had more than about 15 slides in the feeder. I decided that the root problem was that the feedspring pressure increased with the number of slides stacked in the feeder and that at a certain point this excessive pressure was the principal reason for a misfeed/jam. So...the solution was to pull the feed pusher way back to a dis-engage position, take the entire scanner and tilt it about 12 degrees off horizontal, and use a C-size battery and gravity to roll it down against the slides to provide a constant feed pressure. This has made a huge difference! I wish I knew about this when I first got this feeder. Let me know if this works for you.
  
  
  
  

• works for me :-)

  
  By AGMMJAQL6CV on 2006-01-17
  When I bought the SF-210, I was fully prepared to hate it. The only thing I would hate more was to sit there and feed the scanner slide after slide after slide. (I had a big project for which I had to scan many slides.)
  
  So I DID buy the SF-210 in spite of all the negative reviews because it is the only slide feeder for the coolscan. I actually read the manual and took some time adjusting the "feeder adjustment plate." I found that as long as I only scanned cardboard slides in good shape, it worked well. I also went ahead and built up the upper edge with some tape like another reviewer recommended (=where the slides to be scanned are resting). The occasional plastic slide I fed manually. Once I had this "after-market improvement" done, it went great.
  
  The manual warns not to use slides with labels on them - all my slides are labeled. It still worked, although I did make sure that no sticky corners were showing. Also, I used the settings one reviewer suggested and tweaked all batch scans to a DEE of 25, ICE on, and Unsharp Mask off.
  
  Maybe I was just lucky, but the project is done and the SF-210 worked well. I admit that the whole thing feels wobbly and the magazine cover is ridiculously flimsy. The reason why I think it is worth only 3 stars is this: I paid $400 for a flimsy tool, which could have been better designed. In this price range I should not have to build up the upper edge with tape (thereby preventing a second slide getting dragged into the feeder).
  
  

• Not as bad as everyone makes it out as.

  
  By A26SSI28K3GJ1F on 2006-03-13
  Before buying this, I was worried that I would be wasting my money. I had about 4,000 slides to scan, and I needed it to work. My slides were the paper-like slides, not the plastic slides. I had read on another site about putting some kind of piece at the end of the slides to get the feeder to work right. I used a piece of emery board-2 in by 3/4 in and less than 1 mm thick. I put my slides in the feeder then put the emery board behind the last side, placing it at the edge of the slide that was closest to me. This served to place more pressure on the area of the slides that was closest to me and helped the slides feed in better. So for what it's worth, I have scanned all of my slides using this slide feeder and about 10-20 of the slides got stuck. It was well worth the purchase for the amount of slides I had.
  
  
• Deficient, but you still have to have it
  By A1W58O5TOAVHW0 on 2006-12-11
  I agree with many of the reviews here - this thing is poorly engineered and way overpriced. Having said that, I couldn't live without it. If you're scanning slides with the Coolscan 5000, it's completely impractical to think you're going to scan a large amount of slides one by one. This feeder saves you hours of time, but it is definitely frustrating. I've been using it for years now and over 10,000 slides, so here's my tips on avoiding jams:
  
  - With warped slides, good luck. They're going to jam. Try to gently bend and straighten them as best you can without damaging the slide. Be careful, you can separate the frame if you're too aggressive.
  - I've found they tend to jam less with the pressure on the spring loaded backer a little shifted to the left. Basically take something small (like a AAA battery) and but it between the backer and the slides on the left side. This puts more pressure on the left side of the slides and has the effect of slightly fanning out the right side of the slides.
  - Definitely be careful with this one - I take no responsibility for irreparable damage! On the mechanism that pushes the slide in, it is angled with the sharp edge catching the outside of the slide it is pushing. The problem is that that edge often catches the frame on the next slide where the positive meets the frame. I took an exacto knife and VERY CAREFULLY AND SLIGHTLY shaved this edge down so it was ever so slightly rounded. This helps it push off the next slide instead of catching on it. If you dull the edge too much, it will slip on the slide it SHOULD be pushing in, so don't do this until you are pushed to the brink of maniacal frustration and ready to throw the thing away (which is pretty much where I was).
  - Fine tune the width adjuster. You want it JUST wide enough to allow the slide through, but not so wide the slide wobbles and leans and catches the next slide.
  
  Over the years I've thought of at least ten ways Nikon could have made MINOR changes to this thing to keep it from jamming - it's really a disappointing piece of equipment from an engineering standpoint.
  
  There is an update to the software the resolved SOME of the issues mentioned in the reviews, but I still crash it occasionally. I haven't seen an update to the software in years, and that's a little disappointing, because heaven knows it needs it. As far as choices on output formats, it's more than adequate for me - (I usually scan to 16-bit Tiff's and then reprocess down to jpgs with automated procedures in Photoshop). The scanner itself is great - I left a separate review on that with some general (nothing profound) tips.
  
  
• NIKON SF-210 = USELESS JUNK
  By A2NAFFWDFARW5Z on 2005-06-26
  If you are still reading these reviews and have not figured it out yet...........this auto feeder is JUNK.
  
  If you have some fantasy about loading a stack of slides, hitting a button and walking away expecting to come back an hour later and reload the machine...........you are in for a RUDE awakening.
  
  Before you buy this, ask yourself several questions:
  1. Do you like rebooting your computer(even if it is a dedicated scanning computer with Win 2000 & Nikon's software and nothing else)?
  2. Do you have the time to clear jams every third slide?
  3. Do you have the time to reset your image number in the software after every jam/computer reboot/scanner reboot sequence?
  4. Do you have time to go through your scanned image files to find the images of a white screen, because Nikon was too cheap to put a switch in the scanner to tell the scanner there is no slide in the scanning position(thus scanning a slide that is not there)?
  
  The Coolscan 5000ED is not much better. Hope you like you slides with a blue tint added to every image!
  
  12 years and $15,000 invested in Nikon stuff.
  I am officially done with Nikon.
  
  
  
  
  
• Not perfect, but sure beats scanning manually
  By A168XF1BGBU30O on 2005-11-20
  I've scanned about 500 slides. The slide feeder manual states cardboard Kodachrome, Ektachrome and Pakon slide mounts are not supported... Great, so eliminate a good chunk of the USA market :-)
  
  None the less, I have been scanning a combination of Kodachrome, Ektachrome and Pakon mounts and my experience so far is that the degree of warpage in the slide mount from one slide to the next seems to be the biggest cause of jams for me. If I am scanning slides that were stored in a Kodak slide carousel, I see a slight difference in the warpage of the Kodachrome and Ektachrome cardboard slide mounts, and mixing the two types seems to frequently trigger jams when transitioning Ektachrome to Kodachrome. Separating the two types and also looking at the resulting "stack of slides" for noticable warpage differences and removing the more-warped slides seems to greatly reduce the jam rate.
  
  I see similar results to the above when scanning slides that were stored in NON-archival plastic notebook-page slide holders (i.e, 20 slides / page.) However, the slides I've stored in archival plastic notebook pages appear to be flatter than from the carousel or from the non-archival pages, and generally have scanned okay even when mixing Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides. I saw two jams total when scanning about 7 or 8 groups of 20 slides each from the archival storage pages.
  
  In addition, I've also scanned about 70 Pakon mount slides stored in archival plastic notebook pages. All of these have been very-very flat and scanned without a jam. (I hope this holds true for the rest of the Pakon mounts I have.)
  
  I have not seen the blank slides following jams as described in some of the other reviews. I did upgrade from Nikon Scan 3.x to 4.0.2 before using the scanner and I suspect 4.0.2 may not have the blank slide problem. I do see the other problem mentioned where the scanner stops and loses/skips one index number following a jam.
  
  I am using the slide feeder with a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED. It took me a while to find out online if the the feeder worked for the 4000 ED (not just the 5000), but it is supported and is called out as such in the slide feeder manual.
  
  
• Shame on Me
  By A3SW3K75J2S6WC on 2006-03-28
  Why did I buy this thing? With all of the negative reviews, I can't believe I went ahead with it. The physcial design problems have been pretty well thrashed out. It jams - - a lot! And the cover will break off eventually.
  
  But there are other problems with the unit. Why should we have to go through a stack of slides and re-orient them all in the landscape position. I don't take pictures that way, so that means wading through the stack and getting them in the right order. Then, to add insult to injury, the feeder returns them to you in reverse order!
  
  I don't know, it seems to me that for $450, you ought to be able to stick a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the thing without a jam (pun definitely intended).
  
  The software that comes with the Coolscan 5000 ED is another piece of work, but I'll save that for another diatribe.
  
  Shame on me for buying this thing.
  
  
• Jamming issue solved ... maybe
  By AIS3G2G7W8XYA on 2005-10-30
  I've read of the jamming issue on several forums and had the same issue. I may - stressing the may - have found a workaround for it. Please note that I take no responsibility for anything that may happen from here on out ...
  
  After struggling with this issue for a few days (I have 10,000 slides to scan), I sat and stared at it ... and, of course, it didn't jam at all. I left it alone and it did, so I took a close look at how it had jammed. What I found was that it had grabbed the slide to be scanned and started moving it and then hooked the inner edge (next to the film) of the next slide as it moved the first slide. At first I thought it was an inner edge to inner edge hook, but looking at the slide when I removed it I noticed two marks/dents on the slide. That's when I realized it was the moving shuttle (the white piece that slides the, well, slides) that was catching on the next slide. It was thicker than my slides are.
  
  The solution was to build a small buffer to push the to-be-scanned slide out a little from the back plate - so the shuttle doesn't stick out further. I used eight layers of Scotch tape, trimmed neatly, and placed at the very top and bottom of the backing plate. It's gone more than 20 slides without catching, so maybe this is it.
  
  Your mileage may vary, but thought I'd share.
  
  
• Nikon SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder, Shame on Nikon
  By A36MUR4YT88S7D on 2006-09-17
  I got charged the restocking fee after Amazon's false adverstisement(Nikon Cools Scan V ED + Nikon SF-210 in a bundle, although V EDdoes not support the feeder). But after filing a claim at Amazon, I got all my money back. So no bad feelings towards Amazon. I kept the slide feeder and ordered a Nikon cool scan 5000 ED, because manual slide by slide scanning is not really an option...
  Now about $1500 later I find out that all the bad reviews about the SF-210 were no exaggeration. This thing is a complete failure! With regular Hama DSR frames I get an error message about every 5 slides. Nikon should be deeply ashamed to throw such a piece of poorly engineered equipment on the market.
  
  
• I'm stumped - it works!
  By A1XSHOTE42OMZL on 2005-06-29
  Wow! I read all the reviews, was expecting to be disappointed, and then a friend bought the 5000 ED and scanner feeder and loaned them to me for a couple of months. I started with ten slides at a time... and it worked. I slowly worked my way up to 40, and after 600 slides, it has jammed once. The most annoying thing is that I have to count the slides before I put them in so that the feeder knows how many slides to scan. Counting is a little beneath me, I guess, but it's a compromise I can handle. I have had to reboot twice on an XP machine with multiple apps and 4 UBS ports running simultaneously, but compared with one slide at a time (a la the scsi slide scanner I had 5 years ago) this is pure luxury. If the Nikon guys are reading, the machine does work a little like a Rube-Goldberg contraption, and I find myself checking on it more often than I might, but it really does work.
  
  
• Great - when it doesn't jam
  By AE228WNCNLA5T on 2005-03-12
  The feeder is a necessary evil for scanning thousands of slides. The previous two reviewers have clearly outlined the jamming problem so I won't reiterate here other than to add to the plea for Nikon to improve the feeder. I am mostly scanning cardboard Kodachrome slides in excellent condition. Of the 800+ slides scanned to date I average about 5% jams, particularly when running a large batch. I think there is a problem with the pressure plate not being quite vertical causing a misfeed occasionally. I've given up trying to scan more than 25 at a time. The associated software, Nikon Scan, for the feeder/scanner also could use some tweeking. A jammed slide aborts the program and it also adds an extra slide number so when you restart you need to reset the suffix number to keep a continuous series. The Coolscan 5000 ED scanner itself is excellent.
  
  
• It jams, but still worth having
  By A1ZY7GQU3148IH on 2006-11-08
  I'm working my way through scanning several thousand slides dating from the 1930's to the 1990's. Manually feeding every one just isn't an option. I bought the slide feeder and the reviews are correct: Nikon really should have produced a better product than this. It's not very well designed and has a "cheap plastic" feel.
  
  That said, it's still worth having. Slides that are nice and flat and in good condition generally will feed through without problem. So one strategy is to sort out the good ones, start the scanner going, and go take a walk. If the slides were all in good condition, then usually the entire stack will go through successfully. This is true even for ancient slides from the 1950's!
  
  Warped slides... even microscopically warped slides... well, lots of them will jam. One philosophy is to just let the thing jam. Take a short walk instead of a long walk and just accept that when you come back you'll find it jammed. With practice, recovering from a jam isn't that big a deal.
  
  The final alternative is to not let it jam: with prompt intervention you can keep the thing running. Stay nearby and work on something else. When you hear the sound of the slide being grabbed be ready to intervene the instant you hear the sound of jamming. Generally I can remedy the situation before the unit gives up and declares itself jammed. Not an ideal situation, but still much more efficient than manually feeding through every slide by hand.
  
  The scanning software also leaves something to be desired. Some combinations of settings in the Nikon scan software will cause the software to crash in batch scan mode... if you want to turn them on, you're back to manual one-at-a-time scanning again. In batch mode, all files are saved as monstrous 100+ megabyte TIF files, regardless of the TIF / Jpeg settings. You have to tell the unit how many slides to scan. "Just keep going until you run out of slides" isn't an option.
  
  All these deficiencies are annoying, but there doesn't seem to be anything better on the market for batch scanning so I guess I have to live with it. For scanning thousands of high-quality 35mm slides, it still does seem to be the best choice available. The results are worth the pain.
  
  
• necessary junk
  By A14R4PO5717TOC on 2006-01-02
  this slide feeder is a disgrace to nikon's name. it should cost about $50 given the quality engineering and flimsy plastic found in it. it has trouble with most slides, although heavy plastic mounts seem to do fairly well. cardboard mounts jam frequently. since on their return path slides bend the spring plate, you will find yourself monkeying with it repeatedly until you finally break it.
  
  i have 15,000 slides. after some 2,500, it looks like i'll need another one. this is junk, but there isn't anything else out on the market that can offer the same functionality (when it works).
  
  
• BIG Time Saver !
  By A7J39B5197N6M on 2007-01-25
  If you have lots of slides to scan, you'll need this device for your Nikon 5000 or 4000 scanner. I operate a slide scanning business and these feeders, coupled to the Nikon scanners are the backbone of my business.
  
  The SF210 auto-loader, (I own two and will soon buy a third,) saves TONS of time, over loading each slide by hand. The advantage being, you can load in 50+ slides and then occupy your time with other tasks. Come back later and the scans are done. Read on...
  
  IMPORTANT NOTE: The machine does have a some issues and sometimes needs babysitting, depending on the type and condition of the slide mounts.
  
  The biggest issue, stoppage, as the ingoing slide hangs on the one behind it, can be mostly overcome with a simple fix, which I've outlined with a photo and description, in the Digital Darkroom Forum on [...]
  
  If you have a volume 35MM slide scanning project, and you have the Nikon 5000 ED or 4000ED scanner, buy this machine.
  
  Be aware that most 35MM slide scan image files, from ANY scanner, will need post-scan enhancements look their best.
  
  Each feeder I own has done THOUSANDS of cycles, MANY thousands. Niether feeder has ever needed repair. Very reliable.
  
  Go for it! Your time is valuable!
  
  
• Very disappointing
  By A3O6YQEGJUF0Z1 on 2007-06-15
  Try to rent one of these before you buy so you know what you're getting into.
  
  The Nikon Coolscan 5000 to which this feeder is attached works very well, but the feeder is a huge disappointment.
  
  The manual warns that feed reliability varies depending on the type of slide mount. I have slides on many different mounts from many different eras from the 1990's back to 1947, and none of them would feed well, not even plain old Ektachrome on standard Kodak mounts from the nineties.
  
  Older, thin slides won't feed at all. It does best with thick slides with rounded corners, but even then I was getting a jam every 5 to 10 slides.
  
  With thin slides, the most common jam would be the feeder trying to pick up two slides at once. With modern, thicker slides the most common jam would have the slide move about a half inch and then get wedged somehow.
  
  To clear a jam, you must dismiss the application, physically clear the jam, cycle the power on the scanner, bring up the application, and reenter the number of slides left in the hopper. The software will not resume scanning after a jam unless you restart it, (the Scan button is greyed out) and the scanner will not pick up a new slide, even after you've cleared the jam, until you power cycle it.
  
  Being able to scan in bulk is a good idea, and at current prices for professional scanning, owning a bulk scanner can be economical if you have hundreds of slides. But bulk scanning is only useful if it actually scans unattended in bulk, and this device does not do that. If you must have this device, be prepared to baby it.
  
  
• Went back to my Minolta AF-2840
  By A3J0KWI266WDJX on 2006-12-28
  The problems with jamming are insurmountable. I went back to the Minolta DiMage Scan Dual III, AF-2840 (bought on eBay for about 150, years ago), which can scan 4 slides at a time and never jams. The quality is brilliant, but you have to work in batches of four.
  
  
• Works for my type of slides, no single slide jam.
  By AMNVAPHRTBK19 on 2007-02-18
  I was worried by the numerous reviewers reporting on slides getting jamed before I bought this slide feeder. To my positive surprise, I have not experience a single case of jamed slides after scanning about 200+ slides. I exclusively scan comparably thick and stiff plastic slides, GEPE and similar, which I have framed myself. I would give this product even 5 stars if its price was more reasonable and if Nikon Scan would work better for me in combination with my LS 5000 scanner and the slide feeder:
  
  In average NikonScan for Mac crashes for me every 15-20 slides making the slide feeder less useful than it could be. I am using Intel 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo 15 inch MacBookPro running the latest version of OS X Tiger. Unfortunately, Nikon's latest update to Nikon Scan for Mac (vers. 4.0.2) that I could find, is dated 06/17/2004 [...]
  
  Addition 29JUL: The slide feeder continues to work well for me. I think I only had one jam ever and this one was my fault because I inserted a slide incorrectly into the stack.
  
  The Windows version of NikonScan is more stable than the Mac version. I have scaned well over 100 slides in one batch without any issues, neither HW nor SW. Therefore, I have switched to NikonScan for Windows. I boot Windows natively using Bootcamp on my Mac.
  
  
• Works okay with good mounts- and some help!
  By AG86V5Y73ONVK on 2006-01-05
  I've used a Nikon LS 2000 with a SF-200 for many years commercially. My first LS 2000 went back to Nikon about three times before they finally really fixed it- and they did as it's worked now for many years. The SF-200 needs help to work, though. We've found making the gate narrower with thin plastic- a leader card from my film processor- helps greatly in preventing the unit from pushing two slides into the scanner at once. The real issue is this older cardboard slides with bowed inner frames- they'll hook onto each other and cause jams. Inserting plastic between frames BEFORE they enter the scanner works, but does require constant intervention.
  BUT- still haven't found anything that works better.
  
  
• forget it.... try my idea
  By A2XZQ1GXVCR9OW on 2006-12-17
  I have been doing quite a lot of research to find a decent machine to scan my family's millions of slides. After reading all the reviews...I will plan to do what I have done with some old pictures.
  the plan is this: have a slide show. Take digital photos with your "macro" setting (I use a Panasonic Lumix) of every slide...individually. It will take about 3-5 seconds each slide. Download them onto your computer. Play with color, etc on photoshop. Voila! You have all your slides in one place - in IPhoto or Picassa or whatever. You will be surprised how good they come out.
  
  Why bother with a machine? Until a decent one is designed and made, that is.
  
  
• Works great until the metal spring loses it's shape!
  By AWF9MO4E3BB6C on 2008-06-25
  The SF-210 auto slide feeder works great until you do 3 or 4 hundred slides then the little metal spring device loses it's shape and the feeder jams. You then need to reconfigure the little metal spring that handles the slide and get the four prongs back into the right shape where it can push the slides the right way again. Very frustrating because unless you manage to get the little piece of metal back into it's original shape it keeps jaming slides and shutting down.
  
  
• Supplier OK and product OK
  By A21OFJIQAINOIJ on 2007-05-05
  However my experience is limited to PLASTIC framed slides.
  
  Product arrived in time and properly packaged.
  
  
• Great scanner after a bit of fiddling
  By A6TIKV39AULMM on 2007-09-08
  After reading several reviews I was skeptical about this product because of the reports of frequent jamming, but it is the only system available for digitizing a gozillion slides. I found several fixes and used a paper clip to extend the origin of the slide feed compression spring. It was an easy fix after unscrewing a few (7 to be exact) screws. Here's the link for the fix I used:
  
  http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&message=16118672
  
  Here's a link for another type of fix:
  http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&message=15300370
  
  After that fix it worked well. HOWEVER there is a slide depth adjustment that needs to be paid attention to. Each of my carousels of slides had slightly different widths (I'm talking about fractions of millimeters) so I had to pay attention to the depth adjustment to not pull 2 slides at once. Also you need to be careful about orienting the slides horizontally.
  Having said that and after a brief modification as well as a bit of a steep but brief learning curve, the slide feeder and the LC5000 scanner work well together. I have not as yet scanned a 50 slide batch, but so far a batch of 25 has worked well.
  It is a pain in the butt that one has to modify a $450 product to get it to work right, but when it works, it is an immense time saver.
  I do like the Nikon Scan 4.0.2 software that came with the scanner. There are a good number of image format options from which to choose. I do additional post work in Photoshop after the software digitizes the images.
  
  
  
• Okay, but could be better
  By AAS25GD15AJHL on 2008-04-14
  After reading some of the other reviews, it is with some fear that I bought the slide feeder.
  
  Unless you have a very small project, this item is a must have. I am in the middle of a 5000+ slide project. Hand feeding them isn't an option.
  
  The scanner worked well initially, handling 400 odd 1980's vintage Kodak processed slides without a hitch. Older slides (Kodak processed from the 1960s and 1970's) resulted in about 1 jam in 100 slides. Slides in poor condition resulted in more jams, particularly dog eraed corners and warped slides. I had a roll that wouldn't feed well. When I went to hand feeding with the single slide loader, I was reminded how much better the auto feeder was and gave up on hand feeding and went back to the feeder with some babysitting.
  
  Another disappointment is that it is not compatible with the less expensive coolscan V, requiring the more expensive Coolscan 5000.
  
  I have also found that it feeds better running vertically.
  
  
  

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