Kodak RFS 3600 Film Scanner Review If you're looking to do high quality digital printing from 35mm negatives or slides, you need a good film scanner. You also probably don't want to pay an arm and a leg for one either. This is why I ended up purchasing the RFS3600. It has a maximum resolution of 3600dpi, scans both negatives and mounted slides, included a rebate for 100 free rolls of 36 exposure film when I bought it, and now has the support of SilverFast Ai, a high quality scanning software package. Plus it only cost about $800, which, if you subtract the cost of all the film I got for free, is very cheap compared to comparable scanners on the market. So... does it work? Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer is a bit more complicated. When I first purchased the scanner, it didn't come with the SilverFast Ai software. The Kodak TWAIN driver is very kludgy, has horrible memory management capabilities and produces somewhat soft scans, which have to be compensated for later on in Photoshop. Never the less, I was able to produce very stunning 8x10's and 11x14's using images scanned with the RFS3600. Now that I have SilverFast Ai, I'm much more happy with the product. The software offers a substantial increase in control over things like autofocus and unsharp masking that allow me to produce very sharp scanned images. It does have its problems though. My main gripe is that it tends to scratch my negatives, a long scratch running horizontally along the surface of a strip of negatives. Because I develop my own film, it doesn't flatten out until being in a binder for several days. If I try and scan negatives when they're not yet flattened, the scratching problem is very pronounced. If I leave them alone for a while and let them flatten out, there's no problem. Also, there's no dust removal feature, although, because I work only in black and white, I couldn't get this feature on any other scanner either (ICE and FARE, the Nikon and Canon dust removal programs, do not work with black and white film, or Kodachrome for that matter). Aside from those problems, I'm pretty happy with it, especially for the price. As long as I'm patient and don't try to scan my negs right after I develop them, I get very satisfactory results. **** Update 3/26/02 **** Although I've had satisfactory results with the scanning ability of the RFS3600 up until now, it's hard to continue to recommend a scanner that has ceased to function after only a year or so of operation. Yes, my RFS3600 is dead. I suggest you stay away from it... its life span is apparently limited to just over that of the warranty period. Want to read some of my other Equipment Reviews?