Braun NovoScan 120 Scanner

Disappointing

Disappointing but I'm keeping it. Pluses: 1) It's inexpensive and very fast. I can scan a roll of 645 b/w negatives in less than 5 minutes. 2) It's small and light. Easy to store. 3) You can scan without hooking up to a computer. 4) As a free standing device, you can scan 120 negs anywhere you have an AC outlet. Negatives: 1) The quality is only mediocre at best. If you want scans for the internet and e-mailing it's fairly good. 2) The software... Show More wouldn't load on my Mac, though the instructions said it was OK. Disappointing. But it's not actually necessary. 3) The film carrier has a "bar" in the middle of the carrier. Using square negs, there was no problem. Using 645 negs I couldn't scan the whole strip of negatives without cutting the strip into two pieces. So I just scanned four out of the five negatives. 4) Terrible results with 20 year old color negatives. Give it a shot, maybe you're better than I am with massive color corrections on old film. I've scanned 3-4 rolls of 20 year old negatives and I just converted to b/w. 5) Virtually no controls over anything other than exposure. One setting for b/w negatives, one setting for color negatives, and one for color slides. You can plus or minus 2 EV and that is the only control. 6) The LCD screen is tiny, but usable in terms of size. It's very difficult to judge density, especially when you change the settings. Sometimes it just doesn't seem to change. 7) It saves in JPEG. And not every large JPEG. 8) It's only a 14 megapixel sensor. I bought it because I've got about 4,000 rolls of 120 film. I've used my Epson V700 and don't really like it for scanning film. I've got a great 35mm scanner. The Plustex 120 scanner is $2000 and takes at least 5 minutes for a single scan. This does a barely adequate job, but it's really fast. Actually faster than the Epson in practice. I may be retired, but I don't think I'll live long enough to scan even a few rolls with the Plustex 120. My Nikon D850 (45 megapixel and I can shoot in RAW) would probably give me a better scan, but there's no 120 slide scanner (there is going to be one for 35mm film and I'll probably give it a try). I thought about giving it a two star rating, but if you don't have high expectations, three star is about right. It's "OKAY."Show Less

Reviewed on B&H Photo Video