Polaroid Sprintscan 45 Question

[Dan White]

Hi. I had a quick question regarding the Sprintscan 45 (not the Ultra). This is not a spam message. I'm just trying to get some advice from people who know more...

My brother owns the scanner and wants to sell it on ebay or wherever (he isn't familiar with ebay and asked me to list it). Is it worth anything? ebay searches only produce results for the Sprintscan 35 for like $50 max, but there don't seem to be any 45 or 45 Ultras for sale.

-- Worth trying to sell, or should it be thrown in the trash?

Actually he might not even sell it if he could get it to work correctly. He bought it from a store where he knows it worked fine. After a long time trying, he gave up on it because the software seemed to be unstable running on anything after Windows 2000. It did work for a scan here and there, but then would crash. He was told it won't work on newer operating systems. Does that sound right?

Thanks for any comments!

[Gene McCluney]

Many people running older scanners find they have to run an older computer running older operating systems in order to use the scanner. Some dedicate a computer just to the scanner, since older computers are very cheap.

[erie patsellis]

I do know that vuescan supports it, I only wish I could afford the scanner, they tend to be expensive, even used.

[Dan White]

Gene - that was one option we discussed, but he had so much trouble I think he just decided just to get rid of the scanner rather than trying to find an old computer. It's too bad because he's a professional photographer and has tons of 4x5 chromes.

erie - I just googled Vuescan - I had no idea such software existed, so maybe he can get the thing to work after all!

I also thought that the Sprintscan 45 might not sell for much simply because I see the 35 going for peanuts on ebay. I guess the 35 only scans 35 mm film, and might be a lot cheaper than the 45...

[erie patsellis]

Dan,
If he wants to sell it cheaply I'd be game.....

[Dan White]

Dan,
If he wants to sell it cheaply I'd be game.....

I'll let him know. You might have been TOO helpful, though. If he can get it to work with Vuescan he might hang on to it!

Maybe you can PM me with an offer to pass on??

Thanks.

[Gene McCluney]

I also thought that the Sprintscan 45 might not sell for much simply because I see the 35 going for peanuts on ebay. I guess the 35 only scans 35 mm film, and might be a lot cheaper than the 45...

The Sprintscan 45, like all Polaroid branded scanners was made by Microtek. Unlike the other models sold under the Polaroid name, when Polaroid got out of the scanner business, Microtek did not pick-up and start marketing this unit under the Microtek name. It was a fairly expensive unit, at over $2500 when new. I have no idea what it might be worth now, but probably you can get comparable results from a new flatbed such as the high-end Epson.

[seepaert]

I had two of them, and they both broke down very soon after the purchase. I had hopes too combine the two in one working scanner, but had to leave the idea after losing the use of my left arm. Polaroid did not want to service the scanners except on ridiculous terms regarding payment in advance and the cost of the diagnose.

The scanner gives very good results working with the supplied software polascan. Of course not on every secondhand scanner the original software will still be present. It might influence the price. I paid 1300 and 500 euros for them, with about two years in between. I don't know if that means that one of them was wrongly priced or that the price did drop that fast. I moved to Heidelberg later, which was a lot cheaper and a better scanner.

[Kin Lau]

I have the Sprintscan 45 (not ultra) running at home with Win XP SP2 (I think - I'll check when I get home, it's a spare machine) and PolaColor Insight.

I tried Vuescan, but it didn't work correctly. There's enough differences btwn the SS45 and SS45 ultra, that you cannot use the software for the ultra.

The only version you'll find on the Polaroid website is v5 or later, but I found the older version under FTP, and that's the only version that works. Look in ftp://ftp.polaroid.com/imaging/input/sscan45/win95_98_NT4_files/

[Peter Mounier]

I have that scanner. I run it on a G4 mac with the scsi card that came in the computer. It won't run on my G5 Quad unless I get a particular scsi card that's a at least a couple hundred $$$. So I run it on my older mac. I connect the two macs and run VNC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vnc) software so I can control VueScan and the scanner from my G5.

I bought if for $600 about 6 years ago. Its D-max is slightly shy (3.4) of some modern films' D-max, so digging details out of shadows can be frustrating, but usually it's just fine. With all the flatbed scanners out there now that do 4x5 film, it's probably still worth around $300 +-

I actually had 2 of them, but one burned out some electronics. I'm hanging on to it in case I come across another broken one I can buy for parts.

Peter