Are you having several boxes of those old and dusty 35 mm cordless slides and film negatives? Here is a device that is handy enough to help you convert all your negatives into digital pictures. Which you can then upload those digital copies to flickr for better storage instead of keeping couple of dusty boxes that take up lots of space.
It’s pretty easy to use, just place slides and negatives into a tray that aligns each properly. The converter is alos equipped with a 2.5-inch TFT color display that lets you view what’s going on during the scanning. Touch the button, in just about 3 to 5 seconds, the slide/negative will then get scanned into a JPEG file .
The device also has an SD memory card slot, which lets you insert a memory card to store the digitized slides. A 4GB memory card is able to store up to 5,000 pictures.
The converter has a 9 MP CMOS sensor which is able to scan up to a resolution of 3328 x 2216. It also has other technologies including automatic exposure control, and color balance to produce clear digital images without loss of colors.
The device can operate in a complete cordless manner as it can be operated on its built-in rechargeable battery, which is rechargeable via USB or AC power source and provides up to 400 conversions on a single full charge.
It comes with a USB cable, which you can just plug it to your PC’s USB port for transferring scanned images to a PC running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7. Where can you get one? This slide converter can be purchased from Hammacher for $160 each
Other similar slide converters in the market.
The Veho VFS-002 ColorBright slide scanner is a similar product, which comes equipped with the ColorBright technology that promises better clarity of image.
The Veho VFS-002 ColorBright negative/slide scanner will scan 110mm and 35mm films and negative slides onto your Mac and PC via USB port. But it does not have a microSD card slot, so it must be tethered to your computer for scanning.
The Veho scanner also comes equipped with multi-directional insert tray flaps and faster one touch scanning. It’s plug and play, needs no driver. The ColorBright technology also automatically increases the clarity of scanned images.
It shouldn’t have any problem to transform your old and faded negatives and films into bright, crisp and clean digital images. The Veho scanner is available on Scan.co.uk for about £40 each
The Ion Audio Slides 2 PC works similarly, which connects to your PC via the USB port. It’s got a special rail which houses multiple 35mm slides or a strip of negatives that allows you to read, scan and save all at one time.
The device has a 5-megapixel sensor which shall produce high-res digital pictures that are up to your standard. It’s also equipped with a four-glass optic element, together with the built-in exposure control and color correction functionalities, it minimizes the hassle of post-scan touchups. The device costs you only $90 on ion-audio.com, which isn’t too expensive at all for bringing all your precious old pictures back to life.
October 8th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Will this slide to digital file converter work with Windows Vista?? If not, is there a unit that will?
October 8th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
The product page says it needs windows xp for the included software to install. But, I believe it can work with vista too. Or you can enquire more about it at hammacher
October 9th, 2007 at 8:26 am
I too have Vista and wondered about this, so I called HS and was told it only works with XP. If any one knows of another web soucrce or manufacture that has one of these gizmos that works with Vista, I would appreciated learning of it. Thanks!
October 9th, 2007 at 8:51 am
thanks Ruth for your info
October 10th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Wonder if this also wrks with a MAC?
October 10th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Has anyone seen the quality of the pictures this produces? I don’t need anything wonderful (like from a scanner) but I would like to be able to recognize the people in the photo.
October 11th, 2007 at 10:46 am
I too have Vista and wondered about this, so I called HS and was told it only works with XP. If any one knows of another web soucrce or manufacture that has one of these gizmos that works with Vista, I would appreciated learning of it. Thanks!
October 16th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Brookstone.com has one made by Veho that is Vista compatible.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:46 am
I bought one (not from HS as they keep shoving the ship date back every couple weeks) but it’s the same unit. I got mine from ThinkGeek.com for the same price as HS and it shipped out the very next day). I am using Vista and this is the first app that has been able to completely crash my new Vista system (Blue screen), although I was able to successfully transfer several puictures before it crashed. Seems it’s the driver for the scanning software that is at the root of the problem. I’m sure there will be an updated Vista compatible driver coming soon. (fingers crossed)
The picture quality is adjustable (low, medium, high). Using the medium setting, my slides come out at 2592 x1680 (or something like that…) Way to large for my needs, so I run them all through Photoshop after scanning. The image quality is very good (providing you allow the scanner the full 5 seconds per scan). If you hit the scan button too quick (before the 5 seconds) the image quality is severely diminished.
October 26th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Will this be made to work with a MAC?