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.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Just got mine (VuPoint) from Geeks. Downloaded Vista drivers and the latest PhotoImpression from the Veho website and everything is working fine in Vista. They are obivioulsy the same product, or at least use the same chipset.
Also, latest ArcSoft 6.1 is supposed to improve the white balance issue, or so they say.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
After reading these reviews and all of the potential problems, I decided to do a search on Amazon for slide scanners. I ended up buying the Canon CanoScan 8800F. It is a flat bed scanner, but has excellent reviews for slide scanning as well, even with some examples from a user that looks pretty good. I hope that it lives up to the reviews. At $169, it is not that much more than the devices talked about here, so I just wanted to point out that possibility.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I bought mine from Walmart under the 21C label. I was somewhat frustrated with the length of time it took to scan the slides on my Canon 5000. Otherwise the Canon scans very good pictures. I have a 9 year old Dell Dimension system.
900 Mhz with a limit of 512 ram.
The 21c is so far a disappointment. I am still running time trials on it, but it is not looking good. I had seen quotes of five second snap times, which was exactly what I was looking for. HOWEVER, that appears only to be the capture time for what would be a preview on my Canon. the steps to actually save the picture to a file on the computer is a different issue, as the machine goes through several minutes of steps to refine the scan into a useable picture. In overall time it appears equal to or worse than the cannon. It is probable that newer systems than mine may indeed do better. I will publish the results. Of the pictures made, using the recommended delays
The software negatively affects the operation of my mouse, again probably due to the low end performance of my pc. It staggers on the programs screen. I have found the software operation itself difficult. And oh yea, the handbook sucks. You may go blind reading the book, use the file on the disk. It leaves a lot out and is fuzzy about what it does cover.
Two other landmines. First, the software immediately goes in and makes itself the primary processor for picture and audio files. When I click the icon for editing, I got a message that it will open temporary editing software, and that you need to buy the long term version. Surprise!!
If my final testing goes as I think, this turkey will be back at Wallyworld in the morning. On the bright side, it forced me to add a USB 2.0 card, and my Cannon now appears to run faster.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Missed completion of a sentence.
The Pictures made were a mixed bag compared to identical pictures scanned on my Canon. Of six pictures only one appeared better than the Canon’s. Low light colors were off and it actually picked up and accentuated dirt on the slide. My canon has a filter for that. One slide had a tunnel affect around the edges that was not rendered on the Canon capture.
July 11th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
BACK IT GOES! I tested the time to do six slides. My Canon loads two at a time. The total time from clicking on the application, to the completion of saving all six scanned pictures to the hard drive, 8 and a half minutes.
The Walmart unit loads three at a time. and from clicking on the application, CAPTURE took 9 and a quarter minutes. BUT WAIT! ALL YOU HAVE AT THAT POINT IS A FUZZY PREVIEW IMAGE LOADED IN THE SCANNER, WITH WHICH YOU CAN DO NOTHING. YOU THEN HAVE TO TRANSFER, OR RATHER SAVE, TO DISK, AND ON MY COMPUTER, AS DESCRIBED EARLIER. THE TOTAL ELAPSED TIME TO CAPTURE AND SAVE THE SIX FILES TO THE DISK WAS 32 MINUTES!! AND THE QUALITY WAS LESS THAN THE CANON.
I suspect that giga speed processors and giga ram may make this a good deal. I would be curious to hear if someone had faster times or if I did not operate the system correctly. For now, I will stick with my Canon.
July 28th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Scanner software won’t load at installation time on Windowx XP system because the device driver C:\WINDOWS\system32\OVTFBoot.dll with Entry Point “OV550 Start” can’t be found. Internet offers no solution.
Any ideas?
August 21st, 2008 at 11:20 am
I’ve got in excess of 6500 slides badly in need of uploading to my Fotopic site, so I recently purchased a Veho VFS-001 device. I have XP pro with SP2, with USB 2.0 ports. Having now installed this on TWO computers, and BOTH have been unable to make this work properly. If I use the Arcsoft software provided, the results are appalling – VERY dark, and, if lightened sufficiently, all the colour is washed out completely. If I open the OVT device directly via program files, the results are much better, but STILL AWFUL – a blue sky will turn an offensive shade of turquoise on the edges, and glaringly white in the middle. Dark detail remains black until the rest of the pic has disappeared!
In both cases, it’s like the bulb in the scanner isn’t bright enough by far; I daren’t even attempt anything with black in the picture. Or green, for that matter. Or yellow. Or red.
Is it something I’ve failed to do? I’ve done the calibration bit several times, and tried different settings, but still no joy whatsoever. I wouldn’t wish this on a dog! Can anybody point me in the general direction of happiness & contentment in this matter? Or is it a faulty device?
HEEEELP!
August 31st, 2008 at 7:36 am
I recently bought the VFS-004 because it was advertised as Vista-compatible, but I can’t get it working on my pc. I get a feeling that it may be because I am running Vista 64-bit. I have also tried it on my old laptop using XP, and as with the previous correspondent, tranfer times are abysmal. I am waiting for som extra RAM to arrive and will see whether that improves things.
September 6th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
The Hammacher Schlemmer model from VuPoint will NOT work on an IBM laptop computer. There is some kind of glitch, and this was admitted finally by the service department on the phone. They do not tell people this bit of important information in advance.
September 7th, 2008 at 8:51 am
I , this week recd. a new catalogue from H.Schlemmer with a new slide and negative scanner stating that it’s compatible with Vista. Hooray!! I’m returning the one I have to have it exchanged for the newer model…..will let you know.