| Scanners Reviews : Slide and Photo |
 | Epson Perfection V300 Photo Color Scanner (Black)
epson 300 photo scanner -- 2010-08-31
I bought this to scan a great deal of slides. I use this scanner nonstop, from morning to night. It is the best scanner I have ever bought. It works with both xp and vista. It is quiet, a lot of times I don't hear it when it gets done so I have to keep tabs on the screen. I am very happy that it scans like it should, I have had no problems with it. I haven't done negatives yet but I have done pictures and the quality of both the slides and pic's turned out great. It does take longer with higher dpi but I organize in between. I have scanned well over 1500 slides and still going. It doesn't come with a physical direction book, that is on the disk when you load it. I would rather have a book. All in all this is a great scanner and I would recommend it to friends.
Espon ships it broken - then forces you to go to a repair shop -- 2010-08-27
Massive delays. The scanner didn't work when it came (long vertical bar down the center of each scan - with wrinkling effect around the edges). Tech support identified it as a broken scanner, but instead of sending me a new one, the forced me to drive 15 minutes to a repair center. The repair center said it would take 4 days. But after 4 days they couldn't fix it because EPSON wouldn't send them the part.
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 | Canon CanoScan 8800F Color Film/Negative/Photo Scanner (2168B002)
A Great Scanner for OCR -- 2010-08-20
I bought the CanoScan 8800F as an upgrade from my trusty CanoScan 4400F which I used for several years as part of a system that converts text to speech, as a reading aid for my low vision. I often scan a hundred or more pages at a time, and the procedure is highly repetitive; I hoped the 8800F would make the process go faster. As soon as I connected the scanner and made the first few scans, I knew I had made a good choice.
The 8800F has two advantages over the 4400F that I noticed immediately. First, there is no warm-up time for the light source in the 8800F. The 4400F has a cold fluorescent bulb that takes about 30 seconds to warm up when it is cold, and if it sits for a few minutes it does another short warm up before it will scan. The 8800F, on the other hand, has an LED light source that requires no warm up at all. The 4400F leaves its light source on for 12 minutes after a scan (this time is adjustable) to shorten the warm up time, whereas the 8800F shuts its light source off after each scan. Second, the 8800F scans faster than the 4400F. It seems to be about twice as fast, though I have not measured the scan times. These two advantages enable me to be about 50% more productive with the 8800F than with the 4400F, which makes the 8800F worth the higher price.
The two scanners have the same size platen (scanning surface) that takes document sizes up to A4. Most of my scanning is of books, and most of the time I can lay the book flat and scan two pages at once, though for larger books I am only able to scan a single page at a time. It would be nice to find a scanner that can accommodate larger formats, but I did not find one among the consumer scanners that I examined.
The 8800F has a power button, which the 4400F does not. Both scanners have the same buttons that you can use to initiate various scan operations. I never use these, as I always control scans through the software. On the 8800F the buttons are on the top rather than on the front, as for the 4400F, where I would often bump them with my arm, causing a flurry of dialogs to open on the screen.
The basic software user interface is the same for both scanners and consists of two applications that work together: ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5.5 and Canon Scan Gear. PhotoStudio is a combination image editing and scanner control program. It calls Scan Gear to do each scan and accumulates scanned images which you can edit and save. The 8800F comes with several utilities which I haven't used, and also comes with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 and 5.0.
If you do a lot of OCRing, as I do, avoid the ScanSoft OmniPage SE application that comes with the scanner. It is old and extremely buggy. I used it after I bought the 4400F and was in OCR hell for a year until I wised up and bought the latest version of OmniPage Professional, which seemed like magic after that. OmniPage can integrate with Scan Gear, which improves scanning efficiency for OCR operations. I also tried ReadIris 11, but it had a peculiar bug that duplicated letters in OCR'd text. ReadIris technical support never responded to my query about that.
The 8800F has lots of other capabilities that I have not tried yet. I understand that it shines as a photo, slide and negative scanner. I don't know if there is a better scanner out there, but the 8800F suits me very well.
Canon Slide Scanning Tricks and Tips - 8800f -- 2010-08-17
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R10NDPTRFN83WR Stephen Paul West, Author and Artist in Austin Texas, shows how to use the Canon Scannner to maximum benefit for slides, negatives and other projects. See more at[...]
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 | Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner
EPSON V500 PHOTO SCANNER -- 2010-08-25
I was in need of scanning numerous slides from my photo files. I wanted something that was simple and of high quality and something that would allow me to get more technical if I wished to. I have scanned over 200 slides and the results have been consitently excellent. I am now doing old photos as well. For the price, you can't beat the product.
Works Great on Snow Leopard -- 2010-08-23
Purchased this item for use on my Core 2 Duo iMac running Snow Leopard. Didn't bother with the included disk and just downloaded new program right off Epson's web page. Spent the weekend scanning hundreds of color slides and photographs. Works without a problem and does amazing scans. Well worth the money. I am very happy with my purchase.
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 | Wolverine F2D 35mm Film to Digital Image Converter with 2.4-Inch LCD and TV-Out
Works OK BUT... -- 2010-09-02
It works generally well and produces good images but quite honestly the internal "digital camera" has a lot to be desired. Even though it's listed as being 5 megapixels, the image is not as sharp as it should be. The contrasting is also hit a miss and requires a bit of doctoring after the fact in a good photo image editor. The unit also washes out bright portions of images if the iris control doesn't work right. The white balancing is also a bit off. They really should include manual controls for contrasting, brightness, white balancing and sharpness. On the plus side however, the colors are quite good.
It might be better (and cheaper) to purchase a $15 slide viewer and use your own digital camera. I tried this and it works pretty good.
If you need to transfer a lot of slides and 35mm negatives and don't care about perfect quality, this unit works great. It's easy to use and fine for anyone wanting to get everything in their collection digitized quickly. If you want a little bit more control over the imaging system, look elsewhere.
Good product -- 2010-08-31
I have used this product to scan several hundred slides with little or no problem. My slides are very old so colors were somewhat distorted but I think that it was the quality of the slides not the scanner. Most pictures could be corrected with Photo shop elements.
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 | Epson Perfection v600 Photo Color Scanner (B11B198011)
Probably Okay -- 2010-08-29
For 120/220 film negatives you might want to think about something else. Although I'm not sure what if you are on a budget. And that's how I wound up with this product. Decent price, and the scans look good off of negatives and transparencies. Now, here's the problem: The scanning mask for negatives is not sufficiently large to handle 6x6 cm negatives ("two and a quarter square")in strips of four. A fairly common way of filing these back in the old days that fit a 12-shot roll on to an 8x10 inch contact sheet.
Looks like 6x7 cm will fit okay in threes. A few scans of these look good although the default scanner settings breaks them up into oddly chopped image pieces. One day soon I'll have a look at the rest of the software controls and settings to see if there's a way to make what I'm doing the default.
Scans from slides and prints look good. Didn't scan any transparency film (Fujichrome, Kodachrome, and the like)in uncut strips.
I got more or less what I expected because my selection was limited by price.
great scanner -- 2010-08-26
Bought this for my wife and daughter to use. My wife is saving and repairing old family photos My daughter is a professional photographer with a home studio. I set it up and scanned the first photos. The first time I used it I took 3 or 4 try's messing around with the settings to see what they did to get a scan that I wanted. After that it was very easy. It works with windows xp and vista with out problems. It creates great scans and is faster than other photo scanners I have used. The ICE software works better than I expected, which can save considerable time when working with old photos. My only complaint is, why ship with last years photo shop elements when any one that uses elements regularly probably has upgraded any way.
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 | Pandigital SCN02 PhotoLink One Touch Scanner w/Memory Card
LOVE IT! -- 2010-08-15
I had been looking for just this kind of printer, Fast and Easy!
When It arrived and I saw how little it was; I was not so sure??
It has been amazing! About those lines some people are having a problem with;
I did get an picture stuck and had lines in the next two pictures. I put the cleaner that came with the scanner in and no more lines.
I am Very pleased with my scanner. It has saved me hours of flatbed scanning.
I'm ready to purchase the Pandigital Photolink One-Touch PANSCN06 8.5-Inch x11-Inch.
Go Scan!!
mixed review -- 2010-08-04
I love this item, but it only came with one protective sleeve. That quickly became scratched and YOU CANNOT FIND ANY WAY TO ORDER EXTRAS! So I have scanned without, and now get permanent "scratches" on all my scanned photos. I have used the cleaning pad, but it does not help. I would have recommended highly because it is easy to use, but now I'm reluctant because I have to go into a photo editing program to remove the scratches.
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 | Ion Audio SLIDES 2 PC 35mm Negative and Slide Converter to PC
Late 60s to early 70s revival -- 2010-08-27
I bought this to convert my dads old slides into something that is now useful. If you are in need of something that is cheap and that can go through a bunch of slides quickly this product will do. Unfortunately, it tends to oversaturate brighter photos and you can't improve such images in picture editing software. That being said some of the darker indoor slides converted quite nicely and I now have some nice images of my siblings from age 0 to 6 years old.
If you do buy one, I'd suggest buying a can of air too because the dust on the slides not only effects that image but gets stuck in the unit. The brush provided just won't do.
White balance -- 2010-08-20
The white balance is incorrect and cannot be changed. I got this scanner to digitize the old photos my father and father-in-laaw had taken when we were children. Almost all of them come out over exposed even though the exposure and colors on the slide are perfect. This is a terrible disappointment.
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 | NEW! 3-in-1 Digital Photo/Negative Films/Slides Scanner with built-in 2.4" LCD Screen with FREE 4GB SDHC Memory Card (SVP PS9700-4GB)
Art Photographer -- 2010-08-13
Once I figured out the instructions, it worked quite well. Slides were easily converted. The important thing is to change the setting to slides.
bad instructions -- 2010-07-13
I would give this product 5 stars if it came with decent instructions. It would help if the instruction writer had English as the first language. It took me several hours to figure out that slides must be scanned in the film settings and that there was a setting to select slides as the type of film. The film type selection instruction was on page 24 among the playback instructions. The device was delivered quickly and did a nice job once I determined how to scan slides. I have yet to try it with prints or negatives.
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 | Epson Perfection 4490 Photo Scanner
Frustrated the entire time I used it -- 2010-08-31
I bought this scanner in the beginning of 2010.
It makes great scans of black and white 35mm negatives. I haven't tried black and white 120 negatives, but I assume it's the same thing.
As far as color goes -- not the best, at all. No, let me correct that: it will make good color scans if your exposure was correct and if the film was developed correctly. But even then, the colors are usually seriously off and needs to be corrected with software. Sometimes the colors are so off that the image is not even useable. Also sometimes I have to scan more than once because the scanner cannot even pick up the negative. At first I thought it was just me not using the scanner correctly; but I WAS using it correctly. It's jut a terrible scanner.
But now after just living with these frustrations, it won't even power on. It's completely dead. It sits on my computer table and hasn't been dropped, I don't know what's wrong with it and I am so angry that I have to buy a new scanner. It's not even worth fixing or sending back.
I'm not expecting perfection, but a little consistency. $130 is not much to a lot of people, but it is to poor college students like me.
I'm now saving up my money to buy a better scanner.
love my epson -- 2010-07-24
I received my Epson scanner within two days of order. It is wonderful, very easy to use, and excellent quality. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a user-friendly, high-quality scanner for the price.
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 | SVP Digital Film Scanner w/ 2.4" Build-in LCD (2GB Included), ~"World's Smallest Film Scanner"~
Great Scans, Miserable Slide Tray -- 2010-08-18
I bought this scanner based on the favorable reviews on Amazon. I've been using it for three days now, and I find the scans to be super-quick and of good quality, BUT, the three-station slide tray is torture. That's the only reason I knocked my rating down from five stars to three.
There are two problems with the tray. First, the moulded recesses for the slides are too small, making loading slides a chore and requiring much more attention than is should. Secondly, the tray is tricky to open - I'm always afraid that I'll crack the plastic when I go to remove the slides.
Great Digital Slide Converter! -- 2010-08-02
i did a lot of research before purchasing the SVP scanner, and it really paid off. The scans are quick and easy, with plenty of simple but effective options to flip, reverse, and adjust lighting built right in. i didn't have to even crack the book open to figure out how to use it, then put my 16 year old son to work scanning the slides from my late father. He has already done more than 1600 slides in the last couple of weeks, just working about an hour a day for most of the days. He has gotten so he can convert the slide to an SD card at a rate of more than 100 per hour. We still have another 1000 to do, and expect that to be done within the next week. This has been the perfect scanner! my old one took easily more than 10 times longer, and required the computer to be dedicated to the scanning. this is easily done sitting on the coffee table!
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