FILM SCANNER

For the money this device provides excellent results. It's simple to set up and incredibly easy to operate in spite of the lack of a simplified US full color manual. As noted, no SD card is included but is required in order to operate the device so order one if you dont have one on hand. All images are scanned directly onto the SD card and it is not possible to view the images in real time on the PC. After scanning the image/s you can then choose PC from the device menu and open / import the files on the PC via USB. The slide feeder is a real pain in the butt if your slides are not flat and in good condition and in that case forget stacking them. I will not retract a star for this because it works as intended with good flat slides in good condition. If that becomes an issue in your case you can use the provided film tray for slides as well. I love the option to adjust the contrast in real time while scanning without having to go into the menu but I have also found that in most cases adjusting the contrast was a mistake unless the slide was very very dark. The images appear less light / clear on the device screen than the actual scan. I noticed almost no difference in image quality between the 5mp & 10mp scans so I decided to scan everything @ 5mp in case I decide to do any future editing. I am sure a few devices get through that are not quite up to par as is the case with every manufactured device but IMO this device is solid and well worth 50 bucks. I would definitely recommend this device to anyone who just wants to get their collection of home slides digitized on the cheap before they turn to dust. If you've got the money and can afford more then sure, go for bigger and better. Otherwise this will do quite nicely nicely.

I recieved the scanner the next day after placing my order... very FAST delivery! I found the setup easy, and quickly began scanning my old slides. After about 50 slides, when I pushed the capture button, the screen went black and stayed that way. I had to power cycle the unit to get back a normal screen and tried again to capture the slide, but had the same result. I then tried the next slide, but still the same result. It was getting late and I decided to stop and investigate further tomorrow. I thought perhaps I had recieved a defective unit, or maybe after scanning 50+ slides, the unit had overheated. The next day, I tried to rescan the two slides from the previous night, with the same results. However, moving along to a different slide, the unit operated normally, but trying the previous two slides, again locked the scanner up. I was baffled! I finally discovered by lowering the scan resolution from 10 to 5 solved the issue, although why this would be, I don't know. Neither of the two slides were particularly different than others, not over or under exposed. I ran into a few other slides that locked the scanner up, but lowering the resolution to 5 always worked. My only other gripe is the same that many others have commented on, which is the unreliability of the fast loader. It seems much more troublesome when loading my older, cardboard mounted slides, and works almost flawlessly with the newer plastic mounts. All in all, I think this is a good deal for a consumer-grade scanner at this price range!

First, I need to say that when this scanner works, it actually works pretty well. So why the 1-star review? There are several flaws with the device and its software that suggest corners were cut in the design and development, enough testing wasn’t done, or the company was trying to produce the cheapest device possible. Online reviewers have focused most of their criticism on the fact that owners have to provide their own flash memory card. But given how inexpensive these cards are, this is an inconvenience at most. The following problems are far more important. 1. The scanner has two settings, 5 megapixels (5M) and “interpolated” 10 megapixels (10M; which means, I guess, the slide is scanned twice at 5 MP and the images combined). Generally, the 10M setting works well, but if the image is too complex somehow, the device simply stops working. There’s no error message, no suggestion to reset to 5M and try again, nothing. It just stops and has to be disconnected from the computer it’s attached to. It can’t even be turned off. 2. All slides must be scanned in landscape orientation, no matter how the image was shot. So while the device has an image mirroring/rotation tool, it will not rotate a portrait-oriented image to the correct orientation. And if the user tries to rotate images while viewing them using their computer’s image viewer, they might succeed a few times, but eventually not only will the device lock up, it will lock up their computer as well, forcing them to restart or reboot. Again, there’s no error message, no warning, and nothing in the user manual to warn of this problem. The images can only be rotated to their correct orientation after saving them to another computer. 3. The device comes with three feeders: one that holds a strip of five negatives, one with slots for four slides, and one that holds a stack of roughly 20 slides. This latter one seemed like a good idea—it’s something none of the other scanners I considered had—but it doesn’t work. Slide frames vary in thickness—plastic frames are thicker than paper ones—so the feeder has to be able to accommodate all of them. As a result, paper-framed slides don’t consistently push an already-scanned slide out of the way as the user tries to move the next slide into place. It’s a good idea poorly executed. 4. I had expected I’d be able to save images directly to my computer but I can’t. Users have to save the images to the flash drive, then link the scanner to the computer and copy them, or power off the scanner, remove the card, put it in the appropriate slot on their computer, and copy them that way. While this is more of an inconvenience than a serious problem, a better design would have allowed saving the images directly to a connected computer. On the positive side, when I’ve contacted DigitNow’s tech support, they’ve been reasonably responsive, getting back to me within 24 hours, and their answers have generally been helpful. Now that I know how to work around or avoid the problems listed above, I can reliably scan a couple dozen slides in about 15 minutes, and the scan quality certainly meets my needs. It’s easy to see why the scanner made it into other online reviewers’ top-10 lists but it would have gotten even better rankings if it had been better designed and the design better executed.