ION FILM 2 SD 35mm Film and Slide Scanner

by Ion

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 11.3 x 5.2 inches ; 2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001RUGOIY
• Item model number: Film2SD
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #31 in Camera & Photo > Accessories > Professional Video Accessories
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 19, 2009

Product Description

Transfer 35mm negatives and slides to an SD card

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars works ok, September 3, 2009

By 

Barrett Koster - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ION FILM 2 SD 35mm Film and Slide Scanner (Electronics)

For $100, it's not bad. This device holds 3 slides in a bracket. The bracket is kinda fussy. Although the actual scan takes only a second or two, my steady stream average was 20 seconds per slide, mostly due to loading and unloading the bracket. Still, it's easy to do watching TV. No file-naming or computer fiddling is necessary during scanning. The SD card is dumped later onto a computer in one easy step, so that's good. The scans themselves are OK quality. Those old slides have really killer resolution and color, and you lose that. But for vacation shots from the 70s you want to view and share on your computer, this will do just fine.

70 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Piece of junk, November 14, 2009

By 

Slawomir M. Popiel "smp" (nj) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ION FILM 2 SD 35mm Film and Slide Scanner (Electronics)

The bottom line is that one could expect scans from original film to be better quality than scans from paper copy. Unfortunately, when it comes to this scanner, it is just opposite. Therefore purchasing it doe not make much sense. Allegedly, it is a 5 MB scanner. It should give you plenty of dpi (about 3600?). Unfortunately, scans produced by this contraption are much less that your screen resolution. waste of money and time.

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Does what it's supposed to., January 3, 2010

By 

R. Vais-ottosen (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ION FILM 2 SD 35mm Film and Slide Scanner (Electronics)

This review is for the Slide 2 SD version only. The speed and transfer options are different from other versions of the Ion slide scanner.

Pros: fast, user friendly, ultra portable.
Cons: glass needs frequent cleaning to avoid dust particles from becoming part of the scanned image.

This device is great for storing, or restoring, your old family memories. The scanning itself is fast if you don't count the time it takes you to load the slides unto the tray (four at a time). Even that, however, gets faster after you've got the rhythm. My task was scanning 430 slides, and over 500 other images in negative strips and rolls. All combined, I had almost 1,000 photos to turn to digital. What I thought would be an endless pain proved to be the exact opposite. It only took about two days of my time, with a few hours work each day. Just think of it as a fun week-end project.

The photos come out at 2400x1600 pixels. The image quality is as good as the slide or negative allows. Please keep in mind that slides and negatives deteriorate over time, especially if stored in extreme temperatures or humidity, or in too much light. You can't expect a 30 or 40 year old slide to come out the same as a contemporary digitally taken photo, no matter what scanner you use. Additional processing can be done once the scanned photos are downloaded on the computer.

The device is really easy to use. Load the tray with the desired media (slides, negative strip or roll), insert it into the slot, press the OK button twice, push the tray for the next image, etc. The images are stored on the 1 GB SD card that comes with the scanner. You can then insert the card into your computer to copy the photos on your hard drive. The scanner has no processing options other than flipping or rotating the image.

The only complaint I have so far is that the glass where the image is projected gets dirty fairly easily, which will spoil your photos if not regularly cleaned. The glass is where the image is scanned from, so if it accumulates dust particles, they become a part of your photo. It's really like looking at the scenery through a dirty window. So you want to keep the glass clean, which is not that easy. The only access you have to do so is the slot where you insert the slide/negative trays. It's wide enough for a Q-tip to do the job, provided that the Q-tip doesn't leave behind some cotton thread of its own. Other than that, the scanner really did what I expected it to do. It turned my family's slides from the 70's and 80's, as well as negatives from the 90's, into digital photos.