Customer Reviews

ION FILM 2 SD 35mm Film and Slide Scanner

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is a great product. I have tried scanners in the past and they did not provide even "good" quality images - this one gives "excellent" quality. The color rendition and luminance is very accurate compared to the originals, with very high resolution. For the price this is a fantastic value.

I like the included display, that allows one to set up the picture without having to be hooked up to the PC. In fact with the built in memory, you can do many photos without bothering with the PC, then very easily transfer to the PC - or Mac as in my case. No fussing with software - it works right of the box.

I see that others have not reviewed this as highly - I suspect that the poor instruction manual might have something to do with it. To scan positives, it is necessary to get the unit set up to do this, and the instructions are not helpful. I suggest that users try different combinations to get to the right setting.

This is really a great little piece. I scanned slides with it faster than I have with anything eles. The images its produces are of good quality. If you need to mainpulate the image and clean it up you need a photo program, this is a scanner and works very well at that. Now that I said that I am waiting for a replacement to arrive. I started with the base model, it was dead on arrival, returned it and upgraded to the SD, and as I said it works, worked great. I notice from the start that I was having problems powering the unit up. What happens is you push the power button it should turmn on the LED lighting and the program boots in the window. Well, the light would flash the screen would come on and nothing, let it sit and try a few times it would finally boot up and away we go. Well, this just did not seem right so I e-mailed customer support with what it was doing and two days later received an e-mail back saying that it appeared I had a defective unit and to please return it to the store that I had purchased it at, which I did. They had no more, and had to order a replacement from the warehouse, waiting on a new unit. Like I said, scanning slides with it is a breeze.Yes the instructions are not all that great, but it basically is push button and it works, so what more do you need. This will be the test however, if this one does not work I will down grade my rating. But I really do love using it.

Received the upgraded version, works like a charm. Copied over 300 slides over the weekend. To be truthful, I have been trying to find a way of copying my slides for quit awhile to include purchasing a multipurpose printer that scans, copies, prints all media and this device is by far the simplest and fastest device I have come across to date, and the price is not bad either. By the way it works really sharp on negatives too, so if you have sheets of old negatives, this device will turn your negatives back into useful picturesand does it very well.

Now understand, it's not going to fix your slides, they need to be clean and you need a photo program to enhance the color and sharpen the slides. Basically, it's going to copy what it sees, and not fix age nor photographer errors. I would recommend this device to a friend or family member that wanted to make digital copies of the family slides.

I'm a little on the fence about this product, but for the most part I do like it. I decided to get a slide scanner when I found some old slides from my parents' wedding in 1972. It's very easy to use right out of the box. It feels like flimsy plastic for the price you pay, not as weighted as you'd expected.

Pros:
- had holder for slides, 35mm film and also "roll film" which works with the advantix type film, where after you develop the film, you get a little cartridge back with the negatives rolled inside it. I have a lot of these from my early 20's, so I was excited to see I can have digital copies of all my pics, despite the medium I originally used(or having to drag out the photos albums).
- fast and much easier to use then scanning all my photos on the flatbed scanner.
- I love that I don't have to hook it up to my PC to use it(though you can). Just pop in an SD card, and scan away.

Cons:
- The tilt of the screen made it hard to see, I have to duck down to see it properly or lower my office chair to the lowest setting. Perhaps if seated at a better angle, but on the whole, I'd expect it to have a bit of an up tilt.
- the photos have more of a blue-ish tint and they're very faded looking. I can fix this on a photo program with fade correction and hue saturation, but they just don't have that color saturation I was hoping for right out of the gate. The light in this scanner is very bright, almost blue...I don't know if this is the norm for slide scanners or not.
- Having to correct all the photos, which will take hours, if not days depending on how many you have, will cancel out the fact that this machine scans fast.

This photo project I've taken on for my entire family is huge, and I don't want to screw it up, so I might still be interested to see what else is out there and if those products work any better, but in a pinch or for a small project this will work just fine.

I remember my old slide projector had the ability to automatically focus a projected image by sensing the distance from the lens to the actual slide and this was forty years ago.
My major complaint with the Ion Film to SD is that the image projected on the backlit display appears to have the original slide's resolution. However, when you depress the OK Button to capture the image, you can see that the captured image loses some of its resolution and the saved image appears out of focus. It would be nice if there was an adjustment, automatic or manual, that would allow you to adjust the focus. If the system could capture the image as originally displayed, prior to capture, I would recommend this system.

Other than all the saved images appearing out of focus, the system is easy to use.

It's going back after an earnest attempt to use it.
1) The installer instructions did not work as written. That's a minor nit, but it's also a warning of problems to come.
2) I was unable to use any scanner other than the arcsight included software. the other drivers all returned black images.
3) I calibrated several times but the white balance, brightness and color settings were way off. I am not a whiz with color compensation and this software only offered a crude manual adjustment. The colors and exposures were so far off, I couldn't auto-fix them in Adobe.
4) If I was willing to tinker with every one of my planned 300 scans, I would waste more time than I would have spent to use a service. Clearly, the scanner does work and has the potential to be good, but the software stinks.

As a background, I am a person BScEE that treats his electronic gadgets quite well. I bought this in Europe 11 months ago for 99 (around $125) before moving abroad. Finally I got the time to unpack it from its original box and plastic bags to start scanning my slides and films from the pre-digital era.

I scanned two sets of slides and the quality of the scan was TERRIBLE, it was almost like looking at a negative. This in contrast with the actual prints of the same slides which were quite clear (properly exposed).

The quality of the 35mm film scans was good but it lacked a holder for my old 110 film (11mm).

Why do I say you shouldn't waste your money on this? I scanned 6 sets of films and slides and the device broke down. The quality of the SD slot is very poor and to make it worse now it doesn't even power up.

I tried looking for screws in order to open it up in hopes of replacing the SD card holder (but then again now it doesn't even power up) and there were none to be found. Typical Chinese quality: deficient. Now I have an expensive paper weight and 70 films to be scanned.

This same device from ION is also marketed as Wolverine Film 2 SD. If are going to buy better spend the money on doughnuts or something you can enjoy because this device is no woth the plastic it was built with.

I bought this item, because, although there were some bad reviews, most of them seemed okay. All that I can think is that the people, whom have something to do with Ion, are writing the better reviews.

I am absolutely flabbergasted.

I want to transfer slides taken in the seventies to digital, but the result after using the Ion Flim 2 SD was absolutely terrible. The color is just about not there, (completely washed out and mostly hanging in the blue green realm) and the clarity is none existent, (with a close up head shot I cannot see if the person is smiling) I just paid $139.00 for this piece of junk and will be taking it back at my earliest convenience. The only thing worth anything in the unit I just bought was the 2 gig SD card that came with it. (Perhaps a 10 dollar item). Otherwise the plastic box wouldn't even be worth the value of a paper weight.

I implore those of you who are thinking about buying this. Do not waste your time. And do not think that you'll be seeing the clear picture represented on the box. I could not make out the pictures on the unit screen at all...in fact that flip and mirror option is laughable considering that you cannot see if the picture is even upside down.

The quality of the scans are sooooo bad, the whole marketing of this unit should somehow be fraud and therefore be punishable by law. This Thing is a real piece of junk!!!!!