Customer Reviews

Imagelab FS5CO5 5 Megapixel Slide and Negative Scanner

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

I've worked in the film industry for over twenty years, and helped develop scanning technology for negative/digital conversion of motion picture film. For this price, and the convenience, the ImageLab FS5CO5 scanner is a good choice for home-quality slide conversions. However, it is not without some definite shortcomings...

Scanning slides on my illuminated flatbed scanner was a slow and tedious process, especially since they had to be loaded one at a time, and took several minutes to calibrate and scan. That was fine for a few slides, but not when doing stacks and stacks. I've been looking for something quick and easy that my parents could use to import our thousands of family photos into the computer. I had looked at these hand-held "scanners" before, and the high prices and lack of quality always kept me from springing for one. There are also scanners that can scan multiple images, and are automated, but they also cost significantly more.

There are some very nice design elements to the ImageLab FS5CO5 scanner which set it above the other quick-shot scanners. Its' design is clean and self-explanatory. The functions are clearly labeled. There's one button for slides, and one button for film negatives. It also has a very handy "live" screen so you can see what's positioned and ready to scan. It's very fast, and although the scans come out very contrasty, a couple of quick adjustments in iPhoto produce very nice results, considering for the speed and simplicity. If you don't have iPhoto, or some basic knowledge of adjusting photos in another program, you might not be happy with the images as they come straight from the scanner. Some of my slides produced blown out highs, and inky black shadows before I tweaked them in the computer. If you do have iPhoto, load the scan, brighten the shadows, and lower the highlights, for a quick, and massive, improvement.

Some of the benefits of the ImageLab scanner.
-5 mp images. If the image is sharp, this megapixel size is enough for cropping and enlarging.
-SD Card. I love this feature. I have a Mac, and lots of computer hardware will only include software for a PC. With the simplicity of using a SD memory card in the ImageLab FS5CO5 Scanner, I can load the scans to my computer as easily as I upload my camera's photos. It also makes it very portable, for scanning slides when on a trip or visiting a relative.
-Quick Scanning. Flatbeds frequently take several minutes to scan a slide. This produces the best result, but if you're doing hundreds and hundreds of slides, it can take forever. This one is as fast as a camera. Push/click/done. Technically, this is a camera and not a scanner, which is why it works so fast. The camera just takes a closeup pic of the slide. It's never as good as the slow version, but you can save the time-consuming efforts for the special slides.
-Feels solid. Nice construction. Seems durable. Doesn't have that "cheap plastic" feel.
-Slide trays easily snap in place inside the scanner. Once loaded, the trays just slide in, and click in place.
-Good price.

However...

Some of the weaknesses of the ImageLab FS5CO5 Scanner.
The slide trays are not as well designed as they could be. They have a very shallow "footprint" to position each of the slides when being loaded. With the comparative depth of the closed tray, the frame could have been twice as deep, which would have made it much easier to drop the slides in place. As it is, you have to gently nudge the slides into place before the lid will close on the slide tray. This might not be a problem when doing a couple of slides, but when attempting to get through a bulk of slides, this gets progressively annoying.

The 35mm negative trays are another matter entirely. The standard 35mm negatives that I attempted to scan would not fit within the guides. The 35mm negatives that I tried were ordinary, flat, negatives that had been stored in a sleeve. There wasn't anything unusual about them. However, they puckered when trying to force them between the guide rails of the tray. I realize that film may have some organic irregularities, but this seemed significant. The gap between the outer edge of the sprocket and the rail beside it is very narrow, and would not accommodate any of the negatives that I tried last night. Ironically, with the guide sprockets for registration, you don't really need the rails in the first place.

So, until they fix the 35mm negative tray, it's questionable if you'd be happy trying to preserve family photos while potentially creasing or scraping the negatives. But, for a quick and easy way to get slides into the computer, I'd definitely give the ImageLab scanner a good consideration. It's not "archive quality" to the point that you could get rid of old slides, but it sure does make it a lot easier to enjoy them now.

While researching slide scanners, my gut told me to go with the Imagelab because it stood alone from the computer, no software required, could operate on batteries, came with 2 trays each for slides and negatives, could save images on an SD card and was compact.

In spite of all these positives, I went with the ION because it was a few dollars cheaper. Unfortunately, the ION went back to the store because, even though the box and software instructions indicated it was compatible with Vista...it wasn't! (The software is from another company and you have to pay for support.)

So now back to why I'm so happy with the Imagelab. I had a variety of slides and negatives of various ages and conditions. It is very easy to use and once you get into a routine of loading, scanning, and unloading the trays you can zip through boxes of slides in no time! There's the flexibility to save pictures directly on the computer (no software needed) or on an SD card. If needed, there is limited space to save pictures on the Imagelab (and then transfer to the computer using the USB cable provided). Another plus of the Imagelab is the "Viewing Window" where you can see the image you're scanning and even review all the ones you've scanned.

I spent a couple hours a day for a few days and successfully scanned nearly 1000 slides and negatives.

The Imagelab is well-worth the couple extra dollars (as compared to other slide/negative scanners)!

The scanner is quick. Loading film is a bit of a problem: the trays are just too shallow. Also, the resutls are contrasty and there is no built-in software for removing scratches. Before I bought this product, I was using a Canon flatbed scanner that was capable of processing negatives and slides. It took forever to do a roll of film, but it did produce much, much better results. Still, this isn't bad for the price.

I read most of the reviews before I bought this scanner, including the one star reviews. I bought it anyway!

As for the quality of scans, I think it depends on the condition of the slides. I have over 4000 slides to scan. I have found that the ones that are in prime condition scan just fine and need no tweaking later. The ones that have faded or color shifted will need a bit of work with an editing program, but they would with any scanner (except maybe the very high priced ones!).

What impressed me the most is the speed of the scan. Very fast. I also tried using it with batteries and it worked great but the battery life is not very long, about 60-100 slides, I think. If one needs to use it with batteries, I suggest you get a few rechargables, then you can swap the bateries and recharge while you use the new ones.

The ONLY thing I have against it is the holder that is limited to three slides. Once you have the slides in the holder, scanning three takes only seconds. Loading the tray takes longer than scanning the slides. I am thinking about altering the two to make one 6-slide tray from the two, but I can't find a place to buy extra trays and Imagelab says they don't sell them separately! Bummer!

Buy it, you'll like it!

The device worked as described right out of the box. No special software is required and none needs to be downloaded to your computer. The scanning of 35 mm slides is good but not quite as good as a high quality flatbed scanner. The color is slightly off and they are a bit dark. The better the quality of slide you are acanning, the better the scan will be. I use the Windows Photo Editor on my computer to quickly lighten up the scans. The Imagelab FS5CO5 scanner does a very good job of scanning 35 mm color negatives. The scan is quickly accomplished but as with the slide scans the color is a bit off. Also, the slide and negative holders are a bit undersized. By that I mean a small portion of the original slide or negative on both the right and left side of the view is not captured by the scanner. I am very pleased with the device. If you are looking for a quick and reasonably low cost way to transfer over all of those treasured slides and negatives to digital format, this is the device to purchase.

I was really excited about this product, and despite a few questionable reviews, I decided to take a gamble. I lost.

Like other reviewers, I have had a problem fitting some of my negatives into the tray. If I trim the sides, they'll fit, but that produces other problems - frequently, that's where the frame number is, and cutting it removes that number and I lose the order of my pictures. Some of the negatives have fit fine, despite the fact that it doesn't appear to fit before I shut the lid on the negative tray. If I try that same trick with some of my other negatives, they get all warped and squished.

The area scanned does not cover the entire frame, probably 10-15% of the frame is not scanned. That means I have to decide if I want to crop left, right or center. At least I have that option, because the tray has enough wiggle room when you slide it in to the unit.

You can't adjust the settings. It always scans the same size, and the same resolution. The quality of this pictures is pretty poor. I can't recognize many of the people in my pictures because the images are so dark. I'm not skilled enough with photoshop or other software to make them look better.

I must have the same problem as a previous reveiwer, because all of my scans have dust artifacts in the same place. The scanning surface is dirty and there doesn't seem to be much if anything I can do about it. This is after about 30 minutes of use.

On the plus side, the SD card slot is a cool idea, I can just scan my pictures to an SD card (2 GB limit) and take them where ever. The scanning is very fast. It's a really nice concept, it just doesn't work.

I'd really like to return mine.

The imagelab FS-5C05 is very fast. That is its only good characteristic. The scans are very low quality with severe resolution, color and contrast problems. Many people will be using this to scan old family slides which often have color shift and low saturation. If the slide is even slightly less than perfect the imagelab does a VERY poor job.

I read all the reviews and could not believe the reviews that stated that the slides do not fit in the holder. Well - They were right. The 35mm slides do NOT fit in the holder. You have to force them in and then they are hard to remove.

The SD card slot supports only the old 2GB or smaller cards. The preview screen is small, very low resolution and does not show the entire slide.

My old Epson V200 scanner does a MUCH better job on all types of slides. What is the point of a scanner that is easy to use and fast if the results are unacceptable.

I am going to try and return this product.

I ordered this scanner on June 10, 2009 and it arrived on the 11th. I quickly read the User Manual and set about scanning some slides and negatives. I was a bit amprehensive about the negatives because of what I had read in the current reviews; however, I did not find it as difficult as I had thought it would be. I would like to give this unit a 5 star rating; but, I did find that there is the slightess problem of pushing the trays through the unit. It is not as smooth as I would like. One must take great care in getting the slides and/or the negatives seated properly before proceeding with the scan. Regarding the reults of the scanning capabilities; I am very happy with with I have seen so far. Using the unit is pretty basic and very easy, as well as, fairly quick. I would recommend this unit to others - the price is good and I am anticipating that the unit will hold up under the quanity of slides and negatives I want to process.

If dust gets into the Imagelab FS5CO5 gizmo -- and it invariably will -- there seems no way to blow it out. You're stuck with getting the same blotches on all your negatives.
The negative and slide carriers are awkward to open.

For slides:
The image size (L & R borders) which results is not the same as what shows on the small LED screen... it truncates part of the edge of the picture. In other words, the aspect ratio of 35mm slides and negatives does not match that of the thing's LED screen.
Only 3 slides fit into one carrier. If it had been 4 I would probably have saved two days of scanning (I scanned a lot of slides).
Some glass-mounted slides won't let the slide carrier close and thus must be opened to be scanned.

For negatives:
The "sprockets" on the negative carrier don't match the holes in 35mm film! Imagine that!
You can't use the negative carrier with filmstrips that are more that 4 frames long. Only about 5% of my negative strips were that short or shorter. To use the carrier you must cut your film. Short, 1 or 2 frame strips are difficult to put into the carrier because the "sprockets" on the negative carrier don't match the holes, as stated.

Other:
My unit's internal backlight flickered occasionally.
Scanning the same image twice will not guarantee identical pictures. Color may vary. Cropping may vary.
There are may small design improvements which would improve this gizmo's utility.

Image quality:
Because I had to remove many dust artifacts using PhotoShop, many images suffered.

Design:
The small (ill-fitting-for-35mm-format) LCD is a farce -- An optical system, perhaps a simple magnifying glass, would have been cheaper to manufacture, might have had less obfuscation, more utility, clarity, ease of use than that the small LCD screen.
The negative and slide carriers are awkward to open... at least there could have been a small notch for one's fingernail to catch to help snap the hinged lid open... easy to do but thoughtless to omit.
The absence of a FLIP / ROTATE function cause me a lot of consternation and time. It's often not easy to see if a slide is in backwards -- you sense that something is askew, but you often can't tell until you flip it over to see it the correct way.

It's my opinion that most scanned images from a scanner such as this will need adjustments in PhotoShop or some image editing programs. This is especially true of old slides / negatives because film naturally degrades, changes color and hue over time. It seems that the original sharpness of the images suffers also. Then there's dirt and scratches...

So, plan on spending some time doing this photo converting. You'll probably also want to take the opportunity to transfer short-hand information about your slides by giving the files descriptive names -- names that will stay in proper sort-order once they're in a folder on your 'puter.

This is the only unit like this I've used; I can't compare with others. I had some other gripes but I forget them now, 'Nuff said.

I have over 2000 slides from the 70's and 80's of our family that I need to convert to CD/DVD. The Imagelab converter has worked great. It is very easy to use, and I really like the scan preview that is seen after each slide has been scanned. The slide scanning process for me will be a long process, but I can scan three slides each with the two scanning inserts that are provided. But what really makes this Imagelab scanner special, above others, is that when you upload the images. The images are up loaded via the usual USB port but do not go to desktop. They go to 'My Computer' just like using a 'jump drive'. Then you can keep or edit the images that you want to save using whatever image edit software you have. I highly recommend the Imagelab Slide/Negative Scanner