Customer Reviews

Ion 35mm Photo Negative and Slide Converter to PC (SLIDES2PC)

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(23)
1 star:		(65)

 

 

I have a large amount of my dad's 35mm slides, mainly from the 50's and 60's. I wanted to digitize them for him for a Christmas gift. I checked into services that do this professionally and found them to be out of my price range as I literally have around 700-900 that I want digitized. Next step was to look for a scanner to do it myself.
The best (Nikon w/Digital ICE) also out of my price range. So I landed on the Ion Slide2PC. I figured, this would at least get them into 'viewing' quality. At 5megapixels in a decently high res right?
I also got a rocket blaster and a static master to clean the slides before hand and cleaned each before starting with a puff of air and a brush of the static master.
I put the slide2pc the on it's highest setting and went to work. While they aren't Nikon quality, I must say that I'm impressed with the output. I wish that I could tweak the lighting a little so the under and over exposed would come out a little better but with a little photo shop magic, I'm even able to fix those up.
Most are print quality - not perfection as the lines aren't as sharp as perhaps they would be with a more expensive scanner, but many look excellent.
Really I was patient. I gave it the requisite 5 seconds for the white balance between snapshot and transfer. and I did all in .tiff so I could edit each if necessary.
I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to save money as it's quick and effective at digitizing your slides. I have not tested it on film negatives.

I used this item to convert 1500 slides for my parents. Once I got up the learning curve, I could average 70 an hour. You must dust off each slide individually or you will be unhappy because every speck will show. If there was a way to adjust the amount of back light, results would be better but I suspect that will be a feature in the next generation of these things. When the original lighting of the slides was "perfect" the digitized version was excellent, if the slides were light the image all but disappeared and if the slides were dark all you got was a dark blob. Luckily most of my parents' slides were OK and I got some excellent results and was able to make copies for my siblings and create a slide show for my parents on their new computer. At this price point, a great way to save and share family memories.

It sounded too good to be true. It's hard to find a service that will scan negatives for anything resembling a reasonable rate. Online tutorials I read about scanning negatives all said that decent negative scanners cost hundreds of dollars and were slow to use.
So when I got the ION Slides 2 PC scanner, I fully expected it to be yet another piece of cyber junk cluttering up my desk. I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least.
It is very easy to install and use. And it takes up very little space.
If you are looking for something that is professional quality, go ahead and keep looking. If you want something reasonably priced that can give you access to those slides that you've been really meaning to do something with click "add to cart."
You won't regret it.

I have only scanned a couple of rolls of 35mm negatives on this unit thus far, but I can already tell that I will be making the effort to dig out all the negatives I can find to scan. The program included is quite easy to use, and surprisingly offers pretty good editing tools for a novice photo editor (such as myself).

Scanning the negatives could not be simpler. The negatives fit neatly into the tray provided, and all that's left after that is to slide the tray into the unit. I will say that it does take a bit more time than advertised in the user guide to scan and transfer the images to your PC, but I don't mind, I just thought it worthy of mention.

Keep in mind that the image you get is only as good as the negative you have and the camera used to shoot the original image. That said, the editing tools help to compensate for any brightness and color issues, and allow you to crop out unnecessary background items.

I was a bit skeptical that this unit would perform as well as I have found that it does, at the low price for which it sells, but I am very pleased. I am looking forward to digitizing more images, and making CDs for my friends and family.

I purchased the Ion Slides 2 Pc to digitize a large family collection of slides from over the years. For its small cost, I thought I could save a lot by doing it myself and not sending it to a lab to do it professionally. Once you install the software (scanner driver, and Photo Impression 6), you reboot and then start up Impression 6. Click on "get Photos" and the quick scanner calibration starts. Now its time to scan. The program gives a live view what the scanner sees so you can align everything up(the trays click into place for each slide, but it is just to make sure everything is aligned), and then you can take a "snapshot" (using the button scanner, or the button on the program) of the slide, and continue onto the next one. Unfortunately, the scanner can only store 12 slide snapshots in its memory before it has to transfer them to the computer. When you copy over to the computer, the transfer rates are VERY slow. About 1 and a half minutes per each snapshot. The labeled "30 images per minute" is pure crap. If you can do up to 12, and then have to transfer, how could that be under a minute? On top of that, the file sizes were only 300kb(using normal quality). What took so long? I believe that you may as well just get a flatbed scanner with the slide attachment for it, because they both will take the same time and have the need for the flimsy slide/negative tray. Unless this product can be used with the driver and another program, I think it is a complete waste. The system it was running off of had:
RAM: 2.00 GB
CPU: Dual Core 1.7 GHz
Windows Vista Home Premium

Unlike some of the reviewers, I had no problem setting up either the hardware or software. However, the current device driver doesn't allow for manual adjustments, so light areas tend to be burnt out, which can't be compensated for using Photoshop or its equivalent. If this doesn't bother you, fine, but otherwise I'd recommend the CanoScan 4400F.

Despite the negative reviews below I thought I'd give it a try since it has a nice price and I have lots of slides to digitize. Too bad, it doesn't work on my Dell XPS XP system. Unfortunately, the Ion Slide 2PC depends on the old TWAIN scanner drivers. Since it is a camera why couldn't they connect as a camera instead of a flaky, slow scanner? Although it installs easily I found that I cannot calibrate it on my Dell XPS XP system even though I tried to cleanse my system of any other TWAIN remnants. Also, their support does not exist. Weeks have gone by and I can't get a response. I did install it on my sons old XP system and it did work! No scanners. However, it is limited in RAM and the Slide 2 PC is really, really slow there. Don't bother to buy this if you ever had a scanner on your system.

I have a 2 phase complaint.
1. The instructions and manual say to calibrate the slide scanner before first use. When I perform this step, Windows XP restarts. So I cannot really rate the product because it will not load. The customer support (e-mail only) ARCSOFT Said the problem is the Scanner Driver they cannot help with hardware. There is No support available from ION manufacture listed.

2. I received the scanner from the seller (GIZMOS FOR LIFE) on 12/23/08
Tried to use it that day and it failed. Reported the problem that day 12/23/08 and got a automated email reply that response would be 1 to 3 buisnes days. According to the return policy listed here on Amazon.com
the Seller (GISMOS FOR LIFE) the buyer has to pay for shipping to return
a faulty item. THIS IS WRONG just Wrong. If the item is defective the buyer should not have to pay to return it. I will revise my review if and when I hear from the seller (GISMOS FOR LIFE). PS I have bought a lot of items from Amazon.com and have never had a problem before.

I've been using this product to 'scan' 35MM slides from the 60s/70s/80s.

This product is not a scanner in the typical sense of the word. It does not scan the slides. It is actually a digital camera that projects the slide to an image sensor and it takes a picture of the image.

The quality of the product itself is great, but my rating is only 3/5 because of the software.

I was able to install and start using it on my Vista Home Premium Dell laptop with no problems at all. It has worked reliably each time and I've done 7 boxes of slides so far.

My gripe with it is the OVT Scanner driver and the ARCSoft software that comes with it.
1)I can only access the scan quality settings (e.g. TIF vs JPG; normal, high, highest quality; color depth etc.) from within the ARCSoft software.
2)I can't manually change white balance and this is a huge problem. If you wait 5-10 seconds after inserting a slide it will auto-adjust the white balance, but it is far from perfect. There have been dark images that I can't scan with ARCSoft, but if I use Picasa to acquire the image, it is much better. But if I use Picasa (or any other app) to acquire images I can't change the quality settings and it scans it as a Normal quality jpeg, when I would much rather it as higher quality.

This would be a much better product if the software, and especially the driver, were better. If you have images that would be lost otherwise, and are not in the best shape to begin with because of aging and you won't be making prints (only to store on hard drive) I would recommend this converter. If you want high quality scans with control over the scan settings with image fixing, go with a regular slide scanner or flat bed with a slide adapter.

It has the potential to be a useful, though not professional quality scanner. The big downfall is support from Ion I tried 5 times to get an email response from them to no avail. I've called them twice and was told there would be a 20 minute wait. After twenty minutes I was switched to another line and told there would be another 20 minute wait. I would not recommend this or any other Ion products because of the total lack of regard they have for their customers.