Customer Reviews

Veho Film and Slide Converter

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I've been looking for a simple, quick and quality scanner for years. Previous tries with flatbed scanners were quite disappointing. However, this unit is incredibly good! Set up was quick and easy--the directions were accurate and complete. And the quality is perfect. We we able to scan and save hundreds of old slides and negatives. This is a superior product. It scans the slide or negative in just a second or so, saving literally hours of time compared with the flatbeds that required a minute or more to scan. Highly recommended.

I received the Veho Film and Slide Converter for Christmas. Now, understand that I have been lusting for a Nikon Coolscan V for almost two years. But all those gift hints were being ignored by those people most likely to take the plunge and buy a slide and negative scanner for me. <S I G H > Something about "cost benefit analysis." So, I was mildly surprised when the Veho unit appeared under the Christmas tree! As I type this review, I have just spent an entire day processing slides and photo negatives with the Veho unit. I am pleased. If you are looking for something hands free or something to load and walk away from, this is NOT the unit for you. It requires diligence and you have to keep your wits about you. BUT IT GETS THE JOB DONE! My net yield for my casual efforts today were about 75 slides and an additional 30 negative strips fed into my computer photo files. Since I have about 3,000 slides to go and about 800 negative strips, I can see this becoming a long term project. But, the results are impressive.

The software loads easily and is intuitive. The minimalist operating manual provides just enough information.

Warning - as of the date of this review, the support software is PC only. I'm a Macintosh user. Fortunately, I use an iMac running operating system 10.5.2 and have loaded a partition on my computer to allow me to also run Windows Vista. I operate in PC/Vista mode and archive my work to a CD disk. Then I reboot in Macintosh mode and copy the contents of the archive photo CD with iPhoto and/or Aperture software. Not the best way to do business, but I am willing to kludge this together to make it all happen.

Summary - It does what it advertises it will do and the end result is quite good for one-fourth the cost of the Nikon Coolscan V. Do I wish I had the Nikon Coolscan? Yes. Am I getting the job done with the Veho Film and Slide Converter? Absolutely. Practical and economical. Four stars for a good product. It loses one star because of the lack of Mac software.

This is not a professional slide and negative scanner, nor does it claim to be. However, for my purposes, getting passable scans of my old slides that I can later optimize, it fills the bill, and at a very reasonable cost.

Some negative reviewers complain about the quality of the scans, and when I first started using the scanner, I got very uneven results. After a short time, however, I discovered that the software performs an incremental optimization of the image. If one waits until the image is optimized (which will depend on the speed of one's computer), the results are much more even. When I am dissatisfied with the results I can readily get something better from the scans by adjusting the brightness, contrast and gamma. High contrast slides tend to be the least acceptable without additional optimization. It is also important to blow off dust from each slide prior to scanning with a can of compressed gas. Otherwise, dust will ruin the results, but that will be true of any scanner.

I am very happy that I can view my old slides again.

Looking for an affordable solution for converting over 3000 Ektachrome slides, I purchased the Veho Film and Slide Converter through Amazon's off-site connection to Brookstone. (This unit appears identical to one by Hammacher Schlemmer). Perhaps the only good thing I have to say for the Veho was that Brookstone issued a return authorization with no hassle or argument.

I was able to install the hardware and software without a hitch, using the provided CD. ArcSoft's Photo Impression 6 isn't terrible, though it isn't all that outstanding either, lacking some of the features of PhotoShop or Compupic Pro. However, after several hours of trying, I was unable to get a single properly color-balanced or focused image from my slides. The "automatic exposure control and color balance" built into the scanner were completely inflexible, producing washed-out, over-exposed images with white skies. The final exasperation was when the input portal "door" broke off its hinge -- after perhaps 12 hours of use.

There must be an affordable solution for slide scanning out there somewhere. But this isn't it.

I found the scanning software to be clunky and inaccurate. It would allow you to scan a slide and adjust the color & saturation levels, but the final image would look NOTHING like the preview - it was more of a trial-and-error process. Scanning in a negative was even worse: the preview would show you what the negative looked like, not the photo, so it's impossible to tell how to adjust the levels to make the picture look better. I had to wait until I'd saved the image and looked at it in another program before I could tell if my adjustments even worked. The actual use of the machine is simple, but the software renders it worthless.

Hardware and software were easy to setup (although I received a warning from Microsoft XP that the software had not been certified and could potentially impair the operation of my computer). Scanning the slides to my hard drive was quick and easy. HOWEVER, the quality of the pictures was poor. Focus was OK, but color and saturation were terrible. My slides are in excellent condition, and I tried a number of them with the same results. I have PhotoShop, so I can hopefully go in and fix the photos, but that kind of defeats the purpose of being able to create the digital files quickly. I will probably just bite the bullet, return the Veho to Brookstone, and pay for a more expensive device that can give me high quality images. The memories on the hundreds of slides I have are worth it.

Bought this for my dad who has DRAWERS of slides. After a quick and painless setup, we scanned 36 slides in about 1/2 hour. This is not auto-feed. You have to place 4 slides in the tray and push them through individually. It's easiest to do with 2 people - one to get the slides ready, one to click them through.

However, it is great to see these old pictures being recovered and saved in another more permanent format. MUCH cheaper than taking stacks of slides to be made into prints at the store, and MUCH quicker than using a flatbed scanner.

Would recommend!!

The unit was returned to Brookstone. I want to scan 35mm slides. The only function that performed well was the scan speed. Then, each slide needed to be adjusted for color. I spent over an hour trying to adjust the color on 3 slides. My color comparison basis.. the slides were being projected on a screen as I tried to make the adjustments. I got 1 slide of 3 close to being acceptable. Even as I duplicated the settings from 1 slide to the next, the color didn't come in. No global adjustment. I emailed Veho technical support in England as to whether there was a global setting, no response. The preview didn't work, it was a rainbow of color and not the image. Now, about Brookstone. The returned unit was received by Brookstone on 12/12. On 12/22 it wasn't yet logged into their system. The excuse, we don't have computers on the RMA dock!!! What company requires a RMA and then doesn't log it when it comes in. Thank God for UPS tracking. On 12/24, no one was in receiving because they were trying to get everything out. On 12/27, it still hadn't been found. On 12/30 Amazon notifies me that I am getting a refund.

I highly recommend the Veho Film and Slide Converter it does a fantastic job and is very easy to use. I recorded 700 slides in just a couple hours.

Bought this product to scan 35 mm slides. The manual was almost useless; it only had one reference to slides. Nor did the manual tell you how to load the slides. Setting up the software was also not well explained. After I finally figured out how to scan, and transfer the slides I went looking for them. They were not in the location I specified in the setup. There is no way to bring up the system to change the location. To do that it is necessary to remove and then re-install software. Scanning once you figure it out yourself is straight-forward but saving images is still a problem. You first scan the image, then have to click to "snapshoot" it then tell the program to transfer the pictures. It is hard to tell when the process is complete. I lost a bunch of scanned pictures after going through scanning, snapshooting, and "transferring" them.

Not a happy camper!!!