
Mounted slides or film stips will scan positive. For negatives, this means you will need to invert the image after scanning and then perform color correction/level adjustment/unsharp masking/etc. Using this method I was only able to ‘dumb scan’ at the highest resolution of 2592x1680. I installed the scanner drivers ONLY, ignoring the image editing software that came with the unit (Photoimpression 6) and instead chose to scan directly into PhotoShop CS3. The scanner is also insensitive to attitude, allowing usage virtually anywhere, from any angle (sideways on your lap, in bed, etc) making it much more likely you’ll get that scanning job done. The unit gets power from an attached 4 foot long USB 2.0 cable, so it has an extremly small desktop footprint. Although made of plastic, it has a very nice feel (akin to a ‘satin finish’ cell phone) and the mounted slide and filmstrip trays appear durable and fit firmly into the unit. The build quality of the VuPoint scanner is quite high. To relax the slides fully, try holding the tray over a steaming pot for about 10 seconds.) (Extremely curled negatives may introduce shadows into the scan. The trays are VERY GOOD at holding curled negatives secure. Each tray window snaps gently into place, helping you to perfectly align slides/negatives under the CCD. Simply take your slides or negatives, mount them in the included trays, and slide the trays into the scanner unit. The housing contains a mini lightbox at the bottom to illuminate 35mm slides/negatives for scanning by the CCD. The VuPoint 35mm slide scanner is exactly what it appears to be, a 5MP low-mid range CCD in a plastic housing. It was cheap, simple, and appeared to do everything I needed. That’s when I saw the VuPoint FS-C1-VP 35mm scanner. Also, the new device had to be simple to operate, allowing me to get negatives and film strips mounted as quickly as possible, while also having facilities to secure curled strips. Since the 500f’s slide attachment only supports film strips, the new device had to support mounted slides. It became clear I needed a faster solution both in terms of mounting and scanning speed. I worked out how long it was taking me to mount and scan each negative, and took a look at my remaining workload (about 2,000 negatives and mounted 35mm slides remaining). Many of the negatives had curled up with the low humidity of Winter and mounting them into the 500f’s slide adapter was quickly becoming a nightmare. Here’s a short review.Īlthough I’d been successfully using a Canon CanoScan LIDE 500f to scan OLD 35mm color and B&W negatives, it was slow going. Works with Windows XP and Vista (I’m currently using it with XP only). I just picked up a Vupoint FS-C1-VP 35mm slide and negative scanner for $99 ( ).
