Slide carrier missing – the very one I need of course! Not impressed.
Take back all I said! I found the slide carrier and managed to cancel the return.
I needed something quick and easy for several hundred slides of mine and my late father’s. There is slight cropping of the image but not too much to worry about. The only downside is that it won’t take old Agfa plastic mounts as they are too thick. I did have a problem with the supplied cleaning brush. I pushed it through the right hand slot and it went with a click but I couldn’t push it right through due to the thick handle, and I couldn’t pull it back out again as it was stuck. Not wanting to exert undue force I resorted to hacksawing the handle off! But it did the job and cleaned off a lump of schmush.
Above is a slide of my father’s taken in Switzerland in the 70’s.
4.0 out of 5 stars Item returned - and cancelled agai
Instruction book gives conflicting information gearing size of SD card needed and the print and pictures are so small you need perfect vision to be able to read them. We are using a magnifying glass!
No problem scanning old slides with this unit. Takes a little while to get the knack of positioning the slide in exactly the right place as the guides aren’t the greatest but for the price I’m happy enough: 40 year old slides scanned, enhanced and printed out to share with the family.
Reading the reviews you’d soon be put off as it seems people are comparing this to high end scanners like the Epsom v600. Well you are never going to match the quality of that scanner and it’s unfair to make the comparison. What you get here is a cheaply made plastic box ( yes even the wife said “how much did you pay for that?) and I must admit at first glimpse you take a gulp and think was it worth it.
However I’ve only had a quick play around with it and scanned an old B&W negative from about 30 yrs ago and I’m pleased with it. I think the majority of people who just want to scan old negatives for memories of times gone by and share them with family would be more than happy with the result.
The picture attached was my first attempt without even reading the instructions, so I’ve a little more to learn and I’d suggest the paperwork and instructions are read to get a good insight to its workings before getting stuck into scanning big time.
It’s not a professional scanner and no you will not get professional results (those in the trade should already know that)
For the everyday amateur wanting to smile from memories of yesteryear- then this might be for you.
The item is plastic, so are the film holders and they won’t take a lot of knocking about – beware of this.
A good little unit at the entry level of scanning. It will do those just satisfying curiosity as to what’s on those old negatives stuck in the drawer.
This is priced accordingly. It’s an easy solution to review old negs and slides.
Probably not best suited for professional output, but a good home solution for viewing and saving old photos
There are a couple of online tutorials to help with the set up.
Slide carrier needs a modification to accept slide mounts as it is not easy to open up the carrier. It won’t accept slides in plastic mounts unless you are able to modify the slide carrier.
I like that I can power it up from the mains and from PC so no matter where I am I can use it. It is nice and compact so doesn’t take up much room on the desk and it will fit in a drawer when not in use to help protect it.
Slightly damaged 40 year old 35 and 110 negatives converted to digital. Slightly grainy but colour okay for my purpose. I had to buy a memory card for the scanner and a USB card reader to get the images onto computer. It takes a little time and care to feed the negatives through the scanner and the screen is quite small but good enough for family photos I’d say.
The colour on the small screen is very yellow but is clearer on play back. I can’t give an opinion on how it looks transferred to tv or laptop as I am still capturing my 35 mm negatives
Our scanner arrived today, on time. The size is impressively small. We’ve so far scanned a dozen or so slides, which have by and large come up better quality (colour, brightness) than previous scans of the same slides, so we’re happy with that. The scans look to be as sharp as the original slides, which are not perfect anyway. The instructions are not too bad but we had to play around a bit to find just what to do. We had to provide our own SD card (I think this is made clear in the sales blurb) and we had to have the scanner connected to the computer to transfer the scans — ie we couldn’t plug the SD direct into the computer, that just showed an empty SD card. A small array of “carriers” is supplied; we’ve only used the one for 35mm slides; it’s easy enough to use but feels a bit fragile so we’ll want to be a bit careful how we handle it. It won’t take slides in 3mm thick mounts, but it’s easy enough to transfer a slide to a thinner, 2mm, mount if you have a spare plastic one to hand. Don’t know if it’s the best on the market because we haven’t tried the others but we’re pleased enough with it. Can’t speak for its durability because it only arrived today. Not tried it with a Mac either. Not a bad piece of kit. Enjoy!
Surprisingly light and small I wondered if this scanner was up to the job but it proved very good for my purpose.
A little tedious getting each film strip into the scanner but easy to scan and save to an SD card – A 16 Mb card holdes about 7500 14Mb photographs.
Scans slides as well BUT some of my slide cases are too big to go in the holder. DO NOT FORCE THEN IN. getting them out is a real pain in the A$$
Colour representation good and adjustable RBG and Gamma.
It took about 4 hours to scan in over 2000 images. Now to take on the task of going through on my PC to correct faults and catagorise them.
i had about 200 old, i mean 70yrs old.negatives put in the back of a drawer 20yrs ago and forgotten about. i,m not a photographer . i recently sorted said drawer, see these negatives from dads old house. anyways looked on amazon found film scanner. they are still negatives but i can see now what i looked like 65yrs ago. i can now terrorise my sisters on facebook posting their baby pics
have only just used it on some slides and I am very pleased with the results. I am about to try and scan some old negatives and hoping Iget the same results
I bought this to scan a few-thousand 40+yr old slides which were deteriorating in my damp loft. The set up is relatively easy. The scanner produces a jpeg image of the slide around 1.5Mb in size. It won’t win any prizes for superb optical resolution but as a simple and straightforward way of converting old slides into durable digital images it would be hard to beat. Worked fine with oblong (135) and square(126) slides. Also worked well on old negatives. I tried scanning images from old 8mm cine films but this really didn’t work well. Overall a great gadget for preserving images of friends and family in an accessible format.
The 35 mm slides when scanned do not take the full slide, about 10 of the width doesn’t get scanned/saved. Easy to use and upload to PC etc. But all in all not bad for the price.
pretty good kit, easy to use and ok quality. great for what I needed, archiving old family transparencies. I scanned them very quickly and did the rest in Photoshop
This item wasn’t the cheapest, I didn’t want to get a real cheap one in case the quality was rubbish. Anyway, this item is easy to use, but i found the reproduction of my photos wern’t poor but the picture quality wasn’t what i was expecting… Maybe i was expecting too much from my old negatives from the 90s. Some were better than others, and at least i had copies of old phots to send to family members..Would i buy it again?…maybe i would go for something a bit more expensive which is a PC based scanner, then i would be able to view the image easier on my PC and make any editing pre processing of image..
This is a great little scanner. Have scanned some 60 year old slides to flash drives to give to the family for Christmas. Just before digital photography arrived I took a course in photography and have dozens of unprinted negatives to transfer. I might also try to transfer some stills from the old video films. I am so pleased with this little kit. Buy this with confidence , if you need support it is readily available from the seller who answers emails with great speed. Thank you support @ digit now.
Took a while to get my head around the instructions, had dismal failures to start with, slept on it overnight and started again. Success, I am pleased with the results. The holders are a bit fiiddly but its a minor issue really.
I wish they had included holders for Standard 8 cine film but I guess I can fashion something myself.
Bottom line, you could pay a lot more for minimal improvement, for me it works just fine.
I just rough out what I need on the Digitnow then finish with Coral Paint Shop Pro.
This machine is easy to use, it takes usual cardboard slides and the thicker plastic ones are a bit of a squeeze, but they can be scanned.
Useful machine to get digital copies of old slides.
To see these forgotten photos and memories come alive is magic. This product has stood the test of time very well. I have processed over 5,000 negatives over an eighteen month period, and having the scanner on for considerable lengths of time as well. It is a tedious job and you have to stay focus but the results are worth it and a job worth doing as its all then available for future generations. The best advice is to read the instructions well before use, as its not nice to re-do your first 700 negatives because you made fundamental errors, by using the wrong parts. You soon get into a rhythm/routine. Does the job, robust but its all manual work.
For the price, this device is very good and does the job. Pretty easy to use, and faster than more expensive alternatives as you can keep pushing slides through one after the other. The attachments don’t cater for thicker slides (in plastic housing) however we found you can push them through manually. Not ideal, but still works.
I managed to digitize approximately 400 slides with acceptable quality (just). As other reviewers have said, some of the plastic encapsulated slides eg old ‘Boots’ slides, are a bit of a tight squeeze, but managed to get them all through in the end. I found the easiest way to use this is to use an external colour monitor to view the slide position before pressing ‘Scan’. I found all the slides I digitized had a very blue cast (I assume they use a white LED as the light source); this can be adjusted for in the scanner itself, but the easiest thing to do, if you have a photo editing program like Photoshop or similar, is to adjust the ‘Colours’ and ‘Levels’ post scanning. In my case, I found the quality just about acceptable (I would say the resolution is on a par with an old 2Mp camera) but on balance it rapidly processed a large number of slides which are mainly destined for a USB stick to show an elderly relative in Care. You will need to use the cleaning stick regularly, I found once per 20 slides or so was about right. A bit pricey for what it is, but overall I’m pleased with the purchase.
Was just what I was looking for. All my parents slides were copied to sdhc card so many memories to share again. Obviously quality was not so good many years ago but none the less I am so pleased with it. Didn’t change the fact that my mum missed off many heads when taking photos but still the memories are precious.
With several thousand negatives to scan to digital, I was keen to find a scanner that would not take ages to scan each image. This reasonably priced little scanner took about half an hour to set up and understand the settings and menus and we were off. So far I have scanned around 1000 negatives and can confirm that quality of scan is quite acceptable considering the scanner appears to take a quick snapshot of the negative presented and a better scan would probably take a minute or more each time. The scan time is about two seconds each and the quality acceptable on a 12 x 18 computer screen. I wouldn’t want to rely on this for a quality print to A4 size, but it is
doing the job I asked of it and I look forward to seeing more of my store of holiday pictures from around the world
Easy to use and produces decent result. BUT it does not capture the full frame. It chops the top and bottom of the picture. Whilst this isn’t always an issue, if the photo is a close up or a group, you can end up with sliced heads. There’s no way to can change this or manoeuvre the negative in the adapter to compensate.
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This scanner is very small so if you’re like me & have poor eyesight you will need a magnifying glass. It’s not outstanding but it serves its purpose. I sent mine back and went for the 22 megapixel version. Not so easy to use if you’re dealing with a single negative but strips and slides are easy. I feel that you really need some sort of photo editing soft wear to get the best from the scanne
Strightforward to use – sometimes a bit too easy to press the off button by mistake when adjusting colour. Default setting is for negatives but very easy to choose slides. I have only used this for slides and with good quality pictures it works well. Good that you can adjust the colour on the DigitNow itself and then do more on the computer later if you wish. These two slides date from 1969 and 1967. The results are dependent on the original quality but it is a good way to save memories.
I had upwards of 100 old slides which belonged to my Dad. I have now been able to transfer them to my computer and share them with the family. The process is very easy. I just connected the converter straight to my desktop and it didn’t take long to transfer them. I can now edit them on my computer. I am so pleased I now have access to them rather than keeping them stored away. We have all enjoyed reliving old memories!
The instructions weren’t very easy to follow but found it quick and easy to use once I had got the hang of it. Just one problem I had some Agfa slides which were encased in quite a thick plastic casing. Had a bit of difficulty getting some of these through but overall excellent piece of kit at a reasonable price
This cheap-and-cheerful scanner works fine. There is a single page, six point quick start guide which is very helpful and gets you going easily. It produces high quality JPEGs which you can then do anything you like with.
Two little gripes reduce my rating to four stars: As the device has no battery, it has to be plugged in order to work and the cable is short. If you’re not plugging it directly into a laptop and your mains socket is more than 75cm from where you want to work, you’ll have to faff around with an extension lead. Secondly, the device needs an SD card to work (even if connected to external memory in a laptop) and this isn’t provided. So unless your house is littered with spare SD cards, you will need a further purchase before you can use the thing. It’d be much better to include a basic card and increase the price by a pound or two.
It can be a bit fiddly to insert the negatives sometimes. able to change the light balance before saving. 110 negatives are very hard to copy, you have to save it with multiple light changes to choose your best, the result is not that good. 35 mm is ok and easy to copy.
Found it a piece of cake to use. Quality is pretty good for the price, and the fact that I’m scanning forty year old negs.
Reasonable price, very happy.
I was supprised at the quality of the scans. It takes a little time to get the sequence of button pushing correct. I have now scanned over 1600 negatives & slides, bothe B/W & colour. the only quibble is that it crops the image slightly, but I can live with that.
Copied 46 year old slides and 10 year old colour negatives as first attempts. Aim is now to digitise most of my old photographs – slides and colour negatives.
Great quality.
Playback of files to PC screen/monitor is good using USB lead, copying of files to PC using USB lead good – better than removing the SD card.
Screen on device is very small, only use is to ensure photograph is properly aligned.
It would be better if when copying photograph to device if it could be seen on PC screen as well as on device – the USB lead from PC does power the device.
For the price this is perfect and very handy. I have hundreds of old negatives and just wanted to go through them quickly and have good enough scan/image to keep for momento. To be honest no discernible difference between low and high res image options, larger just takes longer. So I ended up scanning all at low res. This is very quick to scanner (about 5 secs per negative image) and works fine. Don’t expect perfect images that can be blown up to good 10 x 8 print. However, perfectly good enough for small prints or on screen (see unedited example). Either invest in very expensive scanner or send to professional for images you want blown up for printing or high res.
So great to us this and restore old pictures. Its a real voyage of discovery to see old picture brought back to life. You will have to ignore the negative reports on this product. About scratching film. Thats is nonsense its works perfectly fine.
Used to convert old colour negatives. The scanner is really easy to use but you need to have negatives which are in good condition.
I would also clean the scanner regularly otherwise tiny blemishes will appear on the scan.
I found the instructions very unclear but after a bit of fiddling I am getting some excellent results. The edit facility is useful although I mainly use the computer. I am converting 35 mm slides so the default setting for negatives is a minor irritatio
This is a very basic little machine, as you would expect for its price, but it does the job. I am scanning some very old slides and gave been surprised at the quality, although some are so rough that they require a fair amount of editing on the computer. Some (but not all) slides in plastic cases are too thick, but as I am doing this in order to get rid of the slides, I just swap them into cardboard covers. I am sure you can get much fancier, robust machines, but really this is not going to be used once I have completed this task.
So this was my predicament. Lots of slides of Pic’s that my dad took over 50 years ago and never get to see them. Have all the bulky, mains powered viewers but everything is in the loft and they never get looked at. Hence, this purchase.
Now I get that today’s generation know nothing but Jpeg, but my family history is on Slides and I haven’t seen these pic’s for years. This is so easy to use. All you need is an SD card or Micro SD with a converter, bang it in and start using. I’m only using this for slides but you can use it for negatives or 110 film etc. I was caught out by the settings to start off with as everything was coming out as a negative, but that was the default and once changed it was easy. More importantly it was quick.
When all the catalogue is finished, I’m going to transfer onto memory sticks and send out to the family. My good deed
great product, reasonable price, easy and quick to use. You can run it through a TV if the screen is too small for you to use, perfect!!!!
First of all forget any negative reviews. I bought this to review and digitise old B&W film negatives that were left by my father – some dating back to the 1960’s. So pleased I bought this scanner – it does what I wanted so effortlessly. Now for some detail…
The scanner is very easy to set up – the manual is adequate but if you are tech minded it is not needed. It does not need a SIM card as it has some internal memory – I tried this and then decided to use an old 32GB SDHC (Sandisk Extreme – 60MB/s, easy to insert with contacts faced upwards). Inserted my first strip of B&W negative 35mm film, toggled through the menus to select film OK and then B&W, press OK, 135 (35mm) press OK. Slide the first strip of fiim (4 images) through, continued sliding through until a picture I liked (I needed to raise the scanner of books to eye height to assure the exposure /contrast was being viewed correctly – you can to adjust exposure press ok in needed and then toggle/down then press scan), press scan and then OK to save the picture. It is that easy!! I had previously been using my Epson V370 Photo – good but tedious!
Repeated lots of times and then plugged USB lead into my MacBook … recognised the device straight away and could then copy photos to Mac.
Oh – forgot to say I selected resolution of 22 – produces approx 3MB file for each photo. There seems to be slight cropping of the image but not an issue for me.
I bought this to scan old 35mm B&W negatives for display on a website – and for this purpose it is very good. The native resolution of the sensor is 14 MegaPixels (MP) which for 35mm film gives a digital image of 3072 x 4608 pixels. The digital scan is saved as a JPG and from B&W 35mm negatives the file size is around 2MBytes (possibly bigger for colour images). This is more than adequate for any use on a website, digital picture frame or tablet – even with moderate cropping (post capture on a computer) to select part of the image. This resolution would also be fine for normal size (6×4 inch) prints. If you are comparing the scan resolution to other types of more expensive scanners then the native 14MP scan equates to a 3200dpi (dots per inch) scan resolution.
There is a higher scan resolution mode (22MP) but this is created by interpolation and contains no additional image detail – the captured detail is just spread over more pixels. The only benefit of this mode is that it creates a finer pixel granulation at higher magnifications or larger print sizes. Using the 22MP scan resolution a 35mm B&W frame produces an digital image of 3760 x 5640 pixels – with a file size of around 2.8MBytes and equates to a scan resolution of 4000dpi. For my purposes I did not find the interpolated (22MP) mode added anything to the image – but for larger size hardcopy prints it may be useful to reduce visible pixelation.
The built in controls allow for exposure correction (lighter or darker) and the LCD display shows a positive image – which makes reviewing the images from negatives much easier. For colour negatives and slides you also get the option to adjust the RGB colour balance – but I have not as yet tied any colour film.
The unit does have a small internal memory (98 MBytes available) – enough for 30-40 B&W images. It is possible to use the unit just using the internal memory – but you would have to keep moving batches of images to a computer (via USB cable) to clear the internal memory store ready for the next batch. Alternatively you can plug in a standard SD memory card (32GB maximum) and images will be automatically stored on that. Apart from the benefit of being able to scan as many images as you want without stopping – you also get the option to remove the SD card and plug it directly into a computer to transfer the scans at a much faster speed than USB_2 allows.
The biggest plus for this unit is the speed of the capture process – just a couple of seconds per frame. This compares to one to two minutes per frame for most of the more expensive high resolution scanners. The film adapter for 35mm works well – just insert it into the scanner and then feed strips of negatives through from right to left – adjusting the position using the LCD display. Each image capture requires only two key presses (assuming no changes to exposure correction) – press the Scan button and then the OK button – very simple and very quick. For bulk processing of 35mm images for use on screens this product is ideal and for standard size hardcopy prints it produces results that are as good as a 10MP camera.
I’m very pleased with the results of scanning transparencies, colour negatives and Black & White negatives. As others have said the instructions could be better but a little practice and some trial and error soon makes the user proficient. Colour and brightness correction is very useful. The internal memory can store up to 48 images at 14Mega Pixel from 35mm scans so a memory card isn’t essential. I don’t understand the few critical reviews that have been posted.
Great little tool on the cheaper range. I used for slides. Take time and you can brighten some. Many of my slides were taken on low budget film and poor quality. Enjoyed recovery.
Not difficult to use. Like anything, study and practice.
I bought this product to save a huge collection of colour slides built up by an elderly neighbour over a 50 year period. He has more than 3,000 slides in his collection and wanted them saved in digital format but professional companies charge around 55p per slide. I have already scanned around 25% of his collection, saving hundreds of pounds. The viewer is very easy to use and stores all the new files on an SD card (not supplied) scanning each image in less than 10 seconds. The quality is excellent. I had some trouble with the slightly thicker plastic slides but the older cardboard slides slip through very easily. Hundreds of images of Scottish lochs, fishing ports, pageants and village life saved from oblivion. I’m delighted.
If like me your old faded photos were taken with cheap cameras when you had no idea about composition, lighting, and avoidance of flash shadows, then with any scanner it is a case of rubbish in means rubbish out. My negatives are between twenty five an fifty years old and by scanning them, most of the resulting photos are now much better than the originals after editing. Straight from the scanner many had awful color casts and heavy red, orange, yellow, or blue fringing, and some skin tones were just too bad to ever be acceptable. Anyone expecting to scan and go straight to print will be very disappointed and will probably return the scanner an give it a bad review. If like me you are able to use photo editing software then these things can be improved dramatically. I am happy with my purchase but only because I know how to use editing software. Top tip is to raise the exposure and scan again if skin tones are very blotchy. I gave this scanner four stars because it is simple to use and performed about as well as I had hoped it would. It does not produce pin-sharp photos but for family albums they can be perfectly adequate after editing.
Easy to use once you have played around with the controls. The detailed instructions are not well translated. It would make all the difference if the manufacturer concentrated on this aspect. Be careful as the brush is too easy to trap in the feeder slot. I had to use a credit card to help retrieve it. Otherwise, the negs or slides are easily adjusted in the frame before capturing. All round, pretty good and good value.
I’ve been scanning a lot of old slides – from the 1970s – the quality of the scan is excellent, and with a little tweaking the images look perfect. (They need tweaking because the slides have deteriorated, not any fault in the device).
It’s so simple to use, that I had scanned my first batch within 15 minutes of the package being delivered.
Lots of options to change the source materials and settings, and the USB transfer to my laptop is super fast.
Can’t wait to finish the slides and get onto to processing my 35mm negatives…
I am really very pleased with the scanner. I have found that it is best to carefully clean the slides with a drop of pure clear alcohol and a soft dry cloth because over the years some of the slides have obtained a small covering of dust or membrane. Once scanned and transferred to a computer they can then be enhanced using the computers own software. However sometimes because of age and colour disfigurement of the slides which has taken place I found it best to remove all the colours on some of the pictures and just have a black and white image.
Also for best viewing results once saved and enhanced on a computer, viewing should be done on something smaller than the computer itself because the photos become pixilated. I found that a 7 ins tablet is ideal for viewing. Overall, I am more than delighted with the results and have found that has I scan the 48 year old slides they bring back many lost memories.
I did not find the instructions very helpful. I’ve worked it out basically and the quality of the photos are not that bad. Perhaps it I can work out the rest of how this works I can improve on the photos. The slides for the scanners are not very well made unfortunately. The openings are not clean and open for the negatives and they do not open and close easily. Whilst contact with the supplier has been excellent and they are going to replace the slides I think for what it is, it is a little expensive.
Got the digitnow scanner up and running easily and with little effort. The supplied cable is far too short, but got round problem by using a portable phone charger to power the device, so that I could set out slides on the dining room table. the image screen quality is poor, but my slide copy’s look great when viewed on other devices. The slides I copied were 50+ years old from a cheap camera and as they say you can’t polish a turd, so overall I am happy with my purchase as I can now view photos unseen for years
Having now used it for about 600 slides, its proved to be a great little scanner. reproduces good quality images from my old 35mm slides. also has a brush in case you get any bits of dirt inside……can just brush it clean so theimages are good……..very very happy with this scanner. heres a slide for 1962.
After reading through ‘many’ reviews I ordered this model due to the fact I had neagtives and slides of different formats. The little box arrived prompty and I was very surprised at the weight, size and fragitlity of the attachments. After one hour of attempting to read and comprehend the intructions I gave up for the night, had a glass of wine and slept on it. I woke the next morning with my challenge to get my head around this little box. After several cups of tea and a lot of patience and trial by mostly error I scanned over 300 negatives.
Basically you get what you get! Do not expect 40 year old negatives to come out like your modern digital. In the 1970s there were a range of new postal firms like Trifca and Trippleprint coming out with a range of quality films and devlopment. Some of my old photos are very clear and some have that faded orange and awful green shade. Also remember that with the 126 you had those dreadful little flash cubes to take indoor photos. My indoor photos are not good. (They came back from the developers like that) Firstly the slide attachment is the easiest to use as long as you keep feeding in new slides. Remember that although you have a slide there were different film formats so make sure you press that button. Slides are fine. Next come the 35m negatives. These are fairly easy to feed through the attachment but this does involve touching the negatives a lot. Quality of scanning just depends. I have put my more modern ones through (only 10 years) old and the quality is OK. Better for outside photos though. If the negatives are scratched then use Picasa on your laptop. The auto adjust or ‘ I’m feeling lucky’ buttons are usually enough to enhance the photo. If the photo appears very scratch make a decision is it worth it or not? The retouch button does work but it takes time. If you have any photos and the negatives are scratched then just flatbed scan them. You’ll get a more natural colour. The 110 negative attachment holder is very small and I am still working on it. If you want to see a scanner then Maplins have some. Then you can decide whether to order one. If you just have 35m negatives then maybe go for the cheaper model.
Just plan some time when you have time to use this machine. Yes it’s pricy in some ways but them I have not found anything else out there that covers all these formats. Don’t be put off straight away. Take time and have patience. You will be amazed that you come up with a past memory you didn’t know you had so that must be worth it. As I said just save to the SD card to have bought and after you have done a number then transfer to laptop and photoshop.
I have attached some ‘genuine’ photos from the past. The sandsculpture is 35m and from about 15 years ago. The old mill photo and the Jaws shark and Disney land is from the 1970s. The little girl is from the 1970s and show how orange and green looks. There is one from holiday of Tunisia from about 10 years ago.
I am happy to answer questions.
Two tips: If you have some photos that you can not photoshop those old greens and oranges then just turn the photo to black and white on Picasa and sharpen it. The results are so much better and colour doesn’t always matter.These were 1970s again. See photos Also check the screen before you start scanning. As one reviewer mention there is dust etc inside at times. Take the adapter out and blow clear or use a hairdryer on slow and cool. It does help. I scanned a whole lot and couldn’t work out why there were marks all in the same places. Easy to solve. I am now rescanning the photos I took earlier and they are so much clearer.
I already have a flat bed scanner installed and I didn’t want to install my previous film scanner as well because of past problems. This is why I purchased the DigitNow, because it doesn’t need installing and there won’t be any unwanted changes to my system.
I find it a marvellous scanner to use, but only after a slight modification. The film holder needed attention at the exit end. A “step” was filed away using a small flat file and also the width increased slightly. My 135 film strips now slide unhindered and don’t require so much handling. The film holder can remain in the scanner and only needs to be opened when fitting either of the smaller film inserts to it.
The slide holder has not been a problem, except to say that some of my old slides are mounted in quite thick frames which the holder will not accept. Both card and thin plastic mounts are fine.
To clarify the instruction sheet:
Display item 3, Capture Mode: While the film frame is displayed, the Mirror & Flip buttons can be used if required before scanning.
Display item 4, Playback Mode: Playback is from the integral memory, not the SD Card. Slide show starts when this mode is selected, but can be stopped by pressing OK. Arrow keys can then be used to move forward & back. Another press of OK reveals six options. Move through these with the arrow keys & press OK to select. Press OK to save & OK again to exit & you are then in slide show mode again.
Another item not mentioned on the instruction sheet: I found that by holding down the Scan button and pressing the right arrow, Setup Options is displayed.
This menu includes a Format option. I imagine this would clear the integral memory and I haven’t yet tried it, in case it clears the operating system also. This doesn’t concern me, since I am using an SD Card, but could it be the answer to another customers problem?
The device worked OK and I have now scanned in all my 35mm slides onto an SD card and then transferred to my Mac – I was not really impressed with the ‘High Speed slide inserter. ( one at a time ) I used one from a device I purchased from Liddle which was much better ( the device from Little , however , would not work on my Mac or scan to a SD card so it was the only thing good about it for me .
The DigitNow was easy to use and did the job
Very happy with the scanner. Setting it up was easy. All the instructions were very clear to follow. It does exactly what I want it to do. I am going through boxes of old slides just now and enjoying a trip down memory lane at the same time. Some of the old colour negatives I have scanned are a bit faded because of their age but will be restored using photoshop software. On the whole I am pleased I purchased the scanner. Worth every penny to me.
We have number of 35mm slides that are from late 1950’s / early – mid 1960’s and this small device is ideal for scanning them in without too much effort. Good quality jpegs produced, which we have shared across the family. Have also used it for scanning negatives, again quick an easy to use. Just scan to SD card and copy to hard drive (or cloud for easy sharing).
Pleased with the product and ease of use – would recommend it for home use
Simple to use and results quite good, certainly brought back memories seeing photos taken over 50 years ago.
Agfa plastic mounts do not go through the machine, the top of the slide tray had to be removed and the slides fed in and taken out on the right hand side, this did not slow things down once I got into a routine. Also if you want to scan at 22MP you have to remember to set it each time the scanner is switched on.
I bought this as a copier of a very old slide collection. I had previously bought what looked like an identical product from someone else (maybe made in same Chinese factory) which did a reasonable job but a bit disappointing when compared to my old Nikon Coolpix copier (which does not work with 64 bit computers) lacking the Nikon’s built in clever software to restore colour, remove dust and scratches etc., so I was unsure whether the increased resolution of this 14mp copier would make a difference. Having copied several hundred slides (with many thousands more to do) I am pleasantly surprised that an accurate copy of the slides is being made, with or without the 22mp enhancement.
It is a bit of a slow process to copy each slide one at a time but for the money I doubt whether better copies could be made and with the use of something like Photoshop Elements the colour and other damage to the slides can usually to restored to an original state. I should say many of the slides I am digitising are from as early as the mid 1960’s and such old Kodak 64s suffer from fading or blue cast and even slight fungal attack, so a decent copy is necessary to hope to salvage with Photoshop. Having examined the results from the scans using this device on a large HD screen, I am confident that I will be able to restore most to a good standard. Can’t say better than that for a reasonably priced copier.
I bought this little unit for my 89 year old father to convert his 35mm slides to digital format.
Within a very short time he was sending me emails of his results – so it can’t be that hard to use!! ‘
His only “comment” is that when scanned, the images need lightening on the PC but he also admits he has not read the instructions cover to cover to see if there are any user adjustments at the time of scanning.
Overall – he is pleased with the results and us getting on with it like house on fire. ‘
Take back all I said! I found the slide carrier and managed to cancel the return.
I needed something quick and easy for several hundred slides of mine and my late father’s. There is slight cropping of the image but not too much to worry about. The only downside is that it won’t take old Agfa plastic mounts as they are too thick. I did have a problem with the supplied cleaning brush. I pushed it through the right hand slot and it went with a click but I couldn’t push it right through due to the thick handle, and I couldn’t pull it back out again as it was stuck. Not wanting to exert undue force I resorted to hacksawing the handle off! But it did the job and cleaned off a lump of schmush.
Above is a slide of my father’s taken in Switzerland in the 70’s.
Instruction book gives conflicting information gearing size of SD card needed and the print and pictures are so small you need perfect vision to be able to read them. We are using a magnifying glass!
However I’ve only had a quick play around with it and scanned an old B&W negative from about 30 yrs ago and I’m pleased with it. I think the majority of people who just want to scan old negatives for memories of times gone by and share them with family would be more than happy with the result.
The picture attached was my first attempt without even reading the instructions, so I’ve a little more to learn and I’d suggest the paperwork and instructions are read to get a good insight to its workings before getting stuck into scanning big time.
It’s not a professional scanner and no you will not get professional results (those in the trade should already know that)
For the everyday amateur wanting to smile from memories of yesteryear- then this might be for you.
The item is plastic, so are the film holders and they won’t take a lot of knocking about – beware of this.
A good little unit at the entry level of scanning. It will do those just satisfying curiosity as to what’s on those old negatives stuck in the drawer.
Probably not best suited for professional output, but a good home solution for viewing and saving old photos
There are a couple of online tutorials to help with the set up.
Slide carrier needs a modification to accept slide mounts as it is not easy to open up the carrier. It won’t accept slides in plastic mounts unless you are able to modify the slide carrier.
Useful for recording old images, but confused over the lack of a card.
I like that I can power it up from the mains and from PC so no matter where I am I can use it. It is nice and compact so doesn’t take up much room on the desk and it will fit in a drawer when not in use to help protect it.
Slightly damaged 40 year old 35 and 110 negatives converted to digital. Slightly grainy but colour okay for my purpose. I had to buy a memory card for the scanner and a USB card reader to get the images onto computer. It takes a little time and care to feed the negatives through the scanner and the screen is quite small but good enough for family photos I’d say.
The colour on the small screen is very yellow but is clearer on play back. I can’t give an opinion on how it looks transferred to tv or laptop as I am still capturing my 35 mm negatives
Our scanner arrived today, on time. The size is impressively small. We’ve so far scanned a dozen or so slides, which have by and large come up better quality (colour, brightness) than previous scans of the same slides, so we’re happy with that. The scans look to be as sharp as the original slides, which are not perfect anyway. The instructions are not too bad but we had to play around a bit to find just what to do. We had to provide our own SD card (I think this is made clear in the sales blurb) and we had to have the scanner connected to the computer to transfer the scans — ie we couldn’t plug the SD direct into the computer, that just showed an empty SD card. A small array of “carriers” is supplied; we’ve only used the one for 35mm slides; it’s easy enough to use but feels a bit fragile so we’ll want to be a bit careful how we handle it. It won’t take slides in 3mm thick mounts, but it’s easy enough to transfer a slide to a thinner, 2mm, mount if you have a spare plastic one to hand. Don’t know if it’s the best on the market because we haven’t tried the others but we’re pleased enough with it. Can’t speak for its durability because it only arrived today. Not tried it with a Mac either. Not a bad piece of kit. Enjoy!
Surprisingly light and small I wondered if this scanner was up to the job but it proved very good for my purpose.
A little tedious getting each film strip into the scanner but easy to scan and save to an SD card – A 16 Mb card holdes about 7500 14Mb photographs.
Scans slides as well BUT some of my slide cases are too big to go in the holder. DO NOT FORCE THEN IN. getting them out is a real pain in the A$$
Colour representation good and adjustable RBG and Gamma.
It took about 4 hours to scan in over 2000 images. Now to take on the task of going through on my PC to correct faults and catagorise them.
For some slides with thick surround a bit tricky to use slide feed. Managed to get it to work with a little effort. Overall, good machine.
Great little device, quite easy to use when you get the hang of it. Saved me a fortune on digitising old 35mm transparencies.
Got this to replace my old one, its excellent, does what I needed it to.
Great buy, easy to use and very handy.
This is a good little device. Just what I needed to rediscover all our old slides. Will post pictures as I develop them.
have only just used it on some slides and I am very pleased with the results. I am about to try and scan some old negatives and hoping Iget the same results
The 35 mm slides when scanned do not take the full slide, about 10 of the width doesn’t get scanned/saved. Easy to use and upload to PC etc. But all in all not bad for the price.
pretty good kit, easy to use and ok quality. great for what I needed, archiving old family transparencies. I scanned them very quickly and did the rest in Photoshop
This item wasn’t the cheapest, I didn’t want to get a real cheap one in case the quality was rubbish. Anyway, this item is easy to use, but i found the reproduction of my photos wern’t poor but the picture quality wasn’t what i was expecting… Maybe i was expecting too much from my old negatives from the 90s. Some were better than others, and at least i had copies of old phots to send to family members..Would i buy it again?…maybe i would go for something a bit more expensive which is a PC based scanner, then i would be able to view the image easier on my PC and make any editing pre processing of image..
Easy to set up and scans quickly and accurately. Good value!
Bad points – cable too short and why is it mini USB?
I have only scanned slides and its very straight forward and you can get through them quickly, quality of files is acceptable
Took a while to get my head around the instructions, had dismal failures to start with, slept on it overnight and started again. Success, I am pleased with the results. The holders are a bit fiiddly but its a minor issue really.
I wish they had included holders for Standard 8 cine film but I guess I can fashion something myself.
Bottom line, you could pay a lot more for minimal improvement, for me it works just fine.
I just rough out what I need on the Digitnow then finish with Coral Paint Shop Pro.
This machine is easy to use, it takes usual cardboard slides and the thicker plastic ones are a bit of a squeeze, but they can be scanned.
Useful machine to get digital copies of old slides.
As soon as I unwrapped this item I noticed that it was not 22mp but 14mp. Why advertise this in the description. Works well apart from this.
Easy to set up and use – though sequence of button presses not too intuitive!
Got the required result for a reasonable price.
To see these forgotten photos and memories come alive is magic. This product has stood the test of time very well. I have processed over 5,000 negatives over an eighteen month period, and having the scanner on for considerable lengths of time as well. It is a tedious job and you have to stay focus but the results are worth it and a job worth doing as its all then available for future generations. The best advice is to read the instructions well before use, as its not nice to re-do your first 700 negatives because you made fundamental errors, by using the wrong parts. You soon get into a rhythm/routine. Does the job, robust but its all manual work.
For the price, this device is very good and does the job. Pretty easy to use, and faster than more expensive alternatives as you can keep pushing slides through one after the other. The attachments don’t cater for thicker slides (in plastic housing) however we found you can push them through manually. Not ideal, but still works.
I managed to digitize approximately 400 slides with acceptable quality (just). As other reviewers have said, some of the plastic encapsulated slides eg old ‘Boots’ slides, are a bit of a tight squeeze, but managed to get them all through in the end. I found the easiest way to use this is to use an external colour monitor to view the slide position before pressing ‘Scan’. I found all the slides I digitized had a very blue cast (I assume they use a white LED as the light source); this can be adjusted for in the scanner itself, but the easiest thing to do, if you have a photo editing program like Photoshop or similar, is to adjust the ‘Colours’ and ‘Levels’ post scanning. In my case, I found the quality just about acceptable (I would say the resolution is on a par with an old 2Mp camera) but on balance it rapidly processed a large number of slides which are mainly destined for a USB stick to show an elderly relative in Care. You will need to use the cleaning stick regularly, I found once per 20 slides or so was about right. A bit pricey for what it is, but overall I’m pleased with the purchase.
I didn’t have time yet to try all the features of this scanner. Only tried with slides. The final result is satisfactory
The scanner was easy to get started and quite quick to use.
Was just what I was looking for. All my parents slides were copied to sdhc card so many memories to share again. Obviously quality was not so good many years ago but none the less I am so pleased with it. Didn’t change the fact that my mum missed off many heads when taking photos but still the memories are precious.
With several thousand negatives to scan to digital, I was keen to find a scanner that would not take ages to scan each image. This reasonably priced little scanner took about half an hour to set up and understand the settings and menus and we were off. So far I have scanned around 1000 negatives and can confirm that quality of scan is quite acceptable considering the scanner appears to take a quick snapshot of the negative presented and a better scan would probably take a minute or more each time. The scan time is about two seconds each and the quality acceptable on a 12 x 18 computer screen. I wouldn’t want to rely on this for a quality print to A4 size, but it is
doing the job I asked of it and I look forward to seeing more of my store of holiday pictures from around the world
Easy to use and produces decent result. BUT it does not capture the full frame. It chops the top and bottom of the picture. Whilst this isn’t always an issue, if the photo is a close up or a group, you can end up with sliced heads. There’s no way to can change this or manoeuvre the negative in the adapter to compensate.
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This scanner is very small so if you’re like me & have poor eyesight you will need a magnifying glass. It’s not outstanding but it serves its purpose. I sent mine back and went for the 22 megapixel version. Not so easy to use if you’re dealing with a single negative but strips and slides are easy. I feel that you really need some sort of photo editing soft wear to get the best from the scanne
Strightforward to use – sometimes a bit too easy to press the off button by mistake when adjusting colour. Default setting is for negatives but very easy to choose slides. I have only used this for slides and with good quality pictures it works well. Good that you can adjust the colour on the DigitNow itself and then do more on the computer later if you wish. These two slides date from 1969 and 1967. The results are dependent on the original quality but it is a good way to save memories.
The device copies the slides one at a time so it is slow work.
It took a while to work out how to transfer directly to the computer.
Its ok good for the price but the instruction manual is a waste of time. Chinese mfgs need to improve English.
Its trial and erro
I found it easy to set up and use but you need to be methodical in positioning slides to ensure you scan the whole picture area
The instructions weren’t very easy to follow but found it quick and easy to use once I had got the hang of it. Just one problem I had some Agfa slides which were encased in quite a thick plastic casing. Had a bit of difficulty getting some of these through but overall excellent piece of kit at a reasonable price
The pictures are not quite as sharp as I would have liked but still good value for money.
This cheap-and-cheerful scanner works fine. There is a single page, six point quick start guide which is very helpful and gets you going easily. It produces high quality JPEGs which you can then do anything you like with.
Two little gripes reduce my rating to four stars: As the device has no battery, it has to be plugged in order to work and the cable is short. If you’re not plugging it directly into a laptop and your mains socket is more than 75cm from where you want to work, you’ll have to faff around with an extension lead. Secondly, the device needs an SD card to work (even if connected to external memory in a laptop) and this isn’t provided. So unless your house is littered with spare SD cards, you will need a further purchase before you can use the thing. It’d be much better to include a basic card and increase the price by a pound or two.
It can be a bit fiddly to insert the negatives sometimes. able to change the light balance before saving. 110 negatives are very hard to copy, you have to save it with multiple light changes to choose your best, the result is not that good. 35 mm is ok and easy to copy.
Found it a piece of cake to use. Quality is pretty good for the price, and the fact that I’m scanning forty year old negs.
Reasonable price, very happy.
I was supprised at the quality of the scans. It takes a little time to get the sequence of button pushing correct. I have now scanned over 1600 negatives & slides, bothe B/W & colour. the only quibble is that it crops the image slightly, but I can live with that.
Copied 46 year old slides and 10 year old colour negatives as first attempts. Aim is now to digitise most of my old photographs – slides and colour negatives.
Great quality.
Playback of files to PC screen/monitor is good using USB lead, copying of files to PC using USB lead good – better than removing the SD card.
Screen on device is very small, only use is to ensure photograph is properly aligned.
It would be better if when copying photograph to device if it could be seen on PC screen as well as on device – the USB lead from PC does power the device.
For the price this is perfect and very handy. I have hundreds of old negatives and just wanted to go through them quickly and have good enough scan/image to keep for momento. To be honest no discernible difference between low and high res image options, larger just takes longer. So I ended up scanning all at low res. This is very quick to scanner (about 5 secs per negative image) and works fine. Don’t expect perfect images that can be blown up to good 10 x 8 print. However, perfectly good enough for small prints or on screen (see unedited example). Either invest in very expensive scanner or send to professional for images you want blown up for printing or high res.
So great to us this and restore old pictures. Its a real voyage of discovery to see old picture brought back to life. You will have to ignore the negative reports on this product. About scratching film. Thats is nonsense its works perfectly fine.
Used to convert old colour negatives. The scanner is really easy to use but you need to have negatives which are in good condition.
I would also clean the scanner regularly otherwise tiny blemishes will appear on the scan.
I found the instructions very unclear but after a bit of fiddling I am getting some excellent results. The edit facility is useful although I mainly use the computer. I am converting 35 mm slides so the default setting for negatives is a minor irritatio
This is a very basic little machine, as you would expect for its price, but it does the job. I am scanning some very old slides and gave been surprised at the quality, although some are so rough that they require a fair amount of editing on the computer. Some (but not all) slides in plastic cases are too thick, but as I am doing this in order to get rid of the slides, I just swap them into cardboard covers. I am sure you can get much fancier, robust machines, but really this is not going to be used once I have completed this task.
Now I get that today’s generation know nothing but Jpeg, but my family history is on Slides and I haven’t seen these pic’s for years. This is so easy to use. All you need is an SD card or Micro SD with a converter, bang it in and start using. I’m only using this for slides but you can use it for negatives or 110 film etc. I was caught out by the settings to start off with as everything was coming out as a negative, but that was the default and once changed it was easy. More importantly it was quick.
When all the catalogue is finished, I’m going to transfer onto memory sticks and send out to the family. My good deed
great product, reasonable price, easy and quick to use. You can run it through a TV if the screen is too small for you to use, perfect!!!!
The scanner is very easy to set up – the manual is adequate but if you are tech minded it is not needed. It does not need a SIM card as it has some internal memory – I tried this and then decided to use an old 32GB SDHC (Sandisk Extreme – 60MB/s, easy to insert with contacts faced upwards). Inserted my first strip of B&W negative 35mm film, toggled through the menus to select film OK and then B&W, press OK, 135 (35mm) press OK. Slide the first strip of fiim (4 images) through, continued sliding through until a picture I liked (I needed to raise the scanner of books to eye height to assure the exposure /contrast was being viewed correctly – you can to adjust exposure press ok in needed and then toggle/down then press scan), press scan and then OK to save the picture. It is that easy!! I had previously been using my Epson V370 Photo – good but tedious!
Repeated lots of times and then plugged USB lead into my MacBook … recognised the device straight away and could then copy photos to Mac.
Oh – forgot to say I selected resolution of 22 – produces approx 3MB file for each photo. There seems to be slight cropping of the image but not an issue for me.
There is a higher scan resolution mode (22MP) but this is created by interpolation and contains no additional image detail – the captured detail is just spread over more pixels. The only benefit of this mode is that it creates a finer pixel granulation at higher magnifications or larger print sizes. Using the 22MP scan resolution a 35mm B&W frame produces an digital image of 3760 x 5640 pixels – with a file size of around 2.8MBytes and equates to a scan resolution of 4000dpi. For my purposes I did not find the interpolated (22MP) mode added anything to the image – but for larger size hardcopy prints it may be useful to reduce visible pixelation.
The built in controls allow for exposure correction (lighter or darker) and the LCD display shows a positive image – which makes reviewing the images from negatives much easier. For colour negatives and slides you also get the option to adjust the RGB colour balance – but I have not as yet tied any colour film.
The unit does have a small internal memory (98 MBytes available) – enough for 30-40 B&W images. It is possible to use the unit just using the internal memory – but you would have to keep moving batches of images to a computer (via USB cable) to clear the internal memory store ready for the next batch. Alternatively you can plug in a standard SD memory card (32GB maximum) and images will be automatically stored on that. Apart from the benefit of being able to scan as many images as you want without stopping – you also get the option to remove the SD card and plug it directly into a computer to transfer the scans at a much faster speed than USB_2 allows.
The biggest plus for this unit is the speed of the capture process – just a couple of seconds per frame. This compares to one to two minutes per frame for most of the more expensive high resolution scanners. The film adapter for 35mm works well – just insert it into the scanner and then feed strips of negatives through from right to left – adjusting the position using the LCD display. Each image capture requires only two key presses (assuming no changes to exposure correction) – press the Scan button and then the OK button – very simple and very quick. For bulk processing of 35mm images for use on screens this product is ideal and for standard size hardcopy prints it produces results that are as good as a 10MP camera.
I’m very pleased with the results of scanning transparencies, colour negatives and Black & White negatives. As others have said the instructions could be better but a little practice and some trial and error soon makes the user proficient. Colour and brightness correction is very useful. The internal memory can store up to 48 images at 14Mega Pixel from 35mm scans so a memory card isn’t essential. I don’t understand the few critical reviews that have been posted.
Not difficult to use. Like anything, study and practice.
If like me your old faded photos were taken with cheap cameras when you had no idea about composition, lighting, and avoidance of flash shadows, then with any scanner it is a case of rubbish in means rubbish out. My negatives are between twenty five an fifty years old and by scanning them, most of the resulting photos are now much better than the originals after editing. Straight from the scanner many had awful color casts and heavy red, orange, yellow, or blue fringing, and some skin tones were just too bad to ever be acceptable. Anyone expecting to scan and go straight to print will be very disappointed and will probably return the scanner an give it a bad review. If like me you are able to use photo editing software then these things can be improved dramatically. I am happy with my purchase but only because I know how to use editing software. Top tip is to raise the exposure and scan again if skin tones are very blotchy. I gave this scanner four stars because it is simple to use and performed about as well as I had hoped it would. It does not produce pin-sharp photos but for family albums they can be perfectly adequate after editing.
Easy to use once you have played around with the controls. The detailed instructions are not well translated. It would make all the difference if the manufacturer concentrated on this aspect. Be careful as the brush is too easy to trap in the feeder slot. I had to use a credit card to help retrieve it. Otherwise, the negs or slides are easily adjusted in the frame before capturing. All round, pretty good and good value.
It’s so simple to use, that I had scanned my first batch within 15 minutes of the package being delivered.
Lots of options to change the source materials and settings, and the USB transfer to my laptop is super fast.
Can’t wait to finish the slides and get onto to processing my 35mm negatives…
Also for best viewing results once saved and enhanced on a computer, viewing should be done on something smaller than the computer itself because the photos become pixilated. I found that a 7 ins tablet is ideal for viewing. Overall, I am more than delighted with the results and have found that has I scan the 48 year old slides they bring back many lost memories.
I did not find the instructions very helpful. I’ve worked it out basically and the quality of the photos are not that bad. Perhaps it I can work out the rest of how this works I can improve on the photos. The slides for the scanners are not very well made unfortunately. The openings are not clean and open for the negatives and they do not open and close easily. Whilst contact with the supplier has been excellent and they are going to replace the slides I think for what it is, it is a little expensive.
Got the digitnow scanner up and running easily and with little effort. The supplied cable is far too short, but got round problem by using a portable phone charger to power the device, so that I could set out slides on the dining room table. the image screen quality is poor, but my slide copy’s look great when viewed on other devices. The slides I copied were 50+ years old from a cheap camera and as they say you can’t polish a turd, so overall I am happy with my purchase as I can now view photos unseen for years
Basically you get what you get! Do not expect 40 year old negatives to come out like your modern digital. In the 1970s there were a range of new postal firms like Trifca and Trippleprint coming out with a range of quality films and devlopment. Some of my old photos are very clear and some have that faded orange and awful green shade. Also remember that with the 126 you had those dreadful little flash cubes to take indoor photos. My indoor photos are not good. (They came back from the developers like that) Firstly the slide attachment is the easiest to use as long as you keep feeding in new slides. Remember that although you have a slide there were different film formats so make sure you press that button. Slides are fine. Next come the 35m negatives. These are fairly easy to feed through the attachment but this does involve touching the negatives a lot. Quality of scanning just depends. I have put my more modern ones through (only 10 years) old and the quality is OK. Better for outside photos though. If the negatives are scratched then use Picasa on your laptop. The auto adjust or ‘ I’m feeling lucky’ buttons are usually enough to enhance the photo. If the photo appears very scratch make a decision is it worth it or not? The retouch button does work but it takes time. If you have any photos and the negatives are scratched then just flatbed scan them. You’ll get a more natural colour. The 110 negative attachment holder is very small and I am still working on it. If you want to see a scanner then Maplins have some. Then you can decide whether to order one. If you just have 35m negatives then maybe go for the cheaper model.
Just plan some time when you have time to use this machine. Yes it’s pricy in some ways but them I have not found anything else out there that covers all these formats. Don’t be put off straight away. Take time and have patience. You will be amazed that you come up with a past memory you didn’t know you had so that must be worth it. As I said just save to the SD card to have bought and after you have done a number then transfer to laptop and photoshop.
I have attached some ‘genuine’ photos from the past. The sandsculpture is 35m and from about 15 years ago. The old mill photo and the Jaws shark and Disney land is from the 1970s. The little girl is from the 1970s and show how orange and green looks. There is one from holiday of Tunisia from about 10 years ago.
I am happy to answer questions.
Two tips: If you have some photos that you can not photoshop those old greens and oranges then just turn the photo to black and white on Picasa and sharpen it. The results are so much better and colour doesn’t always matter.These were 1970s again. See photos Also check the screen before you start scanning. As one reviewer mention there is dust etc inside at times. Take the adapter out and blow clear or use a hairdryer on slow and cool. It does help. I scanned a whole lot and couldn’t work out why there were marks all in the same places. Easy to solve. I am now rescanning the photos I took earlier and they are so much clearer.
I already have a flat bed scanner installed and I didn’t want to install my previous film scanner as well because of past problems. This is why I purchased the DigitNow, because it doesn’t need installing and there won’t be any unwanted changes to my system.
I find it a marvellous scanner to use, but only after a slight modification. The film holder needed attention at the exit end. A “step” was filed away using a small flat file and also the width increased slightly. My 135 film strips now slide unhindered and don’t require so much handling. The film holder can remain in the scanner and only needs to be opened when fitting either of the smaller film inserts to it.
The slide holder has not been a problem, except to say that some of my old slides are mounted in quite thick frames which the holder will not accept. Both card and thin plastic mounts are fine.
To clarify the instruction sheet:
Display item 3, Capture Mode: While the film frame is displayed, the Mirror & Flip buttons can be used if required before scanning.
Display item 4, Playback Mode: Playback is from the integral memory, not the SD Card. Slide show starts when this mode is selected, but can be stopped by pressing OK. Arrow keys can then be used to move forward & back. Another press of OK reveals six options. Move through these with the arrow keys & press OK to select. Press OK to save & OK again to exit & you are then in slide show mode again.
Another item not mentioned on the instruction sheet: I found that by holding down the Scan button and pressing the right arrow, Setup Options is displayed.
This menu includes a Format option. I imagine this would clear the integral memory and I haven’t yet tried it, in case it clears the operating system also. This doesn’t concern me, since I am using an SD Card, but could it be the answer to another customers problem?
Regards RB
The device worked OK and I have now scanned in all my 35mm slides onto an SD card and then transferred to my Mac – I was not really impressed with the ‘High Speed slide inserter. ( one at a time ) I used one from a device I purchased from Liddle which was much better ( the device from Little , however , would not work on my Mac or scan to a SD card so it was the only thing good about it for me .
The DigitNow was easy to use and did the job
We have number of 35mm slides that are from late 1950’s / early – mid 1960’s and this small device is ideal for scanning them in without too much effort. Good quality jpegs produced, which we have shared across the family. Have also used it for scanning negatives, again quick an easy to use. Just scan to SD card and copy to hard drive (or cloud for easy sharing).
Pleased with the product and ease of use – would recommend it for home use
Agfa plastic mounts do not go through the machine, the top of the slide tray had to be removed and the slides fed in and taken out on the right hand side, this did not slow things down once I got into a routine. Also if you want to scan at 22MP you have to remember to set it each time the scanner is switched on.
It is a bit of a slow process to copy each slide one at a time but for the money I doubt whether better copies could be made and with the use of something like Photoshop Elements the colour and other damage to the slides can usually to restored to an original state. I should say many of the slides I am digitising are from as early as the mid 1960’s and such old Kodak 64s suffer from fading or blue cast and even slight fungal attack, so a decent copy is necessary to hope to salvage with Photoshop. Having examined the results from the scans using this device on a large HD screen, I am confident that I will be able to restore most to a good standard. Can’t say better than that for a reasonably priced copier.
Within a very short time he was sending me emails of his results – so it can’t be that hard to use!! ‘
His only “comment” is that when scanned, the images need lightening on the PC but he also admits he has not read the instructions cover to cover to see if there are any user adjustments at the time of scanning.
Overall – he is pleased with the results and us getting on with it like house on fire. ‘