Ion Multiformat Slide and Photo Film Scanner to SD Card

The ION Pics2 SD does what it does very well, but it's NOT a scanner. What it is, is a 5 megapixel fixed focal length camera (interpolated to 10 megapixels) in a very pleasantly designed black box with a built-in LCD screen and SD card reader. What this box of tricks does is take a digital photograph of your prints, slides and/or negatives - making your 'negative' a 'positive' in order to capture the image for the latter.

To be fair NONE of these stand-alone boxes are scanners, so the Pics2 SD is no different to any of the others in that respect. What it is though, is quite a lot better than any similar offerings I've tried from the likes of Agfa, Plustek, Veho and Zennox.

So, the good points then; My order was fulfilled by Amazon UK so as ever, the ordering process and (free supersaver) delivery were excellent - less than 72 hours to an offshore Island! Out of the box the Pics2 SD looks very stylish and well made (compared to similar items on the market these days). It's blissfully simple to start using with an instruction manual just 5 pages long including the Troubleshooting section. There's also a big note inside from ION with a UK phone number if you have any problems - nice touch. Someone recently commented that the picture and slide trays seemed 'flimsy'. To be fair they have to be made out of plastic in order to keep everything nice and mobile, and they're screwed together where possible rather than glued. I'd actually go as far as to say they're as well made as they can be, and better than many others.

The fairly huge benefits of the ION Pics2 SD over it's cheaper sibling (the Pics2 PC) are that this one has an SD card slot, so you don't have to be connected to a computer to start 'scanning' your old prints and slides etc. Also the SD model has a decent sized LCD screen so you can see what you've scanned instantly, and delete, save or retake images as you choose there and then.

Again as with any of these analogue to digital 'magic' image boxes, it would be totally unrealistic to accept the initial output as anything worth archiving, unless you're ridiculously easy to please. So you have to use a software package to clean the inital results up. Using the 'Fade Correction' button on the software I use, is enough to give me a very good/fresh looking image from a 35mm slide taken back in 1964.

I've used my ION Pics2 SD for 'scanning' all three formats now, i.e. prints, slides and negatives, and I'm genuinely very pleased with the outcome of all three, after a 10 second clean up job with the imaging software I've always used.

Bad points; Of course it would be great if someone manufactured a similar box of tricks that transferred analogue prints and slides to digital, without having to use software to clean the results up a bit. But the fact is that technology simply isn't around. Frankly the same goes for high end flatbed scanners as far as I'm concerned.

It would be nice given the price difference between the Pics2 SD and Pics2 PC (about GBP30) if the former was shipped with a 2GB SD card in the box. That way you really could start cataloguing hundreds of your family memories straight out of the box. For a company like ION, that would cost no more than 20p extra for each one they sold.

So would I recommend the ION Pics2 SD over the Pics2 PC? Definitely. Would I recommend the ION Pics2 SD above any similar offerings currently on the market? Absolutely. I know you can buy other machines that do a similar job for less money, but this one is better put together in my opinion, it does a better job, and it's without doubt an easy, quick and very simple way to (finally) get rid of all those shoe boxes filled with pictures, negatives and slides from way back when. It's still not a scanner though!

This has achieved my aim of getting rid of several boxes of photos and negatives that were rarely, if ever, looked at.

It is simple and easy to use. Fairly compact, it's the size of half a shoe box rather than the 10 or so that were previoulsy used to store the photos and negatives.

The advantage of the SD version is that it's more flexible than the PC version, in that it's easy to take a pile of photos and scan them while watching the TV or if you've got a minute or two spare to quickly scan a couple of photos without having to boot up the computer.

To be honest I can't comment on the quality of the digital images but they're adequate for my purpose.

Even though it is designed to cope with 3 different size of prints I've got a very small pile that fall outside these parameters so I will either need to trim them or try and find the negative.

If you haven't got a spare SD card order one or two at the same time as you order this as you will need them.

If you want to clear up some space, have a pile of negatives that you would like to have a look at or just archive and sort you'r photos this is a very useful gadget. As usual it would nice if it were cheaper but there's always the option of doing what you have to and then sell it on.

I've read the previous reviews, and they are all very complimentary. There is nothing wrong with what is written, however they miss the one big fault with this product. Initially I thought this product was everything I was looking for. It isn't a scanner but a Macro Camera, which takes a picture of the image. I could live with that, however, after taking a number of pictures, then inspecting them on my PC, I discovered its fatal flaw. The sizable part of my picture library, are glossy prints. On each and every image, you can clearly see a reflection of the internal camera. If you "scan" slides or negatives I could not see the reflection so this is not a problem, but when you are faced with hundreds of prints to convert to digital, this is NOT the product to buy. ION don't seem to want to acknowledge this as a problem. Shame, it's almost a good product.
I going to get my money back.