Veho VFS-004 5MP 35mm Negative & Slide Scanner

I installed this scanner with ease on a Windows XP laptop and within an hour had two 35mm films scanned in. After a while I got into a routine, getting familiar with the loading, button pressing, transferring etc and would expect to get a 36 frame film scanned in about 15 minutes in future.

I had been apprehensive about how the scans would come out having seen the mixed reviews but I was pleasantly surprised. I would say I am fairly demanding on sharpness and colour accuracy; I am a mid-range SLR camera user rather than a snapshot photography, and I found the scans certainly good enough for displaying on the laptop screen at full size. The results at this size are on a par with viewing shots direct from my Canon SLR; zooming in reveals the scans are less sharp but this is irrelevant unless you want to crop photos down before viewing.

I would have given this scanner 5 stars if if were not for one issue; every scan has a sliver right along one edge that looks like it is scanning the edge of the film holder. This is easily removed by cropping (I use Irfan view as it is quick to use) but slightly annoying - I have yet to work out if it is a misalignment that I can correct in positioning the holders in the slot of the unit.

On balance I would say this scanner is worth having because it does the job with reasonable speed and quite acceptable quality.

I have since sent it back and got a replacement because of the edge effect on each scan. Unfortunately the new one does exactly the same thing and the edges of contrasty subjects have artifacts like a string of bright spots along the boundaries. I am not so pleased with this device now.

I bought this product to make prints of my mum's old slides as a surprise, as they lay forgotten in a box under the stairs. I found it easy to use despite other feedback given. I put the slides in and had no trouble closing the slide holder door. I had no problems feeding the slide holder through the machine. And most importantly the quality of the images was surprisingly good with no pixelation. You can choose the quality of the scan, just like on a conventional office scanner, perhaps that's where some of the other users might have gone wrong, I opted for 'highest quality'. Some of the slides were in poor condition and had dust on them which had stuck on years ago, leaving tiny black dust spots on the scanned image, so my top tip is to retouch your favourite images, I did this using Picasa 3, which I downloaded for free from google (I find Picasa 3 easy to use, taking only a few minutes to retouch each image). I bought this Veho scanner in March when the majority feedback was good, but I read the feedback again at the end of May just before I started my first scanning and was disappointed to read some of the comments, so I was expecting to be disappointed. But I can honestly say it has been a triumph, and has brought lots of pleasure and laughs to my mum and me. My next project is to scan my precious negative strips so that I can keep a digital copy of them forever.

I placed an order for the Veho VF-004 5MP Negative & Slide Scanner after reading 3 very positive reviews. I was especially attracted to the idea of converting all those old slides into JPG images that I could then view on my laptop. I now believe those reviews must have been written by someone connected to the supplier! This item is no more than a very poor quality plastic toy which does not deliver any useful images whatsoever. The images created were appalling, with the vast majority of detail being completely lost. No wonder it comes with image enhancing software! Although, of course, it did not really help because it is not possible to recreate detail that was actually lost in the scanning process. The results were so poor, I thought the unit must be defective so I organised a replacement which turned out to be equally poor. I am very surprised that Amazon have anything to do with this item, especially since the supplier fails to respond to any emails and cannot be contacted by phone because they are ex-directory. AVOID THIS ITEM AT ALL COSTS! Update - Feb 2009: I have just discovered that my HP all-in-one printer (C7180) has a facility for scanning slides / negatives and it's absolutely brilliant!!!