Veho VFS-008 Smartfix Scan to SD Stand Alone Slide and Negative Scanner

Now here is something worth buying! I have spent 10 years trying to scan my 101 boxes of positive colour-slides and countless 35mm colour and B/W negs, using traditional medium price 'sweep' type film scanners, as time allowed. Quality has always been a bit iffy, lacking in tonal range, but as I use Photoshop for correction, dust removeal, perspective control etc, etc, I have laboured on. I calculated that with the years left to me, I'd never finish the job. Then I saw this unit using a CMOS sensor of 5 meg. The price was too cheap to be any good but I bought it having read between the lines of the various reviews, some of the writers obviously expecting miracles at the price. It was an absolute doddle to use and so quick compared to the old scanners I was using, 4 secs scan time each against up to 1 minute for the same size image. Loading is dead easy and I use a blower brush after loading the slides or negs into the holder to remove dust. Colour and B/W negatives come out very well with a very good tonal range needing little correction. Colour slides being inherently of a very high contrast range come out fine provided there are no very bright highlights which affect the auto-exposure setting which tend to burn out. This might be the only downside to this effective scanner but I have managed to complete all my slides in a few weeks with only a small number being discarded, but these were not good slides to start with. However, with tens of thousands of negatives to start on (40 years worth of 35mm format, before going digital in 2000), I look forward to speeding through these over the next few years and we'll see who gives out first, me or the scanner. The fact that the unit can be used remotely is a bonus point and the use of a standard card (SD) is even better. I actually use the unit attached to the PC and delete the images from the card after every box or film (takes a few seconds). The range of holders is good and they are solid compared to some other flimsey plastic devices you see around. The problem you get with black lines along one side is easily cropped where it occurs. It is no problem for me but for someone not used to using editing software, I can see their aprehension. I suggest that the bundled software be used for every scan session before saving into the final file. Colour negs have different background dyes according to the manufacture and the 'adjust colour' will bring it back to normal. Black and white negatives will usually benefit from a bit of contrast adjustment to suit your taste. All told this is a remarkable piece of kit at a stupidly low price. My congratuations to the manufactures (and the retailers). I would be interested in any future higher spec models providing some adjustment before scanning for the problems with colour-slides but this might take away from the extreme ease of use. I am not a professional photographer, just a keen amature wishing to record my life's old fashioned film hobby of the family etc. and I have no vested interest in the sales of this product. I just like to give credit where it is due.

I decided to pay a little more for a better scanner and very pleased I did.
Its so simple to use, you hardly need to read the instructions. I have since scanned over 100 slides and negatives on to the smart card and transferred that to my PC.
The pictures scanned better than expected and in relation to cost of having a developer carrying out this task, the scanner has already paid for itself.
So if you have untold negatives and slides to copy, it would certainly be worth both the purchase, time and effort to carry this out.

First the pros. Very easy to set up and use. Out of the box and scanning in a few minutes.
Now onto the cons.
Since I bought my first digital camera in 2002 I have stored my images on the computer with DVD backup. I wanted to work backwards from 2002 and digitise my holiday and family photos from 35mm negatives. This is why I bought the Veho VFS-008. I was immediately dissappointed with the results - nearly all colour was missing from the scans, the images were overwhelmingly blue. I was unsure whether this was due to the negatives deteriorating so I took them to Boots and had a couple of prints made. These prints were exactly the same as the original prints made over 10 years ago. I e-mailed Veho copies of the scanned negative and the print. They replyed that the unit must be faulty. Amazon replaced the unit, but the results were exactly the same. So regretably had to send the scanner back for a refund. It is just not upto the job.
I also scanned some 50 year old family B&W negatives of various odd sizes (you don't need to use the holder just feed them into the film holder slot)- interesting blasts from the past.
Also had loads of 110 negatives. These scanned an almost exclusively brown colour or a blue colour similar to the 35mm scans.I also found the unit overexposed some negatives. You could actually see the scan pass the optimum exposure before storing an overexposed image.
Finally I tried scanning some slides. Here the results were much better. With strongly coloured slides the scans were were almost acceptable, but with more subtle tones the colour reproduction was poor.
If Veho introduced a scanner with better colour reproduction and perhaps the option of manual exposure I would willing pay twice the price of the Veho VSF-008.