Imagelab FS5CO5 5 Megapixel Slide and Negative Scanner

I am so happy with this slide scanner! It's easy,convenient,reliable and best of all,my pictures are coming out great! I'm so glad I waited to get one which uses an SC card. I've already scanned almost 700 slides and have been viewing them on my large screen TV after I finish for the night. I have a slot in my TV for my SC card and it's just like watching the slides on my parents' old screen in their living room. The quality of the pictures is even better than I dared to hope. The other thing I love is being able to just sit on my couch and scan while I'm watching TV. It couldn't be easier. I HIGHLY recommend the use of the SC card. I feel it offers valuable options for storage, viewing and overall ease of use.If there is one tiny thing I would like to see changed, it would be to increase the size of the scanning area for each slide. Some of the people in the pics get cut off because they're too far to the left or right. I have been able to turn the slide around in some cases. I've also scanned just half of the picture at a time,favoring either the right or left in each scan. And, to be honest, there have plenty of instances when I thought something was being cut off only to find it was all there when I viewed the playback on my TV.Anyway . . . . I've got about 700 down and maybe 2,200 more to go. My parents took a LOT of pictures! Even though I have a big job ahead of me, I'm really excited about the prospect of actually getting it accomplished. It is so good to have this opportunity to transfer these precious photos to a more accesible mode where they can be preserved and once again enjoyed. Once I get them all scanned, I'll be able to put them on my computer and distribute pics to the rest of the family. I've been wanting to do this for years and I've tried several different methods. All have proved to be way too time consuming and the quality of the photos was so poor. The Imagelife Slide and Negative Scanner is the answer for me. I'm absolutely delighted and recommend it without any reservation whatsoever!

So far I am okay with it. Not what I expected, but enough to backup what I had in the attic. It is much better for negatives than slides. Slides come very dark and poor quality. Almost not worth it to spend such a long time doing it. Negatives are better though quality is less than expected. The scanner cuts a portion of the negative on the sides. Impossible to get 100% of the picture> a picture with a group of 10 people, always one person on the border is lost. Same with landsacapes, always some 5 to 10% of the pic is lost. Screen to see the pics is very useful. Scanning is fast, but need to dedicate some good 30 secs per tray (loading, passing and scanning). Not bad, but if you have thousands of negative, reserve the energy for a boring winter day. Pictures come in a good jpg format. Ten times better than using the normal scanner at home. If you are porfessional and want professional quality for a proffesional job, forget it. You will not win the bid with this one. For the money spent, I think it is good enough. I will keep my negatives and slides to re-do it all in few more years again with a better tool that will for sure appear in the market.

Pros: fast, simple, idiot-proof. Once you figure out in which direction to insert the carrier, things are really easy. Works well with Macs.Cons: Poor picture quality. The colors tend to be dark and over-saturated. Sharpness is less than ideal. You can try to improve the results in post-production, but it takes time and skills. In addition, the unit only produces JPEG files, which are not ideal for post-production editing. Also, dust can easily go in the carrier slot, showing up as large particles in the final picture.I found the quality not sufficient to justify the $100 price.I returned the item and purchased a flat-bed scanner that does also films - more slowly, granted, but overall the quality is much better and I have more control on the final product.