Scanners > Film scanner (35 mm) Scanners > USB > by Compatible with

Advantages: A fine scanner at a budget price.
Disadvantages: Yet anotherthing to plug into your PC!

...years ago I bought a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II brand new. These can now be found on Ebay for £100 or so and offer a fine machine at a rather more affordable price. The results I've had are truly superb, with fine detail and subtlties of colour faithfully reproduced. The Scan Dual II is a machine capable of scanning 35mm and APS (with optional adaptor) negatives with an output resolution of up to 2820dpi. This is more than enough to produce images ...
...slides. The drivers and Minolta Scan Utility software are supplied on a CD on which you will also find a 109 page User Guide in PDF format. There is also a Quick Reference Guide in paper form to get you started. The software lets you control such things as scan resolution, final image size etc. It also lets you choose between colour negative, black and white negative and colour positive (slides). OPERATION If you buy secondhand the supplied copy ... Read review

Advantages: Excellent scans, little competition at this price range.
Disadvantages: Dreadful manual, cumbersome software, poor build quality.

...I recently bought a SmartDisk SmartScan 3600 slide scanner for my grandfather's birthday. He has a collection of over 3500 slides that will probably never be viewed again unless they are digitised so it seemed like a worthwhile thing for him to while away the hours with! I researched extensively what was available in terms of slide scanners before deciding on this one. I knew they existed, but to what extent and in what price range I really wasn't ...
...install the driver off the SmartDisk CD, the CD interface is poorly designed and very slow but gets there in the end. Then you connect the scanner which is recognised by XP and installed off the CD. Then you're ready to go. The scanner's controls are accessed by opening Photoshop (which can be quite slow given the size of the program) then choosing to 'import' from the CyberView program (the scanner's driver software). Am I the only one who thinks ... Read review

Advantages: Cheap as chips
Disadvantages: Family ask you to Scan their old photos too

Do you have boxes of old 35mm film or slides from before you bought that shiny new digital camea? This is the perfect gaget for transferring old films onto your PC and it is one of the cheapest that I was able to find. The FilmScan 2700 can scan 35mm positive and negative film. Once scanned, images can be saved, printed, shared, enhanced and published. The accompanying software contains several image adjustment tools allow scans to be fully optimized ...
...is able to scan 35mm exposures in slide or strip format with a reasonably high 2700dpi optical resolution. Each top quality scan is complete in arounf 1 minute 10 seconds. So if you have a lot of images it does take some time, but the scanner does not take a lot of attention and you can watch TV or even write a review on Ciao as you use it! The installation is quick and simple, simply plug in to computer and install the software - if you have ever ... Read review

Advantages: Quality, USB connectivity
Disadvantages: No APS Adapter

The HP S20 Scanner is a good all-around scanner. The S20 can scan prints upto 5x7 inches, 35mm negatives (in strips), and 35mm slides (mounted or in strips). It provides upto 2400dpi scans of film strips which equates to over 6 mega-pixels. Prints are scanned at upto 300 dpi. The S20 also uses 36bit colour for outstanding reproduction. I was looking into digital cameras, but I found that I could always tell a digital from a standard print. Additionally, ...
...I decided on the HP for several reasons. First, the HP scans both prints and films. I have a flatbed scanner as well, but I like to ability to get a quick scan of a print on the HP. Second, the HP was at the time the only film scanner to offer a USB connection. I wanted to connect it to both my laptop and my desktop PCs, so this was a big bonus. Finally, the HP was less expensive that the other models I looked at. As far as quality is concerned, ... Read review

Advantages: Simple to use, Relatively Cheap, Looks good.
Disadvantages: Takes a while to install, lid hinge is awkward.

Being a Graphic Art student, during my first year of university I found myself fighting the urge to buy a scanner. However, even mounting student debts and an overdraft extension could not put me off this bargain of a scanner! Other scanners on the market either seem to have too many needless features bumping the prices up, or they are painfully slow and bulky machines that would not sit comfortably next to a new Mac. I managed to get mine for around ...
...perfect for fast but accurate scans of images, without the fuss of useless applications that clog up your memory [it works best straight through Photoshop]. The added extras like the automatic white-balancing save time, and it crops whilst in preview mode. To add to the list of necessities, it is quite light, it easy to clean, and looks sleek in silver and black. It may take a while to install but it's not complicated and is worth the wait when you ... Read review