If you're older than a certain age, then you probably have a box full of old negatives/slides for pictures from the first part of your life. And you probably have realized that while you can take the prints from those pictures and mount them in a photo book, that's really old school, daddy-O! The big problem is that you can't easily share that photo book. Sure, you can regale your friends and neighbors with your photos and tales when they have the misfortune to say something like "oh, what's in THAT book over there?" But how many "likes" can you accumulate that way? How can you get your Aunt Debbie--who you haven't seen in, like, 30 years-- to fawn over pictures of you as a young ram? The answer is that as long as your pictures remain on negatives and prints...you can't.
But problem presented and now...problem solved. You need a slide scanner to convert those negatives to digital photos that you can titrate out each Throw Back Thursday from now until the cows come home. Slide scanners aren't new. But until a few years ago they were either entirely too expensive, or entirely too lousy to be of much use. Then a variety of lower priced scanners started to appear on the market. The usable low priced end of the market is represented by the Wolverine line.
All slide scanners amount to the following: You put a slide in front of light source and capture the projected backlit image on a "CCD" (the same photo capture technology used in digital cameras). The key differences among these scanners are: A) How fancy and automated a mechanism is used to feed the negatives/slides; B) How pure is the light source; C) How good is the CCD detector and D) How good are automated software options at cleaning up the captured images.
The Wolverine scanner here is--let's not delude ourselves--merely adequate in all these areas. But it's a situation where the sum is greater than the parts, and on the whole it's a wholly usable low cost solution to the problem. It does have its limitations, though. In particular, the low end CCD detector results in digital photos that are more than sufficient for things such as posting to Facebook or Snapchat, and probably for 4x6" prints, but aren't going to lead to satisfactory blowups at 8x10 resolution. Specifically, the digitized photos, which are captured at 5472x3648 resolution, are very noisy if you examine them at an actual pixels level. But viewed in full screen mode on a digital camera, or even on a 1920x1200 resolution monitor, they look pretty good. So know what you can expect to get here. If you need professional quality results that can be blown up, this is not the device for you--you'll need to spend 2x or more to go to the next level.
Beyond the noise in the captures, I found that this unit tended to add a blue cast to many digitized photos. This was easily removed in digital editing software and once removed, the remainder of the colors were vibrant and true.
Feeding the negatives is accomplished, in the common case of 135 slide negatives, by pushing the negative through a guide. Slides with some warp to them (typical of slides stored for years) sometimes took a bit of jiggling to get the slide strip to push through to the other side. Beyond that, it was trivially easy to line up each picture on a slide strip in the LCD viewer, push the two buttons required to capture the image, and to move on to the next picture. In about 2.5 hours I was able to digitize about 400 slides. Once you get the hang of it, the process is very fast.
The unit comes with a very limited amount of internal memory--enough to digitize about 20 slides. I'd strongly recommend using an external SD format memory card. I used a 32Gb card (the largest size officially supported) and that can hold about 7500 or so digitized images. The Wolverine scanner has a mode that allows you to transfer the saved pictures to your computer (PC or Mac) with a couple of button pushes. Alternative, you can take the memory card out of the Wolverine and use your favorite SD card reader.
There is very little in the way of options to optimize the captured images (a few color band adjustments that I found worthless), and no editing options. Honestly, I do the editing on the PC anyway, so the lack of editing options is irrelevant. For professional work, you would definitely want access to various capture options, which are not provided here. But as noted earlier, this is nice unit for the novice. Professionals will assuredly be looking elsewhere.
The Wolverine Titan comes with the digitizer, a USB cable, a USB power adapter (powers the digitizer), an assortment of various sized guides to let you capture different formats of slide/negative film, and a special brush that is used to keep the light source clean (important; you will assuredly need to periodically clean the light source or else you'll wind up with dust artifacts on your scans). The built in LCD is fine for aligning your slides before capturing them, but it's of relatively low resolution and not sufficient for any kind of detailed work. For that, you'll need to look at the slides on a PC.
On the whole, I found the Wolverine Titan to be a lot of fun, and very easy to use. Is it the best slide scanner on the market? Not a chance. But the ones that are appreciably better are also appreciably more expensive. If your goal is fast and easy conversion of slides to digital photos that will be used for social media or printing at nominal size (e.g. 4x6"), then this may well be the gateway from dusty photo box to digital that you've been searching for.
Update;
I have now scanned over 4000 35mm slides, and for my purposes this has worked great. Perfect no, but I think it will be what most people could use.
Easy setup, easy to use.
My slides date from 50 years ago to 20 years ago. While the white balance can be of on some with high contrast in like clouds and such, it is usually and easy fix on a Macs preview page.
Make sure you dust your slides well.
I have included another photo I scanned with no clean up done.
It will be the one of logs on a stone foundation.
thanks for reading.
I have only had this scanner now for about two hours and have scanned over 330 slides. Scanning slides was the only reason I was looking for film to digital scanner. All my slides date from the mid 70's to late 80's. Most are outdoor scenes or family photos. Lots of barns, cabins, dogs and such.
I would highly recommend this scanner if you are looking of something to save family memories from your parents or grand-parents slides. I read many reviews before buying this scanner, and even purchased a higher end one, which I returned because it was overly complicated for what I needed it for and the software kept crashing.
The Wolverine took about 2 mins. to set up and within another min. I was scanning slides.
I first scanned just a couple then moved the card to my computer to see how they turned out. I was very happy with the results so continued to scan the 300 plus I did tonight.
I does on occasion not get the color correct, and correcting the color on the scanner is not productive. Save that for your computer. For me I would say I will not touch up scans on over 90% of what I scanned.
If you are needing the scans for publication or very large prints you my need something better.
However, if you keep your slides organized after scanning, if you ever want to have one blown up you can then send it out.
Like I said if you are looking for an easy, quick and I think good way to save family memories, this is a great slide scanner.
I will include a couple photos so you can judge for your self. These are from the late 70's - early 80's.
Awesome product! After reading a ton of reviews, there seems to be pros and cons to every converter out there, but this one is always near the top of the pile. I ended up getting this in order to convert all of my parents' old slides from the 1970s to digital, and as of typing this, I have gone through eight full carousels, and those were given to my parents as a Christmas gift. Needless to say, they were in shock, and to see them on their TV and computer screen brought memories flooding back. The quality is amazing and more or less depends on the quality of the actual original slides themselves. After an hour or two of getting used to how it works, you can convert slides fairly rapidly, and it's, oddly, a ton of fun. I cannot recommend this enough. I have yet to try actual film negatives through it, but for slides, it works as advertised, and it is highly recommended.
There are a large number of of Slide/Negative scanners out there. But, unless you're willing to spent a few hundred to a few thousand dollars on a premier system, this will do an adequate job. I have a good flat bed scanner with high resolution capability, but I also have several hundred slides and negatives and didn't want to spend days or weeks digitizing them.
I got mine for just under $115.00 on Amazon Smile. It didn't come with an SD card, which was fine as I had plenty already, and this contributed to the lower price. All of the carriers were included, you do not need extras. And included was a brush that you will need to periodically wipe the unit with.
I liked the ability to adjust color and intensity, to flip or invert an image at will. And connecting it to a large screen TV with an HDMI cable (not included) gives a very good preview prior to the scan.
I'm disappointed that the device crops the edges, I'd have favored a black band around a compete image to losing a portion. Also, there is a bit of play in the carriers that can allow the image to not be perfectly perpendicular. I noticed this to the greatest degree when using negatives from a panoramic camera.
It does do old 110 negatives, although they're too short to feed completely through and I had to pull the carrier and position the negative for each photo. 35mm negatives may catch as the negatives tend to curl, but most fed through just fine,
The system claims 20 megapixels, this is generally a meaningless term as the optic sensor determines the output quality. I feared this might produce extremely large files, but the result averaged about 5MB.
I was surprised at how degraded some of my slides/negatives had become. If you're trying to make a decision to buy I wouldn't put if off, even if you select a different model. Time is not your friend.
Note that this is not a scanner it is more like a camere and each has its pros and cons. If you need high quality images this is not the tool but for snapshots it will do a decent job especially on black and white and save you loads of time compared to scanning. In fact it has an advantage that it seem not to record dust and hair on films as faithfully as a scanner. Colours are in most cases acceptable but I find that thin or very light parts of films will be almost bright yellow, not white as in a scanner. This is annoying but can sometimes be remedied by adjusting the exposure. It would be a great advantage to be able to see the results of adjusted exposure live while playing with the controls.
The unit it self is nicely built and easy to work with. The screen is large enough and has acceptable resolution for the purpose and the controls allow for most things one needs. Film holders are a bit clumsy and take some time getting used to but they are well marked with the purpose of each holder so one always knows which one to use.
I need top quality scans of many of my films to be able to work with them and those I will use a scanner for but I also have a lot of films, family shots, travel memories etc., which do not need such quality and are better enjoyed as viewable images on a screen to share with family and friends rather than locked away in storage. For that purpose the Wolverine Titan serves adequetly. The unit it self and ease of operating gets my five stars but if I compare image quality output to scanned images iI give it three stars which is not bad, really.
Feature Product
- Convert 35mm, 127 (1.5x1. 5"), 126Kpk, 110, Advantex APS slides & negatives into digital in three seconds
- New large 4.3" Color screen
- New HDMI to-out jack to view images on TV in hi-def. (cable not included)
- Unique speed-load adapters for fast loading slides & negatives
- Stand-alone no computer or software required
Description
New 4.3" LCD screen, HDMI output and adding aps film. Now you can take all those stacks of 35mm (photo film & archive), 127, 126, 110, aps slides & negatives, regular 8mm and super 8 movies and convert them into digital JPEG images to share and preserve them forever. Wolverine has created a very simple to use device to convert all your film into 20 megapixels digital images in seconds. So simple to use, it only requires a push of a button. No computer or software is needed. Use it right out of the box to convert all your film by plugging it into an AC outlet or any USB port. All images are saved into its internal memory or direct to an optional SD/SDHC memory card. Easily connects to any Windows PC or Mac, to offload images or view on TV (TV cable not included).
The -1 star is for the scanner poor quality and editing options, as reported elsewhere for this product. But it is better than expected for my use. I have a few hundred old B&W negatives, and I am unable, with my mind, to see the positive, and it's also really hard to evaluate content.
Don't bother with the attached screen. Go right to HDMI out and use your big beautiful TV. To view, you don't need to first scan, so viewing is as fast as you can load (more on loading soon). Note that the video quality of the HDMI out is not very good at all. At first I could see I could evaluate content, but I did not think I could evaluate focus. However, after just a few negative strips, I found I could *mostly* tell if focus was good (but I could not see the difference between soft and sharp focus). It worked great to screen out the many images not worth the time to scan with a real flatbed scanner (I use an Epson V550) and decent photo editor (I use Photoshop Elements...really good advice from the user group for this too).
For B&W negatives, you insert the proper holder (they're numbered), then simply, manually, push thru the strip of negative. With at least 3 images in the strip, you are able to grab the leading edge to pull the last image through. If only 1 or 2 images, remove the holder and open it up to insert the negative(s).
I was also able to look at my color slides for indications of focus. Also, I had an old 8mm reel of film, and with the insert, just stick one end in and start pulling the film through. It won't look like a movie, but you can evaluate content. Not sure about focus, as my original was sub-VHS in quality.
Not clearly stated elsewhere, if you do use the internal scanner, all images are saved as .jpg, and you'll need software to stitch together a movie.
What I like about the Wolverine:
• Colors are rendered quite well
• Film guides are very good
• Excellent preview screen (large and colorful)
My procedure:
1) I put my negatives in the correct order
2) With the brush I clean the Wolverine (very important)
3) Then I scan the negatives (to a memory card, a memory card is actually a must in my opinion)
4) I use Microsoft Photos to crop the image files, if necessary
5) With Adobe Elements I do some adjustments to the images (usually only AutoSmartFix)
6) I close all files and with Windows I rotate all landscape images right, so that all images are now portrait
7) Now I open all images in Photoshop Elements and remove dust and scratches, if any. The fact that all images are portrait makes it easy to fit them on screen in very large magnification, which simplifies this procedure.
8) If necessary, the image gets a rotation to the left.
I can really recommend the Wolverine, but you’ll need an image editor also, in my opinion, and spending a few bucks on a memory stick will improve this converter big time.
This was a replacement purchase for an older Wolverine Mighty that had some uneven lighting effects. The Titan in comparison is much more even in its capture, sharper as well as being much faster to expose and save the image on my same SD card. The other components from the old device fit this one which is perhaps a bonus. If I had one complaint, when digging into dark slides or negatives, the deepest blacks are harshly lightened making a sharpening edge effect which shows a little in the results. If I leave the settings alone, this effect Is not seen. The same effect occurs if I attempt to remove an overall cast or a shadow cast. There seems to be a threshold in the darker tones which below that threshold, the lightening effect is too severe so actual edge effect lines occur in the middle of dark detail. I am able to reduce that artifact in iPhoto or Photoshop afterwards by pushing those darkest shadows darker again. Perhaps a software upgrade can repair this problem so I will contact the vendor support line to discuss same. All in all, I would recommend this scanner as a most cost effective yet quality way to capture your films digitally.
I found several boxes of slides, super 8 movies, and negatives in three sizes in my old footlocker in the attic. These were all over 40 years old, and had not been opened in that long. I checked around to find a place that could convert them to digital, and found that it would cost several hundred, to a couple thousand dollars to have it done. Way out of my price range. Then I found this gadget on Amazon, ant thought what the heck, it's worth a try. Well, it arrived quickly and I set it up and began copying my treasures. After a few evenings strolling down memory lane, I had everything converted to one 8GB flash drive (I had a total of 7.2 GB of data). They were all great, except for the super 8 stills. (It doesn't do video). They were pretty grainy, but still useable. This was well worth the price, and I recommend it.
Found that some of the picture gets cut off, but can not tell you if this happened on the originals as well. Just recently found that I could take a negative that is 135 and make another scan of the same photo with the 110 option and it is like enlarging the photo. This has worked great for a number of negatives where I had family members in a scenice photo and wanted to see the same shot of just the people. Unfortunately it only enlarges the center, but I can move the negative left or right at least.
I was unable to do my slides, 110 negatives and 35mm negatives so far. Have not tried my 8mm, but looking forward to it. I have done over 10,000 slides and negatives.
I used Seattle Film Works film, which was returned as slides. These slides did great on the color.
Found the screen nice and large. I would like it larger, but I am getting older.
Would suggest this item to anyone who has the older negatives and slides.
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