ImageBox-MF Film Photo Scanner

The manual is woefully lacking in detail — much telling you what to do and virtually nothing on what to push to make it happen. There are many items in the setup menu which name a function, but nowhere do they tell you what it means and what it does. Soooo, you are on your own to fuss around until you discover what does what. A quick glance at the manual told me to relax, play with it for a couple of days, and have confidence it will all come together as a discovery. Well, it did after about 4 to 5 hours of fiddling, and now that I know what to push to get the result I need, I must say it’s a dandy little device. What I’m reviewing here is only the 120 negative feature, which is the only reason I purchased it. I have an excellent Wolverine for slides and 35 negatives, which is much easier to set up & operate to make jpg’s from 35mm. I find my canon printer scanner quick & intuitive for converting pictures on up to A4 size, and can gang multiple pics on the platen — quick & easy. However scanning larger 120 size negatives has always been a time consuming chore on my flat bed scanner. With this unit, I can now go as quickly with larger negatives as I do slides with the Wolverine. The max negative area on this machine is 2 3/8" x 2 3/8" , (6 x 6 cm). Well, my 2000+ negatives are all 2 1/4 x 3 1/4, so lengthwise don’t mechanically fit. These pics were all taken in the late 1940's before zoom lenses were a common feature, so they nearly all need cropping to focus in on the action, which has a lot of useless background. Often I could not get as close to my subject as I would have liked, such as at a basketball or football game, so the action is taking place on only a portion of the negative and would be cropped as such anyway. I found the film holder is designed for 120 film and really didn’t easily accommodate 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 — took much jiggling to position it right and then everything would slide. I could either cut them down to fit, or as I ended up doing, taping a couple of “U” shaped paper masks, one a bit lower than the other, to the bottom of the light aperture, which will support a small portion of the film as I lower the cover. Using this, I can sustain positioning and scanning one negative every 1 to 1-1/2 minutes — 45 to 60 and hour — not too shabby. These are all black & white, so I’m finding the quality as good or better than my Canon flat bed and at a tremendous saving in time. I always edit my resulting scanned jpg files, so these require simple cropping and little else. As far as the box itself, they could improve it by having a way to tilt the front end up, so the screen is at a proper angle when working at a table — I’m building a U shaped block which will attach and raise the front end a few inches. Of course when scanning 120 film, the preview picture is nearly useless other than to let you know there is film in the machine — a thumbnail much, much too small for any detail. And yes, despite other opinions, you can remove the glass to clean under it. This involves pulling up the plastic frame glued to the glass holder, grabbing the flat bracket attached to the glass and pulling it up. Re-attachment takes a bit of gentle finesse, but you’ll figure it out. Whether or not it kills the warrantee, it’s nice to get rid of dust from time to time. Even with some of it’s quirks, I am getting lots of good scans on my negatives from the late 1940's. Rate 5 on quality and speed, rate 2 on the menu, — overall I feel ok with a 4. Hey, for the money you won’t find anything else on the market which does 120 size negatives. Someday, I may play with the other features, & will review those if I ever do.

This product is perfect for those folks (like me) that have 30 years worth of prints and slides sitting in a box, never looked at, and taking up space. If you are like me, you also didn't want to pay 60 cents or more per slide for professional conversion - in my case the photos in question are important but absolute perfection was not critical. In my opinion this product produces photo conversion results that a typical family member would think are fantastic - especially given the age of the original prints and slides. I also wanted a solution that was fast, reasonably priced, with great results - and this box does all that. This product takes a photo of the slide or print, digitally processes (45 seconds), and stores the photo files on an SDHC card (which you must purchase separately - I'd recommend 8GB or more). You can then move the SDHC card to your computer (Mac or PC) and offload/move the files from your SDHC to your computer photo software for later cleanup, adjustment, and organization. If you don't want to move the SDHC card to the computer, you can instead hookup the USB cable (but I found this just adding complexity to the workflow). After all, the cool part of this box is that it does all the conversion without having to be connected to the computer. You can covert photos while watching TV sitting on the couch, etc. The best part is you can do your final date organization and photo detail adjustments later on your computer using your photo software. You must keep in mind that this device is not expensive and the output is excellent for that cost. I have only tested the 35mm slide and prints conversion process and I am pleased with the cost point vs results/speed. Pros: Quick, easy, good quality, and consistent/predictable results. FYI: The color accuracy on slides and prints of this 9MP device is superior to the similar/higher spec ClearClick (and Wolverine) 20MP device. I don't know why, but it just was. I returned the ClearClick. I believe true slide scanners can give you additional resolution/clarity, but they cost much more, will require much more time, computer storage space, and must be connected to your computer during the workflow. Cons: -Poor manual, but you can figure it out after playing with it for a while. I wish the manufacturer would provide info on the the whats and whys of the Quality setting (S Fine, Fine, Normal), the Resolution setting (has 9MP sensor but has a 12 MP setting - interpolation?), the Auto Crop function, and lack of Power Button/impacts (leave it in sleep mode? pull the plug every everyday? etc). - 35mm Negative film clips (not the slides) were slightly off in the TINT - but I only had a small test source of negatives. I decided to just use the Slide Positives and the Prints instead - which produced very good results. -Dust can collect under glass (unaccessible) which can impact both the slides and prints conversion (but remember you can remove these artifacts with most computer photo software - not provided by this box). I have found that the included hardware cleanup - called magic touch - does some cleanup but not all. Wish manufacturer would provide a means to easily remove the glass to clean it (and blow off the camera lens) if necessary. Tips: If you have 110 film slides (Kodak Instamatic, etc), just convert them as 35mm slides using the box and then crop the resultant files later in your computer software. Turn off the auto-crop function during 110 slide conversion otherwise you might end up with different size files due to the auto crop selecting different portions of the photo.