Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It has probably been over five years since I looked at slide scanners; at the time they were prohibitively expensive, and I had to settle for a contraption that attached to a digital camera, involving a lens adapter, a tube, magnifying lens, and a slide holder with a light diffuser in the back. To use it I had to hunt for an appropriate light source; and to put it mildly, the whole setup was rather clumsy, and was of little use with negative film. Apparently I had not been keeping up with developments in this area until recently discovering this Wolverine 35mm scanner. Naturally, I was blown away at the convenience, and I am happy to report that it comes with no sacrifice in quality. This device does not have to be connected to a PC, although it can use a USB port as a power source, as well as any regular electrical outlet. It has limited internal memory (12-15 photos), but it accepts SD cards, which can store thousands of photos. Its easiest and most practical use is therefore as a standalone 35mm-to-SD scanner. It accommodates the most common form of 135 and 110 formats, i.e. negatives in short strips and slides in their cardboard mounts At first I considered it a shortcoming that this device (like almost all others) does not scan directly to a PC, as I prefer to keep my photo collection on the PC's hard drive, where it is convenient for PhotoShopping and other purposes. Without using an SD card, the process is something of a nuisance: one can only capture 12-15 slides before having to transfer via USB cable; but then I realized that there is really no easy way to make this a mass-production transfer process anyway, because one still has to mount each slide into a tray that holds only four. (I did note that there are some converters on the market that accept a stack of slides, or that have higher-capacity trays, but these were either more expensive, had lower resolution, or both.) As I continued to pursue this thought, I inserted an SD card, and voilá, problem solved! Fortunately, the Wolverine stores directly to the SD card, bypassing its own memory limitation. One can put thousands of photos on the SD card and then put it into one's PC's card reader; it only takes seconds to remove the SD card and put it into the PC; and then all the photos are instantly available. Should one's PC not have the appropriate SD-card reader, the Wolverine can transfer all the images from the SD card into the PC via the included USB cable. This is almost all one could desire; however, a device that scanned directly to a PC would have the advantage of being able to monitor via the PC's display, rather than the 2.25" low-res display on the Wolverine. As I was looking through the 35mm scanners available on Amazon, I found that most of the competition falls short in specs (as of this writing in early 2013). Few have such high resolution (20 megapixels), and users complain that many are very slow. The Wolverine digitizes instantly and requires only 2-3 seconds to save each image (either to its own memory or to an SD card). The few competitors that scan directly to PCs have serious software compatibility issues, requiring back-level operating systems or back-level TWAIN drivers. Maybe better competition exists, but I was not able to find it. The Wolverine's 20-megapixel capture is more than adequate for 35mm film, but one should not read too much into the megapixel rating because focus is somewhat imprecise with this device, due to the variability of how various photo labs place 35mm film into their 2x2 cardboard mounts, and to the fact that there is a bit of "play" in the slide holder. Colors, brightness, contrast, and sharpness were all quite good without having to make any adjustments for normally exposed film. I have to stress that this is not pro gear: while the Wolverine has a number of useful controls, it lacks the ability to tweak the focus, for example; thus the most fastidious of users will be disappointed in the resulting sharpness, or lack thereof. The bottom line in terms of resolution is that the Wolverine will make digital copies that are suitable for sharing on the Internet or as 4x6 prints, but don't expect to make very good 11x14 enlargements. On the other hand, this is an affordable way to rescue one's old slides from obscurity and bring them into the twenty-first century. The Wolverine has many helpful features; don't underestimate the value of being able to instantly flip photos vertically or horizontally; it saves the time of having to be careful how you load the slides. Brightness and other adjustments can be made as well, but the device automatically adjusts for brightness as it is, so it was rare that tweaking was necessary. And, although it is no longer an unusual feature, the ability to do the color reversal for negatives wowed me. The negative tray handles the typical strips provided by photo processing labs (remember them?) Navigating the menus is rather easy, although not immediately intuitive to one used to working with a PC. There is, for example, no overt "back" button to take you back to the previous menu level; but there is another button that does the same thing. The main improvement that I would suggest would be to provide a mode whereby one only had to push one button to capture each slide; as it is, it requires two. After a few minutes one just does it automatically; no significant time is wasted, but it does seem sort of silly. (If you simply press the Enter button again after progressing to the next slide, the Wolverine takes you to a screen allowing you to adjust the brightness. Since it is seldom necessary to adjust the brightness, this sequence doesn't make sense.) Cavils aside, this is a marvelous device, and a great value.