Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I received the Veho VFS-002m scanner for Christmas a few days ago, eager to get to work scanning decades of old Instamatic 110 negatives. The Veho VFS-002m is one of only a handful of scanners to include a tray for 110 negatives. It's a pity, because the film holders are this scanner's best attribute. With the bundled Arcsoft scanning software, and using a fairly new Core i5 laptop, scans of 110 and 35mm negatives were both very speedy. People who complained in their reviews that the scans were slow should try putting some money into a faster computer. The scanner itself isn't doing a bit of the processing. In fact, as near as I can tell, it just backlights the image for a photo sensor. The film holder must be manually slid from image to image. Not a deal breaker, especially since it does scan quickly with a fast processor, but it does make lining up the image a little tricky. The main issue is that the image quality that you get in your scans is not good. I have an older, but very high quality Minolta Dimage III scanner which I typically use for 35mm slide and negative scanning. I was hopeful that I'd be getting a scanner which, while maybe not quite as good, would be in the same ballpark - using newer, cheaper technology. Not a chance. Even with relatively large 35mm source material, the Veho VFS-002m only managed mediocre image quality. The lighting is uneven and small details, like faces, are a pixelated mess. Larger details and backgrounds are recognizable, but this isn't scanner which will let you archive your old photos. It's fine for scanning old photos to email or post on Facebook, but the image quality just isn't there to produce acceptable prints. With 110 negatives, the problem is much worse since the source image is about 1/4 the size of 35mm. Faces are barely recognizable blobs of pixels with all detail lost. All other small details get lost as well. As with 35mm sources, the quality is probably good enough to email a picture to family or post online, but it's not nearly good enough to ever allow new prints to be made (not without sacrificing too much in image quality, in my opinion). Basically, this scanner does what it says it will. It's easy to use, mostly because it's so simplistic. The film trays work well enough, but it's a shame they only work in THIS scanner. I guess I was expecting too much considering the price range it falls in, but with no higher grade option available for 110 negatives, it's unfortunate the image quality produced is so bad. For 35mm slides and negatives, there are many more (and better) options from better known companies. They may cost a little more, but the improved quality is probably worth the extra money. If all you want is 35mm scanning, look elsewhere. If you have to scan 110 film, whether this is an option for you will depend on what you want to do with the images. For me, I'm looking to find a way to permanently digitize a lifetime of old photos so they can be shared, cropped and reprinted at will. This scanner just can't do that for me.