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Winter Wonderland-Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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Wolverine F2D100 35mm to digital scanner- not worth it

I have hundreds upon hundreds of 35mm negatives that I want to scan into digital files from my travels abroad. The cost of having a lab scan them would be prohibitive, so I have wanted to buy a scanner to convert the negatives into digital files for a very long time; so when I saw the Wolverine F2D100 on sale at CompUSA, I bought it. At about $80.00 plus tax, I thought it should be good enough to make a decent enough copy that I could then tweak in editing. It is possible. One of my best selling photos was tweaked from a digital file on a cd that I purchased along with the original film processed photos. Unfortunately, I did not do that with other trips using my 35 mm.

Before opening the box I emailed Wolverine to make sure it would do what I wanted, get a good enough resolution to eventually make 8 x 10 prints. I was assured yes, decent enough. I also read reviews by consumers who had purchased the scanner, and they all seemed happy enough, other than a common complaint about the dust that collects on the machine.

So I set up the scanner, followed the instructions and was not happy with the results at all. First of all, the comments about the dust are spot on. Within seconds you could see dust clinging to the casing, and of the 10 or so photos I scanned most had major dust spots. They have a little cleaner that didn't do much to correct the problem. The color was also off, the scans had a washed out, bluish tint and looked overexposed, although the originals were not. During one scan, the scanner froze, and I had to shut it off. It's a flimsy, plastic contraption that might be fine if you could care less about the quality of your scans, but it's time consuming, since it's not easy loading the negatives into the negatives cartridge.

So I packed it up and returned it to Best Buy. Had it been under $20 I probably would not have bothered to return it, but $85.00 is a lot for something that doesn't work well.

I guess I will just have to be picky about which negatives I want transferred and take it to a lab.