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(More customer reviews)I just finished converting 100 slides to digital format using this slide scanner and it works great. Here are the details...
I have a Canon S3 IS camera. This product includes all the necessary connection items for use with the camera including a special connecting ring for the S3 camera body and a 52mm to 58mm conversion ring for the slide scanner assembly. Bottom line, this kit has all the necessary hardware and you do not need any of the Canon lens adapters to use this.
The unit is well made physically - the lens tube is metal and the slide holder is plastic. It is easy to insert and position the slide.
So how were the results? The quality of the results exceeded my expectations. I am not a professional photographer but to my untrained eyes the output, both on my 19" computer screen and printed via my inkjet at 6x4 looked very, very good. Was it absolutely perfect? No. However, all of the imperfections that I observed were due to the original slide. On about 15% of the slides there were a few (2-3) dust specs. On about 20% there was a slight color tint. The dust and color was part of my original slides, your situation will vary. These imperfections were fixable in Photoshop Elements.
The process I used was to first sit down and use this device to photo the 100 slides and then use Photoshop Elements to edit them. It took about 1 minute per slide to photo and about 3 minutes per slide to edit - so figure about 4 minutes total per slide when you do them in batches. One very useful feature of the S3 (and most Canon cameras) is that you can connect the camera to your computer and use your computer to control the camera. The big advantage is that I was previewing the photo on the large computer screen rather than the small camera LCD - this was a huge plus. I am not a very sophisticated Photoshop Elements users, but here is the process that I went through: 1) rotate the picture to level the horizon [don't know why so many of my slides were shot crooked, but probably 20% needed this], 2) crop to a 6x4 aspect ratio (when you photo the slide you will have black bands on the top and bottom that you want to get rid of because the slide aspect ratio is not the same as the digital camera's photo aspect ratio], 3) remove any dust or scratches [maybe 10%, but I was not a perfectionist], 4) adjust the color to eliminate color tint when necessary, maybe 10% of my slides, 5) adjust the levels to brighten colors and contrast, 50% of my slides.
The process is easier than the above paragraph makes it sound. I looked at slide scanning services on the internet and they wanted 50 cents to a dollar. Dedicated slide scanners were $500+. I have no reference to compare the end result, but I am very happy with this solution.
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