Railfan Technology > Wolverine Slide Scanner

Has anyone used the above slide scannner? Costco has them on sale for a good price online.

Not really a scanner. More like a 5MP digicam with a enclosed white LED light source.

You should really read as many reviews on this device as you can. I haven't used it and have no use for something like this but I've read about it and suspect that for people who just want to make small JPEGs of their snapshots, it's probably sufficient. For people who want to digitally archive their film and slides, this thing isn't close to being up to the task. Even a modern flatbed with a transparency adapter is probably better.

At the end of the day you have to decide what your goal is with your negs and slides. Do you just want to make small JPEGs of them to share online? Or do you want to archive them and never touch the originals again? Or is it something in between? Also, are most of your photos well exposed and properly lit?

One of the huge downfalls of the less expensive devices is their inability to capture detail at the extreme ends of the histogram (shadows and highlights). They just don't have the dynamic range to take poorly lit or exposed images and capture enough data to salvage them. It's the old "garbage in-garbage out" rule.

A good quality scanner with a wide dynamic range can pull amazing detail out of pretty crummy originals. Unfortunately for most of us who shoot trains instead of studio subjects, our subjects are often in less than optimum lighting conditions. I don't know about your slide collection but mine has a lot of beautiful, well-exposed slides, along with a lot of images that were shot on cloudy days, are back lit, were shot in the shade or under harsh noontime axial light, were shot at dawn or dusk, etc. Many of these can be scanned and enhanced with a good scanner and proper software. Few can be salvaged with a cheap digitizing set-up.

This may be a decent device for you depending on your situation and expectations. But if your railroad photos are imperfect like most of ours, or if you want proper archival-quality digital files. I suspect this device will yield very disappointing results overall.

trainjunkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not really a scanner. More like a 5MP digicam with
> a enclosed white LED light source.
>
> ....>
> At the end of the day you have to decide what your
> goal is with your negs and slides. Do you just
> want to make small JPEGs of them to share online?
> Or do you want to archive them and never touch the
> originals again? Or is it something in between?
> Also, are most of your photos well exposed and
> properly lit?
>
>

so true. If you are like my better half, uploading the old family snapshots to her FB page, then the little device like hers that scans small prints or the one you are describing work well.

chico

Thanks, That makes sense. I have a cannon scanner that scans really nice but its just so slow. The reviews on the wovlerine online are 50/50.