VuPoint FS-C1-VP Film and Slide Digital Converter Review

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(More customer reviews)Although I'd been successfully using a Canon CanoScan LIDE 500f to scan OLD 35mm color and B&W negatives, it was slow going. Many of the negatives had curled up with the low humidity of Winter and mounting them into the 500f's slide adapter was quickly becoming a nightmare. I worked out how long it was taking me to mount and scan each negative, and took a look at my remaining workload (about 2,000 negatives and mounted 35mm slides remaining). It became clear I needed a faster solution both in terms of mounting and scanning speed.
Since the 500f's slide attachment only supports film strips, the new device had to support mounted slides. Also, the new device had to be simple to operate, allowing me to get negatives and film strips mounted as quickly as possible, while also having facilities to secure srips curled from low humidity. That's when I saw the VuPoint FS-C1-VP 35mm scanner. It was cheap, simple, and appeared to do everything I needed.
------THE UNIT
The VuPoint 35mm slide scanner is exactly what it appears to be, a 5 megapixel low-mid range CCD in a plastic housing. The housing contains a mini lightbox at the bottom to illuminate 35mm slides/negatives for scanning by the CCD. Simply take your slides or negatives, mount them in the included trays, and slide the trays into the scanner unit. Each tray window snaps gently into place, helping you to align slides/negatives under the CCD. The trays are VERY GOOD at holding curled negatives securely. (Extremely curled/rumpled negatives may introduce shadows into the scan. To relax the slides fully, try holding the tray over a steaming pot for about 10 seconds.)
The build quality of the VuPoint scanner is quite high. Although made of plastic, it has a very nice feel (akin to a 'satin finish' cell phone) and the mounted slide and filmstrip trays appear durable and fit firmly into the unit.
The unit gets power from an attached 4 foot long USB 2.0 cable, so it has an extremly small desktop footprint. The scanner is also insensitive to attitude, allowing usage virtually anywhere, from any angle (sideways on your lap, in bed, etc) making it much more likely you'll get that scanning job done.
------SCANNING
I installed the scanner drivers ONLY, ignoring the image editing software that came with the unit (Photoimpression 6) and instead chose to scan directly into PhotoShop CS3. Using this method I was only able to 'dumb scan' at the highest resolution of 2592x1680. For negatives, this means you will need to invert the image after scanning and then perform color correction/level adjustment/unsharp masking/etc. Mounted slides or film stips will scan positive but will still need additional filters applied for best results. If you're scanning into CS3, create ACTIONS to handle typical slide archetypes (negative, positive, blurry negative, desaturated positive, scratched and dusty slide, etc).
In practice, the scan driver shows you a low framerate preview of the image under the CCD. If you wait between 5 and 15 seconds, the light levels in the image will balance and be ready for scanning. A sequence of positives with extremely different light levels will push your waiting time towards the maximum. In extreme cases you can wait 45 seconds+ for decent balancing.
To initiate a scan you either press the 'copy' button on the unit, or click the 'snapshot' icon via the scanner software driver. Snapshots are quick, but once you have a snapshot you then need to 'transfer' the image to CS3. This can take as long as 30 seconds per image.
The driver holds 12 snapshots. Once this 'buffer' is full you need to transfer the snapshots to CS3.
The driver grabs a decent amount of CPU while its previewing - taking 60% CPU on a 1GHz Pentium M laptop, and 40% CPU on a 2GHz P4. I'd imagine CPU usage would be around 20% on a dual core (will test this out later).
------IMAGE QUALITY
This unit will win no awards for image quality. I scanned in three 35mm mounted slides and viewed them onscreen while simultaneously also using a backlit slide viewer. The raw scans were fairly grainy, with blown out highlights.
I am linking to the RAW scans (with light JPG compression) for your review. Try cleaning up these photos yourself to get an idea of what the scanner is capable of.
http://www.geocities.com/gamedev123/35mm_ektachrome_slide_aug81.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/gamedev123/35mm_fujichrome_slide_jun68.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/gamedev123/35mm_kodachrome_slide_aug81.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/gamedev123/35mm_kodachrome_slide_sep68.jpgI was subsequently able to clean the slides up in CS3 but couldn't recapture the lost details in the highlights. In some cases the loss of detail was so extreme that the photos were virtually worthless. High contrast photos seem to suffer the most (ex: a person in an unlit room sitting framed in a sunny window). However "normal" photos will occasionally suffer the same fate (a person sitting at a cafe with black shirt and creme colored striped pants = dramatic loss of detail in the pants).
The source photos provided were taken by my father and grandfather, using low-midrange SLR cameras - I have no idea of the lens or settings used. I assume these types of images represent typical inputs for this scanner. Higher quality slides with large, in-focus subjects should provide comparatively higher quality scans.
------OVERALL VALUE
As just a raw USB slide scanner, the VuPoint is arguably worth the US$99 purchase price.
The hardware is well designed and very user friendly, looking like something worth at least $99. However, the driver software is horribly amateur compared to the likes of Canon and HP and seems cobbled together AT BEST. It cripples the hardware side of things, turning a potentially quality product into a questionable purchase. Until the driver software is vastly improved, allowing you to switch off the 'auto' adjustment functionality and set your own parameters, there will be no way to scan high contrast imagery.[NOTE: The AMSHOW direct capture software that is installed along with the driver allows you to access some scan parameters. But I have been unable to make these changes persist or affect my scans into PhotoShop. I eventually installed the PhotoImpression software suite that came with the scanner, hoping it would provide me with a few more scanner control options. Sadly, this is just a consumer level app for rotating/sorting pics and applying canned image effect.]


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