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Brookstone iConvert™ Slide
and Negative Scanner, AKA "Flashpoint", AKA "Bell & Howell 50134", AKA "Trustin Technology 50134", AKA "Veho VFS-004", AKA "Wolverine", AKA "FILM IMAGER", AKA "ION SLIDE2PC", AKA "Luminox", AKA "VuPoint", and too many others
Click HERE to see our YouTube Video Review of the VuPoint Slide Scanner This is just another knockoff of the Brookstone iCan't Convert. It should actually be against the law for these to be sold other than for door stops.
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 7:57 AM
Subject: Old Photo Online Form: Turnaround time?
Hi! Your service looks great and I want to take advantage of the free ten-sample test to make sure. I'll be mailing the slides Saturday, January 3rd. From your web pages it sounds like they would be scanned the following weekend, so I could expect to get them back around January 16th. Does that sound about right? The reason I'm concerned about turnaround time is that (and I'll bet you're hearing this a lot right about now) I need to decide whether to return the Brookstone scanner I received as a gift. After reading your web pages I know you won't be surprised to hear that the quality resulting from that scanner is often rather poor, and getting decent results usually involves some rather interesting techniques. If your service is as good as I suspect it is I want to return the scanner and use you for all my slides. I have about 25 days remaining to return the Brookstone scanner. Thanks!
Robert
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 8:16 AM
Subject: RE: Old Photo Online Form: Turnaround time?
Robert,
Be glad to give you an extra quick turnaround on the free scans if you will write us an email we can post comparing our scans to the Brookstone. I have thought of purchasing one myself and doing some comparison tests but we are so busy I never had the time. If it turns out as I expect, it would also be nice to have your scans as comparison.
Here is a link to a brochure we are working on comparing our service to Walgreens:
http://www.old-photo.com/Walgreens-vs-Old-Photo.pdf
Thanks for considering Old Photo for your digitizing needs!
Best Regards,
Ed
Affordable Old Photo
1/7/09
We have received Robert's slides and his disk with his sample scans from his Bookstone Scanner. You can judge the results, below, yourself. When the slides came in, I did not tell our scanner opperators that this demo job was any different than normal. No adjustments were made after they were done with scanning and Photoshop editing. Then I compared the images from the Brookstone scanner and our demos. The slides that are for comparison below are 126 slides and so the Brookstone cropped the top and bottom off, whereas we give the whole slide scan.
This is the text file that Robert sent along with his slides and his disk with his Brookstone images.:
<"Hi, folks. Here are all the scans I took with the Brookstone scanner. I have included some of the slides in the ten I would like for my free sample. I think I've included plenty for your purposes in putting together a comparison page, but if you would like others that I haven't included just let me know and I'll send them along.
<I tried the scanner on three systems. As expected, the system didn't make any difference in the result. The name of each slide includes either "vista", "xp", or "acer". Even though Vista isn't supported I once got it to work with my desktop Fry's Vista system (later I couldn't reproduce my success). The "xp" designation corresponds to my Sony Vaio laptop running XP. The "acer" designation corresponds to my Acer Aspire One netbook; the poor little Atom processor in the Acer took quite a while to process each picture.
The Brookstone scanner clearly has issues with contrast. The really frustrating things about it (other than generally poor results) are that it's not predictable from slide to slide and that the intelligent contrast adjustment almost always goes too far, bypassing a better result on the way to its final conclusion. The scanner is predictable for any single slide -- it always does the same poor job.
For the outdoor slides it would start with an image that looked very overexposed and in quick steps adjust contrast to a better result. For these slides the end result was probably actually as good as or better than any step during its adjustment process. The indoor slides are a completely different story. Often it would start with a fairly decent picture and quickly adjust the contrast so that the final result is completely washed out and has lost so much information that Photoshop is of no use in fixing it. Unfortunately, the adjustment happens so quickly that I was never able to capture a sample of the initial picture in order to see how good it really was. This was one of the most frustrating aspects.
In general, the "acer" jpegs allowed the scanner to complete its adjustment process, so here you can see what people are going to get if they let it just do its thing. In general, the "xp" jpegs are my attempts to hit the sample button when the picture looked best (or, in the case of the indoor pictures, to hit the button immediately so as to try to get the first image). I don't remember what I did with Vista, but there are only four attempts there anyhow.
I hope this is clear, but if not please feel free to correspond via email or give me a call.
Thanks! I look forward to seeing my samples.
"
| If you are really determined to buy one of these pieces of junk, wait for an "open box sale". This is where you can buy what other people have already decided is junk and have returned it. Just make sure you can also return it. Kim Komado has frequent "open box" sales; a testament to the quality of these "scanners". | |
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Here is a review from the Miami Herald Newspaper on 11/11/08
By BRIDGET CAREY
http://www.miamiherald.com
/business/story/765576.html
"Ups: It's easy to load the film into the scanner.
Downs: The software is a disaster. When you click 'scan' or push the scan button on the machine, you get no indication from the computer that it is doing anything. No sounds. No progress bar. The only thing that happens is that your mouse icon turns into an hourglass for about three to five minutes. Then you have to click a button called 'transfer' for it to actually save it to your computer, which takes another five minutes. So basically you're left pondering if your computer is frozen as you stare at an hourglass for about 10 minutes to process one picture.
All the photos I converted ended up with a blue hue, so I had to use the photo editing software (which is included) to make the tones look normal, but it still was hard to get it right.
Bottom line: Don't waste your money. It's not worth the hassle. You're better off going to a drugstore photo center."
We would say that you are better off going to Affordable Old Photo for your slide conversion project because, even if "a drugstore" used the same machines as we do (and they don't) you still do not get the FREE Photoshop enhancement of the scanned image by a trained proffesional. We are just so much better. Get TEN FREE SCANS to see for yourself.
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 Free Full DVD Slide Show: $50+ value now free with your scanning order. Make sure you specify on the order form that you want the DVD slide show instead of the free Data Disk with just the images. |
| Take advantage of our free offer to scan ten of your slides and create a DVD playable slide show for you. |
| We specialize in slide to digital conversion, as well as digitizing many other films. |
| Bringing your photographic past into the present and preserving it for the future. |
| Don't let your photographs fade away, become damaged or lost to posterity. Let our 35mm scanning service help you bring your photographs and slides and other films into the 21st century as digital images. Once digitized there is a whole world of new possibilities waiting for you. |
