Fantastic little photo scanner., August 25, 2011

I was a little apprehensive about purchasing this small photo scanner. I have literally 1000′s of photos from years and years of family photos, trips, candid moments, heirlooms, etc. that have begun to fade, turn pink or become brittle with age. So I was anxious to find something that would allow me to quickly scan in my huge photo and negative collection giving me good color and pixel resolution and photo-to-screen reasonable definition without costing me a fortune. This small scanner has been worth every dollar.

PROS: The set up is fast and easy. For starters, the scanner came complete with a power cord or I could insert four AAA batteries and make it completely mobil. The usb connection cable tethered the scanner to my PC or laptop. I also have the option of downloading the scanned photos to the 4 GB MicroSD Card that comes with it that is easily inserted into the back of the scanner. My first scan, I chose to download the scans to my laptop. The software to complete that setup is on the MicroSD card. The software setup was quick and in just minutes I was scanning in my first photo. After 50-100 photo scans, I cleaned the rollers with the cleaning tool supplied with the scanner. Despite reviews that gave negative feedback concerning white lines on the photos, the tool did the trick and kept my photos crisp and clean. There is also a sleeve for photos that are too curled, thin, too small, or just need a little TLC to make it through the scanner. I love this little scanner and can’t wait to start on my negatives. I highly recommend this scanner for those who are looking for a quick and easy way to archive their old photos. I’ll update my review once I have begun to scan in my negatives. Also, the description online said it will scan up to 8″x10″ but it will actually accept a 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper.

CONS: It only scans in one format, JPG. I would have liked PDF so I could scan in my recipes, magazine articles and receipts. When you use the JPG format the files are rather large. I can scan them in as a JPG and then print them to a PDF but that is just extra work. I would also have liked the ability to control the JPG size on the scanner itself.

Overall, I am very pleased with this scanner. I don’t think you will be disappointed with the functionality.

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Fast, easy to use, portable with medium scan quality, November 17, 2011

PROs, CONs, and NEUTRALS

If you’ve got the daunting project of scanning thousands of old photos without wanting to spend 5-10 minutes fiddling on each one, then this little device is going to work really well for you. If you’re looking for super high quality scans worthy of an photography gallery, choose a more professional flatbed scanner and prepare to spend the next two years hunched over in a dungeon with your klunky PC.

PROS:

- Scans directly to a memory card without an external computer!

- Up and running in less than 10 minutes, which includes breaking it out of the box, reading the quick start guide and two pages of the user guide, and guessing that the power button doubles as the resolution selector.

- Easy to use. Examples:

1. Stick your SanDisk in the back first. Then plug in the device. Toggle between 600 dpi (amber) and 300 dpi (green) by pressing the power button. Hold the power button for two seconds to turn off, or hold again to turn on again.

2. To scan a photo, either insert the photo directly into the slot. It will automatically feed itself!

- Fast scans.

600 dpi (amber light): 8″x10″ took 32 seconds. Anything inside the plastic sleeve will take 32 seconds to go through the scanner (since the speed is the same to process the same sized sheet, regardless of the size of the photo inside it.) Smaller photos fed into the scanner without the sleeve will still be between 25-31 seconds.

300 dpi (green light): 8″x10″ took 10.8 seconds. Anything inside the plastic sleeve will take 9-10 seconds

- Plastic sheath included. The plastic sleeve is about 8.75″ long, and is used to protect older or frayed or bent photos.

- Really small. About 10.5″ long x 2.25″ deep x 1.875″ high. P.S. It operates similar to a NeatReceipts-style scanner, but without a PC and other software.

- Portable. Runs on batteries (but I use the included power cord.)

- Once you put the photo in, the scanner rolls the photo through by itself, so you’re not holding it the whole time.

- Good value. It’s a scanner that can cost less than 0 in some places.

CONS:

- Sometimes if you don’t feed the photo straight, it will go through crooked, and you can’t stop it midway, as the scanner doesn’t open. You would end up yanking the photo out. It’ll let you, but that’s probably not a good idea since it’s those internal rollers that roll the photo for you. Wouldn’t want to damage them or the photo!

- The plastic sheath won’t cover anything larger than a 5×7 photo. So you’ll just need to feed larger photos directly without the sleeve, or use a regular flatbed scanner.

- Only one plastic sheath. Not sure how to get replacements, as I could see it getting lost or frayed or destroyed by children/pets. I suppose you could just get a normal office transparent, thin binder sleeve to substitute, but I haven’t tried.

- Occasionally, the feed won’t start right away, or starts too quickly. But it recovers quickly just by pulling the photo out quickly before it goes in too far, and trying again. (See the caveat about the rollers above, though.)

- You do need to feed the photo and take it out once it’s gone through. It doesn’t spit the photo out, but will sort of continue scanning until you pull the end out completely.

NEUTRAL:

- This scanner assumes you just need decent but not super high quality scans of relatively flat photos no wider than 8″. (Length can be a little more than 10″.)

- You *must* have a memory card in the memory card slot in order to scan, even if you are scanning to a machine. (Someone please confirm.)

- I did encounter the white line that another reviewer mentioned, but in my case, it cleared up once I used the enclosed cleaning tool. There is a little paper guide on the scanner that you adjust to fit the size of the photo being fed. I notice that I have problems if my photo ends up really pushing against that plastic guide. Hard to explain–think of it like trying to squeeze a bed through the doorway. A part of it might compress, and I think that was partially responsible for my white line. Yes, I admit: user error.

OTHER FUNCTIONALITY:

- It saves all the photos as *.jpg format to a folder on the memory card called PHOTO# (where # refers to a number, starting with 1.)

- You can scan to a desktop/laptop with the included software if you wish

Hope that helps! Comments and questions for clarification are welcome. Happy digitizing of old photos!

[11/18/2011 Update]

I read the user guide and discovered two additional things to note:

- This product is made by Pandigital for Kodak.

- There is a calibration card included that can be run through the scanner to calibrate it and help with the white…

Read more

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Thousands of photos, October 3, 2011

By 

Brenda Aliff “Briarhop” (Maryland) – See all my reviews

  

I have 3 generations of photos that I treasure and wanted to scan them and preserve them on a stick/disc. Using my printer/scanner was going to take mega hours of work. Using my new Kodak P811BK scanner I have really cut the time down and only have one more storage bin of albums to do. This is the fastest most efficient scanner I have ever used and I highly reccommend this to anyone with a daunting scanning job facing them.

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