Review: Veho VFS-001 scanner

An easy way to scan old slides and negatives

So popular and widespread are digital cameras that it’s easy to forget there was once a time when photos meant a set of prints along with negatives, or slides.

But many people still have vast collections of either or both of these and Veho’s compact scanner offers a convenient way to preserve those pictures.

It has a striking design, looking much better than most traditional flatbed scanners, and will fit easily on a desk.

The main unit is fairly small and compact, but feels very solidly built, aside from one rather flimsy button. It’s designed to work with the included software from ArcSoft to get your pictures scanned and fixed - to get rid of dust marks and scratches, for example - with minimal drama. And this it is able to achieve quite comfortably - the setup process was commendably simple and the software intuitive. The included trays can be loaded with either with negatives or slides, and they are scanned from there, one at a time.

This is much faster than scanning prints, plus it has the added advantage of not recreating any imperfections (such as scratches) that a print may have picked up over the years, so even if you're not someone who's kept their negatives untouched and in the envelope with the prints, it might still be fine.

One minor gripe is that if the negatives have been poorly cut, they may not fit properly into the tray, which means it's necessary to crop the image after scanning. The biggest problem is that the software is rather limited, although it is very easy to use. This was a problem because quite often with scanned slides the colour reproduction is slightly off, so you need to use the software to correct the colours. It is possible to scan slides straight into Adobe Photoshop Elements, which was more effective.

Another important point is that the documentation uses an astonishingly small font to guide users through the setup process. We’d defy anyone to be able to read the included instructions comfortably - we certainly couldn’t - so it’s a good thing the initial setup process was so easy.

Vista compatible: Yes