Plustek Smartphoto F50

Many people have an archive of film photographs stored safely away that they would like to get onto a computer.

Photo prints can be scanned with a standard flatbed scanner, but for those with collections of slides or negative film the process is a little trickier.

The area of a 35mm film exposure is very small so, in order to pull out all the detail it contains, you will need a scanner with high-quality optics to enable it to magnify the small area by a large amount.

Until recently this meant buying an expensive flatbed scanner with a special adapter, or a dedicated film scanner. Recently, however, we have seen a few devices like this one: a simple, low-cost device for digitising film.

Using the Smartphoto could not be simpler. You fit the film to be digitised into a plastic holder – here is one for strips of negatives and one for mounted slides. Then push that into the device and press a button. A few seconds later the photo appears on the computer screen.

Unfortunately the results were very poor. We tested the device using an assortment of standard colour and slide film and found that the Smartphoto tended to produce poor-quality images with inaccurate colours and, more annoyingly, detail lost from lighter areas.

Images from negatives fared slightly better than those from slides, but we were not happy with either, and adjusting the settings made little difference.

If the device was cheap – say £40 – this might be an acceptable trade-off, but for the cost of the Smartphoto you can buy a flatbed scanner capable of far superior results.

For more information on scanning old film and slides see our online feature.