20 | February | 2013 | 2clicksaway

central drive-in

Last week I checked an Amazon lightning deal for a Wolverine 20 MP film conveter that normally sells for $110 and was discounted to $70. It looks like a toy in the ad but desperate people do desperate things and I needed a converter. When it arrived I didn’t even open the box for several days because I really didn’t expect it to perform very well. Once unboxed, it set up easily and I took a box of slides, color and black and white negatives at random and ran some tests. The ease and flexibility were impressive and there are some manual controls for exposure and color balance. Within 10 minutes I scanned an entire box of slides (24) and saved them to an old SD card. I also scanned (converted, that is) some color negs and B&W negs easily. While I think the optics could be a bit sharper, the converter did a pretty decent job on all film types. The photo above (from about 1984) was from a 35mm color negative which I converted to this monotone in Lightroom. (My brother has the original color print in his living room). Here’s what I learned in the past two days:

– It’s not a Nikon scanner, so don’t expect that kind of result in the scans. But despite its looks, it’s not a toy either and the conversions may surprise you. Also, I don’t think there are any moving parts as in a traditional scanner so I don’t think it needs to be as robust as one.

– CLEAN YOUR NEGS AND SLIDES BEFORE CONVERTING. There is no dust or scratch removal hardware or software included.

– Native files are jpg only so I convert them to tiffs and edit in LR4.

– There are some correction that can be made before converting but even the jpgs or tiffs can be edited easily in LR or whatever editor is available to you.

– CLEAN YOUR NEGS AND SLIDES BEFORE CONVERTING (I repeat this because it’s an important step and can save you a lot of time post scan).

– I find that out of the thousands of slides and negs I have, not every one is conversion-worthy. The image on the screen in the converter is a close approximation of the actual file so it makes it a bit easier to decide weather to convert or not to convert.

– It’s a bit difficult to get the exact color balance in the converter but relatively easy to get in LR during post processing.

– You can put a lot more scans on an SD card than what will fit on the converter internal memory. I have a few old cards I could use and I would suggest getting one if you don’t have one available.

– View the process as a new opportunity to be creative with your older work. The transition to digital can be a bit of a challenge but at the same time very rewarding.

– CLEAN YOUR NEGS AND SLIDES BEFORE CONVERTING (you’ll thank me later).