Product Reviews

Digital cameras have all but seen off traditional film-based photography, and most of us are snapping away using pixels rather than silver halide. For those who were around before this great new age, though, or still prefer the feel of film, there's likely to be a box in the attic or store cupboard full of negatives and slides. To get these images into your PC, you need a film and slide scanner.

Assuming you don't have the budget for serious scanning equipment, the Veho VFS-001 looks just the job. It's a 5 megapixel scanner that works from 35mm negatives or slides. The squat little box is just 17cm tall and 9cm square, so it'll sit on a desk without taking up much room. It's powered through the USB cable from your PC, so it doesn't even need a separate power supply. There's just one button, which launches

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the software and scans an image, making the process very speedy. There's little else on the unit but a power light.

Slides and film are passed through the scanner in dedicated holders. The slide unit supports up to three frames at a time and the negative six. Using the holder can be fiddly, and you have to move it manually after each item is scanned - there's no motor to do this.

Setting up and installing the Veho is simple, and we were up and running in minutes. The supplied ArcSoft PhotoImpression 6 software handles image capture and processing. It's easy to follow, and scans are almost instantaneous. If you're doing negatives, the preview isn't inverted until you move your image from the capture screen to the storage screen, so everything is backwards and the wrong colour, making it hard to identify specific shots in a set.

As you might guess, image quality isn't all that great, with plenty of noise and a distinct absence of detail. If you want to preserve your shots for posterity or blow them up on magazine covers, this isn't the scanner for you. But that's not to say the pictures are unusable, and if you need to convert a few reels for a web gallery or a digital photo frame (where you could downsample the 2593x1680 pixels to a smaller, clearer image) or printing at modest sizes, the Veho may fit the bill. For a small, cheap scanner it works well, and very fast.