Mobile Film Scanner - RODMFS50

KODAK Mobile Film Scanner This is a clever product for what it does. And at a great price. I like it for that. And what you want to use it for should be aligned with what it does. DO NOT think, however, that you are going to scan your entire negative and slide collection and turn them into photographs. While it CAN do this, it's really not for that purpose. It can do this for the odd slide or negative, no problem. But the process is a bit time consuming and depends on the quality of the picture taking capabilities of your phone - which are, no matter how new your phone is, still very limited compared to a scanner or camera. Remember, your phone is a "phone with a camera function” not a real camera. The images you take with your phone are JPGs, which can't be very well post-processed such as with RAW or TIFF images - which is an important requirement for converting negatives & slides. If you have that many slides & negatives, you really need to get either a scanner, or pay a service to do them in bulk. This is simply not the product for that kind of volume at all. You need to download the Kodak Mobile Film Scanner app for your smartphone. It’s a basic app that has “film negative, color negative, positive film” settings for your camera so it can interpret the image it sees over the film plate. It works well enough. It has a couple of filters built in for adjusting contrast and color tint, but they are hard to precisely adjust. (BTW, remember that Kodak went bankrupt years ago, so even though this has the Kodak colors and logo, it’s NOT the “Kodak” company of yore. Just some unrelated company that bought the trademark rights for “Kodak” (just like “Polaroid” today as well.). So here’s what it does do and what I bought it for. I do have hundreds of rolls of film (negatives) and this little baby can allow you to view your negatives as positives via the imaging of your phone. It makes it much easier to view the negatives and see what you’ve got. Your phone’s function also allows you to enlarge the image as well, to see details you’d miss just holding it up to the light. You could use a lightbox, which I also have, but you can’t enlarge the negatives and, importantly, you are still looking at a negative image, which can make it difficult for the untrained eye (or trained, for that matter.) So this system is much better. You put one end of the negative strip in, and pull it though, all the while seeing positive images on your phone’s screen. After that, you need to make notes and make decisions: “convert #15 and #21,” or “toss the whole strip…”. In THIS way, you can go through your B&W or color negative collection. And yes, make the occasional image capture with your phone and send it to the kids with a note “Just came across this of your 2nd birthday party!… You were so cute! Remember Dougie… heard he’s getting out with good behavior in 2 years….” Something like that. Ditto for slides. Holding them up to the light is a pain. This way you can enlarge the image and see what you’ve got and make that all important decision: “Keep this important image as it’s a critical piece of family history that my kids and descendants will value and thank me for saving” or “toss it as the kids won’t give a rip about the 6 people in this picture who they’ve never met and of whom I only remember 4 of them myself…” At that point, after going through your “collection” you should end up with perhaps 1/5th or 1/10th of what you’ve started with, and can start scanning the remainder with a high-quality scanner (they are not very expensive) and working with image-editing software (that will usually come with the scanner if you don’t have something like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (a much easier and less expensive version of Photoshop with all the most commonly used essentials) to make the best image possible. (Highly recommend it if you are just getting into image editing and don’t really need the full blown Photoshop.). REMEMBER: you are now dealing with ONLY those absolutely-precious family heirloom images that you and your kids will want preserved for posterity. You’ve tossed all the useless junk images. It will be worth the effort. Once taken, the app allows you to easily save to the phone (bad idea) or email/text/airdrop/post images. Alternatively, there are several services where you can bundle up your images and send them off to be professionally digitized with properly adjusted contrast, exposure, color balance, etc, and returned in a few months, all while you wait for a few months with no effort on your part. “A few months” you say/complain? What’s the rush NOW? These are images that have sat in the back of your closet forgotten for decades, and now you can’t stand to wait a couple of months? If that’s the case, that’s a separate personal issue beyond the scope fo this review… So, yes, this is a good product, inexpensive, and allows you to view a large volume of negatives as positives and also color positives (slides) for easier viewing and decision making, and making the occasional image from them to send to the kids or grandkids. But it is not for volume conversion or quality conversion.

One thing people need to know about this product is that even though the 35 mm negative has way better resolution than a 4x6 print, don't be fooled that great resolution in that negative will naturally translate into a great resolution image file. Using a phone to take a photo at the distance this scanner provides on a tiny 35 mm negative is always going to give you poor image quality because the film is so small and the resulting resolution will be very low even though it is completely focus. I use my iPhone 7 which has great camera and the free app from Kodak to attempt this scan on my 35 mm negatives from 30 years ago. It gives me an image file of 400 KB with very grainy and off balance color image. When I point that same camera to the 4x6 print from 30 years ago from that same negative, I get a much better image file of 3 MB with much better color and details. I don't have those professional scanner, nor do I have any image editing software. So my guess is that professional scanner can probably generate an even better image from that negative because the negative itself has very good resolution in it. So if you have a 4x6 print, even from 30 years ago, it would be better to take a photo of that print than to use this scanner to take a photo of the negative. I think a lot of people in the review said they were happy about the image produced by this scanner was because they did not realize that the negative has great resolution and could give you way better image if using the right tool. I am no way near professional eyes, but the image produced by this scanner is horrible that even I can see, especially after I used my phone to take a picture of the original 4x6 print and saw that huge difference. I have returned the scanner. If you just want to use this scanner to see roughly what is in a negative, it is ok. But any attempt to convert that negative to image file will be pretty disappointing unless you are willing to spend a lot of time and efforts to post-process those image files.

At about $35, this Kodak Mobile Film Scanner is a bit over priced, but I am pleased with the product's simplicity and usefulness. I've captured color 35mm slides (see attached photo, unretouched),and 50 yr-old- B&W 35mm negatives with good success. It's simple enough to use--open the box, fold up the sides to create a platform for your phone, flip the switch to power up the small light box, position your slide or negative in the holder so the light shines up through it, then place your camera where it can view the now backlit image through the hole in the platform. The app that you download to your phone is simple and easy to use. I was surprised by the fact that this thing is heavy duty cardboard, but it seems sturdy enough for years of use. It's nice and portable, folding up to a thin 1 inch (+ or -)thickness. Worth the price if all you want to do is get your slide/negatives into digital format so you can then use computer photo editing to clean up the image. I would purchase this item again.

So at first I thought wow this is really cheap quality but then I thought about how expensive other ones are and realized they found an inexpensive way to accomplish the same thing! It is made out of a heavy duty cardboard like material but works really well and if not abused it seems like it will last. It needs 2 AA batteries that you will put in the bottom part so that it can backlight the negative. You will also need to download the Kodak app for your phone, at first I was like ugh I hate Kodak apps and programs but this one is actually really nice and it is user friendly! I was even able to use it on an oversized negative but the backlight only illuminates the area of a 35mm negative, which the area I was trying to capture was about that size. It works with color negatives, color positives, and black and white negatives. I havent tried it yet with any other sized negative but I do have some 110 negatives that I might try with it. If the negative is smaller than 35mm it might be possible! Overall I am very pleased with this purchase and highly recommend it but dont be expecting a heavy duty item, it would be nice if made out of some plastic type material but that would just drive up the cost.

It's not really a digital scanner. It's more of a copying stand. Having said that, it's worth the roughly $40. Just don't expect to be able to make prints any larger than 5x7. The resolution just isn't good enough. But if all you want to do is convert old slides or negatives to digital files to store and view on a computer then it's good enough. Basically it works like this: First you download and install the app that comes with it. Then you put a slide or negative on the small light box in the base of the unit. Then you put your smart phone on the stand, over the slide or negative, making sure the phone's camera lens is positioned over the hole. Then all you do is take a photo of your slide or negative. You can do a bit of image processing using the included app, but iPhoto or Lightroom give you more options and work better. Once you've photographed (Remember this is not a scanner!) your original negative or slide, you have a copy of it on your smartphone and can transfer it from there to your computer for storage and/or printing. Just remember that you get what you pay for. A good film scanner costs about $1000. This is under $40.

I had just a few slides that I needed to digitize this product. Let me do it easily and at a very reasonable cost.

In the process of decluttering for a move I came across hundreds of slides my parents took from1955-58. I knew I would need a slide viewer to look at the slides to pick the ones to have digital images made. I came across this, and since the cost was similar to a slide viewer, I decided to order this with hopes that I could save the images to my phone and not pay to have images made from the slides. I figured if nothing else, I could use it as a slide viewer. I am happy to report that I was able to make digital images from all of the slides. Since the slides were in color, I didn’t use the app, I just snapped a picture of the slide and used the edit function that came with my phone to crop the pictures. I would imagine if you were making photos from negatives, you would need to use the app for that. The device is made of cardboard so I would doubt that it could take much abuse, and there is no one of off switch for the light source, which would be annoying to have to take the batteries out if you used this every day, but it worked perfectly for my needs. The attached picture was taken of one of the slides.

My mom passed away about 5 years ago and my dad has taken it so hard that he threw out all the family photos so he wouldn’t be reminded of her. Luckily, he found the negatives, so I’ve been digitizing them. At first, I just wanted to get started right away and didn’t want to spend much money, so I went ahead and ordered the Kodak Mobile Film Scanner for $39. It was the cheapest one out there. With further investigating, I decided it probably wouldn’t be the best solution if I wanted to have good quality. I had looked up on youtube how to make your own scanner using your phone, glass from picture frames, a tablet (for the light), a box, and some tuna cans. I downloaded the Kodak app and tried it out. The quality was terrible! So I figured the Kodak Mobile Film Scanner would be about the same. Just as the other reviews state, it is a simple design made of a hard cardboard-type material. You turn it on (batteries not included), place your negative on top of the light, and place your mobile phone so that the camera lens is over the hole. It matters little how good your camera works--it is still blurry and poor quality. My phone is an iphone X, which has a great camera—one of the best. I think mainly because you are taking a photo of something so small and expect it to be larger and clearer. I got the same result by using the home-made scanner. Pros: •Less expensive than other scanners, but still not worth the price. I agree with other reviewers that have said it’s only worth about $10, not $50. •Good for if you just want to see what a negative is, but not good enough quality to print a photo. Cons: •Does not produce good quality photos. •Way over priced. I included some photos for the review that show the difference in quality using the Kodak scanner, and another one, and also different size of negatives. Keep in mind, these negatives are old and of poor quality to begin with.

I am disappointed at how Kodak designed this product. First of all, the model/template for the mobile phone is based on a very old mobile phone with cameras in the center. Who else uses such phone these days? And secondly, no matter how much I adjust my phone camera, I can never get a sharp image. Perhaps can Kodak advise which particular phone model works best? Utterly disappointing.

Funciona perfectamente para escanear los negativos. Considero que está caro para que sea de cartón y sobre todo porque es prácticamente de uso único una vez q acabas de escanear todos los negativos

unfortunately, useless product, primitive mechanism, sorry to see the inveterate trademark made such kids toys :(

Why did you pick this product vs others?: Kodak brand Quality: It does what it is claimed to do !

I have more than 1000 slide to scan, so the unit is insufficient for that task.