CMOS Film 'scanners'?

[calculus]

There seems to be a class of film 'scanners' which are actually more like
cameras - with a built-in LED illuminator and 5megapixel CMOS sensor. They
may not be new - bit they are new to me!

The ones I've seen advertised are the "Summit Photofix Scanner" and the
"Veho VFS-001 5MP Slide And Negative Photo Scanner".
I haven't been able to find reviews or sample images from these, but the
speed is very attractive, and the resolution _sounds_ reasonable...
are they any good?

Thanks for any advice,

Calc.

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

There seems to be a class of film 'scanners' which are actually more like
cameras - with a built-in LED illuminator and 5megapixel CMOS sensor. They
may not be new - bit they are new to me!

The ones I've seen advertised are the "Summit Photofix Scanner" and the
"Veho VFS-001 5MP Slide And Negative Photo Scanner".

Judge for yourself. Anything advertised as a "5 Mega CMOS (1.174
million pixels) image sensor" doesn't sound particularly promising or
even legal.

What exactly is a "5 mega CMOS image sensor"? Is it a CMOS sensor with
5 megas, whatever they are? Perhaps its an image sensor with 5 mega
CMOS's? Perhaps its a new image sensor technology entirely, based on
mega complementary metal oxide semiconductors and this unit has 5 of
them? ;-)

It sure as hell isn't a CMOS image sensor with 5 mega pixels, since even
the highly misleading advertisement explains that it only has 1.174Mp!

And as for "interpolating to 3600dpi", lets see: 3600ppi on a 35m frame
is around 17Mp. Just stick any image into any viewer application and
view it 400% scaling and the resulting poor image quality you see is the
BEST that such a route to 3600ppi can achieve.

Even at 60GBP, the lowest I have seen them, you are still being ripped
off. I've seen more useful items in packs of breakfast cereal!

 

[brendanodonovan]

I ordered a Veho VFS-001 scanner about a day before reading this
thread, and then spent the next three days awaiting my £60 cereal-box
toy with a kind of dread, but now I'm glad I didn't get scared off!

The scanner is definitely using a 5MP sensor, given that it's capable
of resolving dust specks only a pixel wide. Interestingly, it is
listed in the manual as a 5.174 million pixel sensor, which is
presumably what was badly transcribed in the advert the previous
poster refers to. Yes, the quality of the english in its advert and
manual are pretty comical (there's a phone number on the back page for
"Supper in the UK"), but the hardware itself is very nice - solidly
built, simple to use, and assuming you don't need more than 1800 dpi
(its native resolution) a very effective solution. Comparing the scans
vs. a Canon flatbed, it's definitely pulling out more detail with a
better dynamic range.