Kodak Photo Plus of C&A IP Holdings has launched the Kodak Mobile Film Scanner, a ‘cute little box’ that is assembled by the user into a functional film scanner. As with some competing products, this film scanner works with an ordinary smartphone to digitize slides and 35mm film negatives. Unlike those other products, however, Kodak Mobile Film Scanner is made from heavyweight cardboard that collapses back into a small portable box.
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The Kodak Mobile Film Scanner is like Google Cardboard, only for photographers rather than casual VR experiences. A built-in LED light is used to illuminate slides and film; a companion mobile app is used with a smartphone to capture and edit the resulting digital images, including cropping and rotating.
Once ‘scanned,’ the same Kodak Mobile Film Scanner app can be used to apply image filters and directly share the digital image on social media. The entire system offers an experience similar to what many consumers are already familiar with, enabling anyone to rapidly digitize old negatives and slides.
The film scanner is powered by two AA batteries and can accommodate 35mm black-and-white film negatives, color film negatives and color slide positives. The related mobile app supports Android 5.0 and higher and iOS 6 and higher. The Kodak Mobile Film Scanner is available from Amazon now for $39.99 USD.
I'm all for the avoidance of unnecessary use of plastics for disposable items, at least - but they are perfectly acceptable in products that are designed to be used over a reasonable period of time. Making a $40/£40 "scanner" out of cardboard seems a crazy choice: an ABS solution could have included some basic close-up optics, to allow the phone to focus at "infinity" and get a full-screen image from a 35mm negative or slide. And an ABS solution would last for many years, long after the cardboard has become soft or creased. Sorry Kodak, your esteemed name is being shamed by this cardboard toy.
Does no one value their time anymore? The components may be cheap but you have to source then trial theassembly etc. It may be fun and I would do it for that reason, but to just get on and use $40 seems about right And it will be £40 in the uk 😢
The major problem with this solution is that there is no closeup lens. Therefore, the image will be rather small and the quality low. If your phone do not have a tele lens with close up abilities. Add a lens and make it thinner and we have a much better solution.
Of course, that it is lens less also is an advantage. It is much cheaper and also you are not depending on the quality of the lens.
Get an Epson 4490 backlit scanner. They are really good and very cheap. Scan the whole lot at 1200 dpi (you can see the grain at this level) and you'll be fine. Go for 2400 if you were using fine grained film, or just want bigger files.
Can we just get an ls600 or sp500 please? These are very old and already do a much better job than most consumer 35mm scanners. I don't understand why it is so difficult. Happy to pay at least a grand (probably more) Thank you.
Ah! It is not focused close. So - the image is small if you do not have a tele lens. A closeup lens and a thinner box for us without tele lenses! And we might start talking seriously good result.
It seems every time I browse a thrift store there will be a pile of unwanted cardboard VR glasses from Google and others. This gimmick from Kodak looks like something else that will be tossed into those piles.
If you have a macro lens and a film adapter, you don't need this. If not, get a macro lens adapter. I guess this is for those who only shoot smart phones.
"easy to carry" says the vid. I mean, why would you want to carry this? I suppose just in case you indiscriminately come across some 35mm negs and you think "Hey, really gotta scan these".
For most people, their old negatives were snapshots on cheap cameras with cheap film. I don't think they need a high grade solution to preserve the memory.
I agree. People in the comment seem very hostile to the idea, maybe because they have access to better (more expensive?) solutions. However anyone who has taken a photo (instead of scan) of a negative knows there is quite a bit of setup needed: a way to consistently hold camera and negative, and quite a bit of post processing to get the colors right. If this setup and app can do it with little effort, it’s well worth $40.
Even if they somehow found way to reproduce the process with non toxic chemicals and got millions of R&D funding for it, you'd have to pay north of $20 per roll and more again to process it. We should be glad there are still many E-6 labs around.
I actually just bought it a week ago and will send it back. It appears to only take a smallish crop of the frame. I was hoping I could shoot raw with Halide and get then reverse the negative. Nice concept though.
Attention haters: Real film scanners are expensive and slow. This is cheap and fast. There is room for both.
I have an Epson flatbed scanner for "serious" negatives. I have a cheap Wolverine scanner for a quick preview. It's kind of like this:
Wolverine scan: JPEGs of everything (adequate for snapshots) Epson flatbed scan: RAWs of important shots
I can run a roll of 35mm through the Wolverine in less than five minutes with decent results. I'm guessing the results from this Kodak gadget are similar.
Edit--All that said, $40 seems at least $20 too much for this.
@PAntunes - You might be right--I obviously haven't used the Kodak scanner. I'm just speaking from my experience with my Wolverine scanner. It's so much faster and more convenient than my Epson. I develop my own film, and I can spin a roll through the Wolverine without cutting/mounting/previewing/orienting etc. I just slide the leader into the Wolverine and pull the whole roll through, pressing a button on each frame. It's fantastic for the purpose. I highly recommend it.
@Jason a dedicated negative scanner, even if it's one of those cheap ones, is not the same as a phone on the top of a card box. Specially if you have a phone with a camera on the side and it's not straight, all the images will probably need to be adjusted. It just seems more work than cutting the negatives, mounting them on the scanner and hit Preview->Scan.
It's a lot smaller and that's amazing. I wish there was something decent to scan up to 6x9 with decent quality, but so far, nothing.
By the way, do you have any examples of the final images of your scanner?
@PAntunes - Again, you might be right. It all depends on the quality of the software. If it detects edges, inverts (where necessary) and corrects color, I'm sure the process is pretty quick. If it misses any of those steps, it's probably useless--unless, of course, somebody doesn't want to spend a lot of money on a scanning solution, and they don't have the good fortune to find a $20 V500.
I just uploaded a couple of Wolverine scans to my DPR gallery (the only photos in there). The B&W photo was shot on my Rollei 35S, and the color photo was shot on expired film (hence the odd color) on my Olympus OM-1. I printed the color shot out at 13"x19" from this file, and it looks great. Both of these files are unmodified from the scanner.
The quality is quite OK, indeed. The quality is so quite OK, that there is often no real difference between the Wolverine files and the files from my V600 with B&W 35mm. The V600 offers more resolution, but it doesn't really extract more detail. Often, the Wolverine scans are superior, because it flattens the film better than the Epson does.
I agree with you on the price--like I said, the Kodak is too expensive. But currently available Wolverine scanners are in $100-150 range, so maybe I got a really good deal.
A lot can be said for the Kodak in that it "scans" directly to your phone. The Wolverine, while really quick and easy to use, scans to an SD card, which then has to be imported to your computer for viewing, sorting, uploading, etc. For many people, that makes the Kodak superior.
I'm not saying the Kodak replaces any of the higher-quality products on the market--just that it has a place. Depending on how good the software is, it might be a worthwhile tool for enthusiasts.
This is what happens to companies that fail to make the right decisions. How pathetic. The once great Kodak, almost too big to fail, has been reduced to a manufacturer of overpriced cardbox photo scanners.
It's not Kodak. it's a name holding of Kodak Photo Plus of C&A IP Holdings. Says so in the first paragraph. But the use of the Kodak colours and logo is designed to fool people. Oh well. Such is modern life.
Yes, their accountants drove out their engineers and their sales people and destroyed their leadership in the industry and then even their existence through arrogance and blindness and greed. And then the accountants sold their once-proud name to junk-manufacturers.
Laying the blame for Kodak's demise on the short-sightedness of accountants, sales people, top management or anyone else is just too simplistic. Kodak earned an 80% gross margin on film and chemicals and when digital replaced film there was nowhere to go but down. Even if Kodak had become a significant player in digital cameras, they would necessarily be a much smaller company because the margins earned on digital products are razor thin. Could people at Kodak have made different decisions and had a better outcome? Sure, but the company would still be a shadow of its former self. This happens to lots of company's when their core technology becomes obsolete.
Tell that to Fujifilm, Kodak's direct competitor (without Kodak's patents), which made a very successful transition to the digital world (and grew its specialty-film business as well!).
Hi Chris. The story is more complex. In the year 2000, both companies had sales of approximately 14 billion US dollars. However, film and cameras only accounted for 34% of Fuji's revenue (470 billion Yen). The majority of fuji sales were in cassette tapes, LCD and health imaging product. Kodak was much more dependent of film and cameras with 65% of it's revenue in consumer and professional imaging with the rest in health and other imaging products. Today, Fuji's consumer imaging business is 383 billion Yen (13% less than in 2000) with imaging products accounting for just 16% of total sales. And of this 383 billion yen, most is from Instax. Sales of digital imaging products amounted to 128 billion Yen, or just 5% of total fuji sales. Most of Fuji's revenues today come from other sources, most notably document products -- Fuji purchased Xerox in 2001. Fuji has survived as a company where Kodak has not. But not because they made themselves more successful in the photo business.
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