There are a few devices available these days that allow just about anyone to digitize their old film reels. One is the Wolverine Film Scanner, but does it do the job?
When I started this business over a decade ago, the Wolverine Film Scanner was pretty much the only device on the market for everyday consumers to digitize their film reels. At the time it was a technological wonder! A compact and simple machine that saved our precious memories to a digital format on an SD card.
The real question now is, does it still hold up?
In my experience, not really. Looking back, as convenient as it was, it did give me a lot of headaches.
The Wolverine Film Scanner snaps a shot of the film strip frame by frame, which is technically a good thing, but process is extremely slow. I found myself sitting by the machine anywhere from 1 to 6 hours depending on the size of the reel.
The reason why I was sitting by the machine was because over time it became less and less reliable. If I found myself in a situation where I had to step away for a few minutes, I'd sometimes come back to multiple feet of film sprawled across my floor because the machine got jammed and I'd have to recoil it and figure out where it left off.
The image quality wasn't great either. It has basic adjustments for brightness and sharpness but I found the end result, if sharpened, looked pixelated. On a small screen it looked pretty good but when shown on a modern day flat screen TV, it simply did not.
So if you're looking for a quick and easy fix, without spending too much money, then perhaps the Wolverine Film Scanner is for you.
I'm of the opinion that if you want to do something, especially something as important as preserving precious family memories, then it should be done right. That's why I upgraded to a higher end machine (seen above).
This machine is a custom modified Eumig projector that scans the film images at various speeds, frame by frame, in higher quality, and without glitches. It was a hefty investment so I don't recommend this purchase to anyone who doesn't provide this service to customers, but if you're serious about digitizing your old film reels, Studio 85 can do it for you!
Comments