I used a soft cloth to wipe dust off my negatives. The Super F2D offers no dust and scratch removal, so be sure to clean your negatives well. The Super F2D does offer basic color and exposure correction tools, but given the screen’s limitations I decided just to do all of that in Photoshop. The screen is good only for framing images, as it doesn’t accurately render color and the corners are a little washed out. A second slide is always necessary to push the first one through. To get out the last slide you scan, you have to remove the sleeve from the Super F2D and pull it open (it is hinged). I usually used a second negative to push the first one through. There’s a separate sleeve for slides, which are a snug fit in the sleeve. Pushing negatives through was easy enough except when a negative was cut shorter than the sleeve. You line up each image on the screen until it looks right, and then capture and save the image. You slide the negatives and slides through the sleeve in the middle of the unit. Using the Super F2D is simple once you get the hang of it. It lights up your negatives and slides from below and photographs them from above. It is as inexpensively made as it looks: the plastic is thin and cheap, and the buttons and connectors feel flimsy.
The Super F2D isn’t a scanner, but rather a digital camera and a light table. It has some internal memory, but it also has an SD-card slot.
I plugged it into the wall, but you can also plug it into any powered USB port. (If you have negatives or slides from even older films, such as 127, 620, or 828, you’re out of luck.) I did it in my lap while lying on the couch the Super F2D is small and entirely self-contained. I used some recent downtime to digitize every old 126, 110, and 35mm negative I have. Comparing the Super F2D to flatbed and professional scanners.Here is a set of links to each of those sections so you can skip to what you care about. But more good information follows, including insight into using the Super F2D and examples of my scans. And I’ve already shared some of my images on Facebook, and they look pretty good. That’s faster than I could have done it with my flatbed scanner, and hundreds of dollars less expensive than paying to have it done. And now I have digital images of all of my old negatives. Then I spent about 10 hours touching up every image in Photoshop Elements. I converted about 1,000 images in under six hours. You could even make prints of them, but they will be too noisy for big enlargements.īut I’m not sure I care about those limitations for my old snapshots. But the Super F2D will give you images good enough to view on your screen and to share online.
And you will need to touch the images up in photo-editing software – but, to be fair, you would need to do that after using a flatbed scanner, too. I got mine for even less on sale.īut there’s a big tradeoff: you won’t get professional-quality work from the Wolverine Super F2D. It promises to deliver on all of those goals, quickly creating JPEGs from color and black-and-white 35mm, 110, and 126 negatives – and 2×2-mount slides in those formats, and Super 8 movie frames. That’s why I’d even consider a flimsy-looking toy-plastic device like the Wolverine Super F2D film-to-digital converter. What’s needed is a way to do the job fast with minimal fuss and at reasonable cost. And few scanners take the old 126 and 110 snapshot film formats that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s. But it’s slow work and there are lots of settings to master. For less money you can buy a flatbed scanner that handles negatives and do it yourself. If you pay to have it done you’ll get the best possible quality, but the expense might make you wince. To bring those memories into the modern age means making digital images of them. You have two options: pay someone to do it for you or do it yourself. Because you can’t share a physical photograph on Facebook, our photo albums get very little love or attention. We look at our photos on screens and store them on phones, SD cards, and hard drives. We stored the prints and negatives in albums or boxes.īut when was the last time you looked at them? We all shoot digital now. Most of us beyond a certain age photographed years of family moments and vacations using simple point-and-shoot film cameras.