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Bought used, easy to set up and learning curve is fairly easy. Used HP software but will upgrade to something else when I can. Feed for negative strips can be a little balky at first; I had to learn the right touch. Great results, negs, slides both look good. Very pleased.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
This is a great little scanner. I would have given it a 5, except the loading process is a little slow. But even doing one at a time, it moves fairly quickly. I have an old laptop computer with Windows XP, and downloaded a newer program to run it. I don't think you can use it with newer versions of Windows. But I'm getting old slides turned into digital format, and it's working very well for that.
My project started with buying what was basically a "slide/negative converter camera" on sale from a department store chain. Underwhelmed with the overexposed results and the extremely poor instructions and finicky software, I took a chance on the HP S20, despite its being nearly 8 years old at best. My purchase had only the unit, the power cable and a USB cable. I was able to obtain software, drivers and a manual from HP's site and am successfully running the scanner with Windows XP and a 1.3GHz machine. At first I was amazed with the night & day difference between the captures from the camera and this scanner. Resolution and exposure are impressive, again for technology of this vintage. I've scanned mainly slides so far, about 150 with several thousand remaining. I've tested one 4 frame negative strip and one 4 x 6 snapshot and have been impressed with those results as well. While at the moment the slide digitizing project is my main focus, I cannot rule out broadening scope when the slides are done to go back and digitize some negatives and some older snapshots, too. Thus far, the machine itself is reliable though somewhat particular when feeding slides in. It will eject them if not done just so. What was equally impressive was the color correction capability of the software when I discovered it. As indicated, my purchase did not include any supporting documentation for either the scanner itself or the software. By luck, I happened to stumble across an article with Google that referenced a scan setting more appropriate for the age of slides with which I'm currently working ("old or faded color slides" vs. "color slides"). While my project will eventually lead me to newer and presumably better preserved Kodachrome slides, early slides are Ektachrome and have "magentafied" (blues & yellows have nearly all faded away leaving slides with a red or pink hue). The internal color correction used with the "old or faded color slides" setting rivals examples I've seen on the web of the capability of the Kodak Digital ROC color correction plug in for Photoshop. I'll be transparent and say that while I've only been working with this scanner & software for a few days and haven't even delved into what Photoshop Elements could do beyond the HP software's abilities, I'm very impressed with the scanner's and software's capabilities, especially considering that my scanner could be as old as 8 years (HP only made the S20 until 2002.) I'll also say that I'm an amatuer and my goal at present is not total restoration but merely archival protection of several thousand slides worth of family history and vacations. My "bar" might be lower than a professional's or a true archivist's but if you're looking to save and safeguard a similar collection of family memories, this unit is a great tool for the purpose regardless of its age! Once you've digitized your slides initially, you may be able to accomplish some pretty impressive restoration with Photoshop, too. ADDITION: This scanner WILL work with Windows 7. You must have the Professional or higher version, and since you will need to download & install Virtual PC and Windows XP mode, your hardware (chip, motherboard, BIOS) will need to support Virtualization (in the chip and motherboard) and have it activated (in the BIOS.) Also, the scanner needs to be USB (since XP mode only supports USB passthrough.) In XP mode, download the driver and software and it will work.Read full review
I have used the HP-S20 to make excellent scans of 35mm slides, 35mm B&W negatives and color negatives. Yes - your originals must be clean - it picks up everything including the film grain. Residual specks can be eliminated with special software. Clarity, color and exposure latitude are amazing and the results are often better than the originals especially after being tweaked in a photo editing program. Images are uniformly sharp edge-to-edge unlike so many quickie units on the market today. The downside of the device is that it is very slow. It takes patience to learn the machine and get good results. Set-up and scanning are slow. This is not for large batch projects. However, for images you are afraid to send out for fear of damage or loss, this device does a wonderful job. This is NOT a toy - it's a serious tool for serious photographic enthusiasts. I even used it to digitize an artist friend's lifetime portfolio of oil paintings that had been on slides. She was amazed and pleased at accuracy and quality of the digital images which I provided her in both hard copy and on CD-ROM.Read full review
this unit was designed to work with older operating systems ( win 95,98, 2000 )which I have. I also had one of these units in the past so I still had the installation disc for it. After installing it I checked it out and it seemed to be in good working order. The price that I paid for it was quite reasonable based on similar units for sale since my purchase and i'm happy about that.