by Maya Langevin.
When it comes to converting film and slides to digital, the process can quickly turn into an expensive, tedious chore. With the Kodak Mobile Film Scanner, the process can be a quicker, easier, less expensive way to digitize small batches of images, using a small, portable device and your mobile phone camera.
What's in the box
Well, there is a box in the box! The device is essentially a box made of heavyweight cardboard, which folds up into a 6.5 x 4.5 x 1.7" package. Built into the bottom of the box is a LED light which illuminates your negative or slide. It is powered by two AA batteries.
How it works
You first need to download the Kodak Mobile Film Scanner app to your iOS iPhone 6+ or Android 5.0+ device. The top section of the box unfolds with legs that tuck into the bottom half, and where you place your phone to line up with the hole on the top. The bottom half of the box houses the light table portion of the scanner. You then simply place the film strip or slide over the light and take the photo/scan. That's it.
The app lets you control all the scanning, cropping, and rotating of images right on your phone, as well as switching from positive to negative depending on whether your are scanning slides or negatives.
Review
The Kodak Mobile Film Scanner is very easy to set up and use. The built-in editing in the app allows you to crop your image so you have it just how you want it. The nice thing about scanning directly on your phone is that you can quickly edit and post them -- no dealing with large desktop scanners and computers.
Although it is quick and easy to set up and use, if you have dozens of rolls of film, this isn't the quickest way to digitize them. And as one might imagine from an under-$40 device, the scans are not of the highest quality, but they may be sufficient for day-to-day needs.
This is a good product for people who would like to quickly view their film images, but is not the answer for the high-volume user.