Kodak P811 8x10 Personal Photo and Negative Scanner

• Scan any printed photo from wallet size to 8x10 inches
• Scans photographic negatives and delivers crisp, clear positive image ready for upload, printing or emailing
• Scanner has a 5-in-1 card reader and ships with a 2 GB MicroSD Card and SD adapter to make sure you have plenty of space to hold your photos
• Scans printed photos at high resolution 600 DPI (selectable to 300 DPI)
• Ultra portable and battery powered with 4 AAA batteries (not included) allow you to take the P811 where you go

Remember when you got your first paper shredder and you kept looking for things to shred because it was just so much fun? Okay, maybe you didn't, but I did and that's exactly what I have been doing since I started using the Kodak P811! I have several large boxes full of photos and 35mm negative strips and even slides that date back to ....well, a long time :) The boxes are totally unorganized and I have just kept putting off even opening them up, until now.....this past weekend I sat and laughed and cried as the photos brought back memories of family and pets now gone, 4-H camps, vacations, trips, and be still my heart, a 1975 Elvis Presley concert I had forgotten about!!

The Kodak P811 is so easy to use, but before you start, I would highly suggest you leave it alone in the box and read the User Guide and the Quick Start Guide. They explain in detail what to do and what not to do. For instance, if you want to use a slide, you have to take it out of the original mounting and you should not do that if you want to put it back into the mounting and you do not know how to do that. The option is to have it done by a professional if you want to use it as a slide again. I would not have known that if I had not read the User Guide first.

I had no problems feeding pictures and 35mm negative strips into the P811. Just read the directions! And, if you do have a problem, I found that Kodak customer support was readily available to help me solve it.

I am enjoying using the P811!

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I was not expecting miracles with this $100 scanner, and it did not deliver them either. It is not a super-high resolution scanner with absolutely perfect color reproduction. If you want the best quality in the world, it's not here. So why do I give the scanner 4 stars? I was impressed with the speed and ease with which I could scan photos and negatives. Let's face it--none of us have all day to scan photos, manually crop and tweak them in photoshop, and archive them to disk. By setting up this scanner, I could literally just feed photos into it and have cropped images appear on the external memory card. While the resolution is not really high enough for negatives, images were good enough and it cropped the strip of 4 negatives into 4 separate images.

So why buy this scanner when there are better ones out there? Kodak hit a home run with portability. I was just thinking about a trip we are planning to visit a great-grandmother. Her house is full of old photos we'd like to archive electronically. Short of grabbing the photos from her or bringing up a laptop/desktop scanner, this will get the job done. Every time she shows us a photo, we can zip it through the scanner and save it. The image is preserved good enough for nostalgia, where the alternative may be losing the image forever.

Many of us use our iPhones to take photos even when we own DSLR's, and we use FlipVideo even when we have 1080P camcorders with better optics. This scanner is good enough when it needs to be there and needs to be fast.

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I was so exicted to get this it had 5 stars and rave reviews. I have hundreds of photos to scan in.I was thinking what an easy way to scan them in to digital scrapbook. It is easy to use and can take to Grandpa's house when I visit. The MAJOR issue is it washes out the color. You then have to spend time doing lots of color correction to make skintones look correct. Fixing color,so Grandma is not pale white but has a bit of pink in her face, turned the green curtains blue and lost the depth in some photos. The whites realy pop and have to be toned down also. However a black and white photo worked great and looked even better when scanned in the sleeve provided. So give up quality for easy of use and portablilty? Only you can make that choice. Would I purchase it again or tell a friend to buy one, no. The technology needs to get a bit better.

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Kodak P811 Personal Photo and Negative Scanner

As someone who grew up with 35mm film cameras and worked towards digital photography, I had a huge collection of black and white and color negatives. The P811 is actually a very neat product as it allows maximum portability. I could use AA batteries or the AC adapter to power up the P811. Since it stores data on SD cards, a computer is not required for scanning and storing. You could pack the scanner in a bag while traveling and use it in a hotel room.

The scanner defaults to 600 dpi quality, and has an option for 300 dpi. I found that the 600 dpi only produced a meager resolution for my negatives. Some of the negatives weren't scanned in the original aspect ratio and required some height adjustment. The color reproduction isn't that great, as it tended to brighten everything and desaturate skin tones (makes everyone look pale white). For black and white film, it was generally fine but tended to over contrast some of the darker shots. Overall, the negative scans are a far cry from making actual photographs in a lab.

The photograph and sheet scanning was acceptable but not quite on-par with a multipurpose printer or dedicated scanner.

I would have liked higher resolutions for the negatives with better quality and color reproduction.

Overall: 4/5 stars, maximum portability with acceptable quality.

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I have been scanning both old photographs and negative strips strips. If most of your photos are 8 x 10 (rounding down a bit) and you need only fine resolution (600 dpl), this scanner is a good value. If you want true portability, this baby is definitely for you. Portable means it is light, small and has all you need to work in the field. It does not mean that you can break rocks with it, take it out in the rain or sandstorms or scan billboards. So keep it clean and dry and treat it like the instrument it is and you will be happy. Works for both PC and Apple.

If you need extra fine resolution or large formats, look elsewhere. I was up and running in a few minutes with the results I was hoping for. It is simple to set up, install and use. But you do need to take a little bit of care here and there. So a few specific observations:

Scanner does not come with batteries and does not support your normal alkaline batteries. For true portability get four of the the specified Ni-MH AAA or UM-4 rechargeable batteries (consider an extra four for the field), and a charger for them. At home, you do not need batteries, so just plug in.

Pay a little attention to sequence. So first plug in the power adapter to the scanner, and then into the power socket. Then insert the memory card. Then turn it on. First plug the cable into the scanner. Then plug the USB into your computer port. Not critical, but it is good practice to follow sequence.

Use the plastic sheath with small or less than flat photographs and with slides. I wish they had a facility to let you insert mounted slides, instead of removing them from their mounting. But at this price point I have no right to expect such. The sheath improves flatness and gives you higher quality on those photographs with a little warp or other surface undulations.

Be patient. It takes a little while longer than you may expect to initialize the scanner, to begin the scan and to create the file on your computer. Install on your computer before scanning your first.

There is a calibration facility for later need. You do not need it to start. A calibration card is included. Keep your sensor clean. Keep everything clean by storing in the bag or some equivalent.

Take a little care to set your photographs squarely. Otherwise they might scan on a skew. And you may scan in all directions and, room permitting, from aligning left and right sides of the scanner. You can pick the best result in case there are tonal or other visual differences. I keep forgetting to load face up, a hangover from years of photocopiers. Speaking of copiers, this is not a copier. The photographs pass through the scanner. So there are limits on how thick or thin the sheet can be. Here is where the sheath comes in handy again. Newspaper and magazine paper is too thin. But if you use the sheath, you can scan a photo or a recipe out of the paper. Stamp collectors can scan their stamps. You get the picture, so to speak.

Once your files are on your computer you can import them into any other image processor that works with the format. Or you can just view and share via email or whatever you like as is.