Need to scan some old photos? Into film photography and want to save money by printing them yourself? Perhaps you have some old analogue prints from when no-one had a digital camera! I had fun playing with the Film Scanner with my developed negatives and also an old printed photo. Learn how to scan your negatives and photos by following this tutorial!

Start by seeing which frame you would like to use for your film or photos. There are 2 different film frames, one for standard film negatives and one for slides. And there are 3 photo frames in sizes 3.5″ x 5″, 4″ x 6″ and 5″ x 7″.

Scanning Negatives

I will start with my colour film negatives. Open the film frame by pulling where it says ‘OPEN‘ from the back of the frame. It should make a click when opening and closing. Next, slot the first hole on the negative onto the first small rectangular ‘hook’. Once you have hooked the first, the others should fit along the frame. You will be able to see if the images are lined up correctly, as the borders will line up with the black frames. If they are not, simply move the ‘hook’ onto the next hole.

Then, on the scanner, make sure to move both the top switch and lower switch onto ‘FILM SCANNER‘. Press the on button to the left of the screen and you will be brought to the main menu, where is says ‘Capture’.

To move through the menu, simply press the left and right arrows. To move back to the menu, press ‘MODE‘. To select a mode, press ‘ENTER‘. To scan a film negative, press the right arrow until you reach ‘Film‘. Press enter and then select ‘Negatives Film‘.

Then, take your negative in the frame and insert it into the gap on the right hand side of the scanner. Make sure the side with the white arrow is facing towards you as you insert it. And you should see your images! They will be reversed so you can see what they will look like once saved. You can move the frames left and right to see the row of images. But, if you need to take the frame out, make sure you pull it out from the LEFT hand side!

To start saving your images, press the big ‘SCAN‘ button, and a few settings will appear. To scan, press ‘ENTER‘ to confirm, or use the arrows to cancel or go back to the menu.

Accessing your Scans via USB

Once scanned, the images will only be saved onto the scanner. To access the them, use the USB cable provided to connect the scanner to a laptop or computer. This connection is in the front of the scanner, to the left. You can also put an SD card into the scanner, to the right of the USB port.

Then go to the menu by pressing ‘MODE’ and go to the ‘USB MSDC‘ setting and press ‘ENTER’. This will then connect your your laptop/computer and you will be able to access the images. You will need to stay on this setting in order to keep access via USB. As soon as you leave this setting, the USB will be disconnected. Don’t worry though, you’re images will be safe still on the scanner, so simply go back to the USB setting when you are finished scanning. Once connected, open the folder ‘ION (D:)‘ (this may apear differently on your computer) and inside you will find a folder called ‘DCIM‘ and inside that, a folder called ‘100COACH‘. This is where you’re images will be saved and you can simpy copy and paste the images into a seperate folder on your computer.

Scanning Photos

Here’s how you can save those memories as digitial copies! Like before, you will need to make sure both the top switch and lower switch are set to ‘PHOTO SCANNER‘. Decide which print you would like to scan and see which frame it will fit. My photo fit into the 4 x 6 inch frame. It insert it, lift the ‘lip’ that has a smiley face on it. The print can be slipped into this gap and you can feed it into the frame. Then insert the frame with the image facing you, into the slot at the top of the scanner. Make sure the smiley face is pointing upwards.

Make sure you are on the main menu by pressing ‘MODE‘. Here you can either go straight to the ‘Capture‘ setting, which will allow you to scan without changing any settings. However, I found that this image was scanned as a 5 x 7 inch image, so some settings need to be changed. From the menu, go to ‘Crop‘. Press ‘ENTER’ and select the correct image size. I selected ‘4 X 6‘. You can then scan from here by pressing ‘SCAN’, or scanning from ‘Capture’ while the settings are saved in this size.

Unknown to me, the image suddenly mirrored itself horizontally! I was not worried too much becuase this can easily be edited once the image is saved to your computer. If this happens to you, simply use a mirroring tool when editing your images on your computer.

Scanning in Black and White or Colour

I also discovered that you can add effects to your scans. This is also good if you are scanning black and white images or negatives. From the menu, select ‘Effects‘ and then either select ‘Multi-colour‘ or ‘Black and White‘. If you start to use the scanner and find that everything is in black and white and you want to scan incolour, you probably need to change this.

And there you have it! When in doubt, refer to the manual that is provided with the scanner. This has more info on scanning slides, as well as rotating (unfortunately not mirroring!) and deleting images in ‘Playback’ and adjusting the resolution of scans in ‘Resolution’.

Here are my final images that I produced using our wonderful film scanner!