Magnasonic All-in-One 25MP Film Scanner with Large 5" Display & HDMI, Converts 35mm/126/110/Super 8 Film & 135/126/110 Slides into Digital Photos, Built-in Memory (FS70)

I'm saying this up front: This is NOT intended for Professional use. It is designed for the home user. My buying decisions of particular items are basically based on a combination of A) overall rating, B) number of reviews (both positive and negative). and C) the knowledge that some negative reviews can be the result of inexperience or impatience. I am retired from a very technical profession so I am not an impulse buyer, and do some research before making any buying decision. Very recently due to a death in the family I come into posession of some well-preserved slides, negatives, and photos of my father and his service in the South Pacific during WWII. This acquisition reminded me that I have an extensive collection of the same from my own career, thus my looking into a method of digitizing them (My old View-Master Pana-Vue 2 battery-powered slide viewer certainly is not up to the task). After much online comparison of ratings, prices, features, and design I decided on this MAGNASONIC 25MP Film Scanner with HDMI. The unit arrived on time and in undamaged condition. Included accessories are as advertised, and I appreciated the inclusion of the 35mm (135) slide and negatives tray and the cleaner tool. Other included accessories are the 8mm and Super8 film and 110 slide inersts, a good hard copy User Manual, and a USB/USBc power/data cable. The User Manual is excellent for learning the unit operation, and the accessories I used work as advertised, though the unit software does allow Menus for Film Type (35mm, 110, 8mm, Super8), Resolution (13MP/25MP), USB Upload (to your PC), Format SD, Language, and Date and Time (for metadata). Notes on use: 1. Press the Power Button for about 3 seconds to turn on the unit, and a brief press to turn it off. 2. When in a Menu (for example FILM) use the RIGHT Button to navigate to your selection/adjustment. The Left Button will only return you to the Menu page. For the $130 price this unit is worth it, and I highly recommend!

Bought this as a gift for a family member to scan in old family photographs. We were able to connect it to the TV and see the images on the TV screen as we scanned them. Super fun stories and conversations while digitizing. Win, win! Very easy to use!

A BRIEF HISTORY In the early years as electronic imaging was catching on, the most practical way to convert film images to something digital was to use a flatbed scanner, such as the Epson V550 still being sold as of 12-2024. That system is ponderous, involving fiddly trays, a physically slow scan across the film, and prolonged processing time as those digitized images reach your desktop computer. But the image quality on a flatbed scanner can be scaled to suit your purpose, with higher resolution taking longer, making a bigger file size, and yielding excellent quality images. Or, you could dial back the quality and obtain an image more quickly, at a smaller file size that might prove adequate for web posting or emailing. More recently, products have come to market using an owner's high quality DSLR camera, adapted to essentially take a picture of the film image, thereby creating a digital file. If you have such a camera, great, because it's a faster way to accomplish the task, and the quality is considered on a par with flatbed scanning. All you have to buy is the box that fastens to the camera's lens. The unit holds the film and illuminates it as the camera takes a digital picture of it. But if you do NOT already have a high quality, purpose built digital camera (not a smartphone in other words), there would be a significant cost to expanding your photography in that direction. The Magnasonic is a small, desktop device, self-contained, that takes a digital picture of your film image and saves it to memory. The quality, however, is NOT as good as either method above. But it is a very fast way to obtain an adequate image that can be posted or emailed to someone. The practical resolution quality of this unit in this review is 13 megapixels, a number to compare with smartphones or digital cameras. There is no difference in quality when using this unit's "25MP" setting, although that selection creates a bigger image and a larger file size. As uploaded, the image on the left is 6112x4080 pixels at 4.7Mb file size, while the photo on the right is 4120x2752 pixels at 2.32Mb file size. If you download and zoom in, the detail is identical. The Magnasonic does not offer much in the way of adjustment for color and exposure. The images shown are right off a strip of Kodak Portra 800, shot at 400, uncorrected for color, but with exposure dropped by 2EV units to preserve highlights. I was able to improve upon color balance, brightness, and contrast after I moved the image to a desktop computer that has photo software. There is no provision to "crop" or zoom in on the existing film image, and no advantage to sliding the physical film left or right to improve the framing. This unit has a slot for an SD-type memory card, and you will need it. The internal memory can hold only 8 images on a film roll which is usually 24 or 36 frames. Also, it is easier to pull the high capacity memory card when you're done and move it to your computer, than it would be to utilize the USB cable and connection on the Magnasonic to extract images from its internal memory. As long as you can work within these limitations, this is a handy unit to quickly take a roll of film to digitize and send around to friends and family. Exceptionally good photos could later be scanned with other equipment at higher quality. Although one purpose of a unit like this is to archive old family photos taken years ago, another purpose serves present-day film photography. There's nothing quite like the experience of film, especially when educating yourself with an all-manual camera that requires you to think about shutter speed, framing, focus, shutter speed, and film type. Sharing the results, by using a unit like this, is an enjoyable & worthwhile pursuit. Product is RECOMMENDED.

Worked as advertised. Only drawback was having to order additional carries for the negatives, but it worked great.

I decided to order after reading at least a dozen positive Amazon reviews on this scanner. In hindsight, most of them were about the ease of use, with a few photo quality comments. From my perspective the unit produces low quality scanned images. One reviewer stated the scan quality didn't matter whether 13 or 25 mm resolution was selected...and they're right, they both look bad. I compared some scanned images with 8x10 print enlargements made directly from the slide, the enlargement quality far exceeded the scan quality. Personally, I think the unit doesn't changes resolution, I think it's just coded to move the check mark on the display. This "scanner" appears to be nothing but a very poor quality digital camera in a housing that holds the slide and takes a very poor quality picture. A good quality comparison would be to compare the picture quality from a disposable camera to that of a medium priced digital camera. If you're used to looking at poor quality slides, this will make it worse.

Very simple, good quality, scans quickly. It worked out very well for me, I have scanned all my slides and some stills from 8mm film. I don't know what to do with the scanner now, I've copied everything.

Easy set up..

I just bought this Magnasonic All-in-One 25MP Film Scanner (FS70). I’ve been already using the Magnasonic All-in-One 24MP Film Scanner (FS71) for about a year. They are priced the same, so I was curious what the difference might be. The first image I posted is from the FS70, the second from the FS71. There are some differences in the scans. The new 25MP version seems to do a better job of automatically setting the exposure correctly and just looking at the full image without zooming the images look a bit sharper on the newer 25MP version. Strangely though when you zoom in you start to notice what I would call smearing or something to that effect, especially noticeable in black & white images. But you must really be pixel peeping to notice. When zooming in on the images on the 24MP version they look a bit sharper. It's an odd phenomenon. Like I said, looking at a full-size image side by side the newer 25MP looks cleaner and sharper. It may have to do with a better multi-element lens. Overall, I would recommend this, the newer 25MP, over the older 24MP version, just because it handles auto exposure better. With the older version I find myself constantly adjusting brightness setting, I don’t have to as much with the 25MP version. One caution, I noted a few slides that were badly unexposed looked fine on the screen but did not properly scan. Those scans look like a pink blob. Now I just check the image immediately after scanning a “thick” (dark) slide or neg just to make sure it scanned properly. I also should add I could find no difference in sharpness when scanning at the 13MP (2752x4128 pixels) or 25MP (4080x6112 pixels) settings. You simply get a larger image via interpolation when setting to 25MP, but if you want to save hard drive space you won’t lose anything by scanning at the 13MP setting. These scans don’t compare to a dedicated high-quality film-slide scanner, but then again, this method of scanning is way faster and the images produced do a fine job if all you’re going to do with the image is post to the web or social media.