Father's Day Gift Guide

8. ION SLIDES 2 PC

17 top picks for Dads ready to take a digital leap. Each of these products will help him upgrade to gear that suits his lifestyle.

$89.99

If Dad has LPs stashed away, he’s probably also got old 35mm film strips (negatives) and slides, not only of his own but probably from his dad and granddad before him. Film degrades over time, so it’s important to digitize those images sooner rather than later so they’ll still be around for you and your kids.

There are plenty of film scanners on the market. Well-known names such as HP, Fujitsu, Polaroid, and many more have models that can capture at 4000 dpi and beyond. But they don’t come cheap and can be tricky for novices. With one-click image fixing now common in photo editors, most of us don’t need pro-quality scans for everyday pictures. We need affordable, simple, and good quality, and this is what ION delivers. Additionally, you want speed. How many of us have untold hours of video footage laying around, nearly dead, because it just takes too much time to work with the material? SLIDES 2 PC captures a 5-megapixel scan in just one or two seconds—much faster than a conventional flatbed approach—and automatically handles basic color and exposure correction. You’ll spend more time feeding the tray into the scanner’s slot than doing the actual scanning, so you can get through dozens or hundreds of scans in an afternoon and put those images back into circulation for the whole family. The scans might not be lab-quality perfect, but they’ll be done, and you’ll have all those photos revived at last.

ION includes the necessary cable and software (ArcSoft PhotoImpression 6) for Windows XP/Vista. You get a negative tray and two slide trays along with a tool for cleaning the internal glass optics. While we were writing this review, ION had the SLIDES 2 PC on sale for only $69.99 through June 21st, so be quick!