By Tom Gromak / The Detroit News Getting pictures inside your PC has never been easier, with the plethora of multi-megapixel digital cameras and the ever-dropping price-point of flatbed scanners. And both are fine for their purpose: digital cameras for grabbing snap-shots, and scanners for filling your hard-drive with images of old Polaroid prints. Even the neighborhood drug store will sell you an option to have your latest roll of film digitized and sent back on a photo-CD. But what if you're like me? I've got a couple notebooks and an old shoebox filled with film, both negatives and slides - from back when the word "slideshow" meant setting up a projector and a screen and a big bucket of popcorn. Until recently, my options were limited. I could purchase a flatbed scanner with an adaptor made for scanning 35mm slides and negatives, but the quality has always been beyond lousy. Flatbeds simply don't have the pixel-crunching power to render a tiny frame of film at full-screen, let alone send it to an inkjet printer. The other option was an expensive negative scanner. Models from Nikon and Kodak and Microtek are beautiful, but cost in the thousands of dollars. They're built and sold to people like the ones that run the photography department at this newspaper. But now a California company named Pacific Image Electronics is trying to fill that void among consumers, pro-sumers and the SOHO market. Its PrimeFilm 1800 desktop negative scanner runs just $199 and performs - for my purposes - like a scanner that costs a thousand more. Its small footprint fits nicely alongside other gear, and its USB connection makes set-up a snap. Install the scanning software and drivers, attach the cable, plug in the power, turn it on, and you're ready to go. I installed and ran the scanner on a PC running WindowsMe. It also comes ready-to-go with drivers and scan software for use on a Macintosh (the 1800i version of the scanner is built in translucent iMac blue.). In my own tests, it rendered superb images in both black and white and color. In fact, some images scanned directly from negatives exposed an awful truth: the neighborhood photo lab does an awful job with the photographic prints I've been settling for. I found details in several scans that I never knew existed before, and that never would have been picked up by my flatbed. The PrimeFilm's CyberView scanning interface is simple and straightforward. Select your film type, negative or positive, take a preview shot, adjust your colors or brightness or contrast if you'd like, and scan. The software has built-in settings that are supposed to auto-correct for different types of film. The Kodak and Agfa settings did well, but I thought the Fuji settings were a little harsh on my Fuji film. The scanning interface is one area the unit falls short of its more expensive cousins. It doesn't have the facility to easily create your own presets, something that might be important to photographers. It also doesn't have some of the mechanical bells and whistles like ultra-high resolution and auto film loading. That's okay, said Pacific Image spokeswoman Wendy Trujillo. "Our competitors are offering some advanced features over ours which may benefit professional users," she said. "We are not competing directly with these units. We are not claiming to be the best product on the market. We are merely claiming to be the best product on the market at this price point." PrimeFilm 1800u/1800i What: A consumer, pro-sumer, SOHO 35mm negative and slide scanner for PCs and Macintosh computers Price: $199 Description: It comes in standard beige or iMac blue with a footprint of about 11-by-7 inches, taking up little space. It connects to PCs and Macs with an included USB cable. Includes software for scanning, editing, printing, and organizing your pictures. Features one-button scanning on the unit Stats: It's 4.2 megapixel CCD scans at up to 1800 DPI optically and 19200 DPI through software. Pros: It made great scans at its default setting of 1800 DPI from slides and both color and black-and-white negatives. Easy to set up and use. Cost. Cons: Scan interface could allow more customization, including user presets. User manual is sparse. Rating : More info : ScanAce.com Back >>