Review: Wolverine F2D-Super slide and negative scanner. ★★★★

Or why I don't need a $20K slide scanner.

Don't get me wrong: I'd love to have the Hasselblad Flextight X5. It's an amazing device that gives you the best results possible when scanning your old 35mm slides and negatives. I actually considered it for scanning my 16,000 slides, but the $100 Wolverine F2D-Super Film to Digital Converter and a little reality convinced me otherwise.

The Wolverine is just okay. And that's okay.

Let's get this out front: The Wolverine does a great job at producing consistently average results. Though images are 20mpx images, they're not shockingly sharp. What you do get is consistent exposures with no fuss. So what makes me keep using the Wolverine? Two things:

I don't need incredible scans.
I apparently don't have anything incredible to scan.

I don't need incredible scans.

For blogging, social media and even online gallery viewing, those big 20 mpx scans get rendered on a screen at only a megapixel or three. And the smaller you render or decimate an image, the sharper it appears. So for most of what I use the Wolverine for, the scans appear sharp.

I apparently don't have anything incredible to scan.

Many of the images that I shot on Kodachrome 25 with Nikon's best lenses are not as amazing as I remember. It seems at the time I forgave shortcomings of the lenses, films and my skills. And even with a $20K scanner if you put sentimental garbage in, you get sentimental garbage out.

It's easy to blame the scanner and you'll certainly see a lot of complaints online about the Wolverine's scan quality lacking. I can only guess that many of these people have never had a slide scanner before. I'm betting those same people are pretty disappointed when they buy a more expensive scanner. I have owned two Pacific Image scanners and returned a Nikon. My results with these were on par with the Wolverine, though these units cost substantially more. What it comes down to is this: If the image quality is solid, the Wolverine actually does a decent job of scanning. The problem is that we remember all those old images being in rock-solid focus with an infinite depth of field. For me, it's surprising how few actually are.

Minimal fuss: The big plus.

After connecting more expensive scanners to my Mac, futzing with their proprietary software and trying to fix the results in iPhoto, the Wolverine is a real breath of fresh air, giving you a finished JPEG. It's self contained and (for the most part) automatic. You can make scans about 10x faster than most other scanners with this ingenious little box. That's because the Wolverine isn't really a scanner, but uses a specialized camera that works much the same as a bellows slide duper, but with a reasonably accurate automatic exposure. A scan with the Hasselblad takes over a minute, but the Wolverine shoots and saves a viable result in about 3 seconds. When going through a shoebox full of slides, scanning becomes a evening-long session rather than a month-long ordeal.

Once you set the film format, the Wolverine automatically adjusts for focus, exposure and color. The push-through tray lets you copy images one after another, allowing you to scan a stack of slides or roll of negative film in no time. I save the scans on an SD card in the Wolverine, stick the card into my Mac, iPhoto opens and the images are there. It's amazingly convenient compared to all the other scanners I've tried.

Don't expect features.

For the most part, the Wolverine is automatic and it will only give you a compressed JPEG. Since it does digital conversions at 24-bit, I originally thought RAW format would be a nice option, but that would screw up the simplicity.

Post production.

Any images from any scanner typically require post production work. There is also no dust-filtering technology (like ICE) built in to the Wolverine. There's software to correct this, but I get good results using a combination of iPhoto's retouch brush to remove dust and the Perfectly Clear app to smooth out grain.

My take.

If you have old slides or negs, you need a Wolverine. So why is it I'd recommend you buy it? It's substantially cheaper, faster and easier to use than the best film scanners out there. The Wolverine has trays to copy 35mm, 26mm, 110 format film and Super 8 and 16mm movie stills stills. You can copy all those subpar family photos on the Hasselblad, but they won't be much of an improvement over what you get from the Wolverine.

The Wolverine F2D-Super is an excellent choice for most of the images you'll be scanning. It might not do that one, amazing shot-of-a-lifetime justice, but you could get that one professionally scanned and still pay a lot less than a high-end scanner.

Getting the best results from the F2D-Super.

Since the Wolverine works pretty much automatically, there's a minimal workflow for getting decent scans. Still, a little care in the process will get you better results.

Pick great images. If the images are out of focus, blurry, underexposed, burned out or deteriorating, you really can't expect good results.
Clean your images. Old film is covered with dust, dirt, and fingerprints, some which you will not be able to get rid of. PEC-12 film cleaner, Pec-Pads and canned air work well. I gently wipe up/down and across/back on each slide of a slide and then use the index finger nail on the wipes to clean the corners where much of the debris dwells. On Kodachome, I'm wiping off noticeable yellow dye deposits. (There's debate on whether the slides weren't washed off properly during film processing or whether the dye is leaching from age.) But the consensus is that it's fine to wipe it off.
Clean the unit. The tray area picks up dust. Use the included brush (facing down) to clean it regularly. You'll still find plenty of spots to retouch on your images, but the few seconds it takes to clean will save you minutes in retouching time.
Adjust exposure if needed. Since the Wolverine only gives you a compressed JPEG, you'll want exposure to be as accurate a possible. I'd recommend that you shoot twice, once as the Wolverine calls it and once as you see fit to adjust it. Like camera monitors, the Wolverine's monitor may not show exposure accurately, so you may find that the Wolverine made the right call in the first place. iPhoto's Enhance button can usually handle any color corrections or exposure issues.
Retouch spots. Most decent photo editing software has a retouch tool that will easily clean up spots and dust in your image. Cleaning will minimize these problems, but you should expect that every image will need it. In iPhoto, press the 1 key and your image will enlarge to be one screen pixel for one image pixel, showing the image as it really is. Shrink the retouch brush to be small and tap along lines of dust as opposed to drag them with the brush.
Fine tune your scans. In your photo editing software use the Shadows and Highlights sliders to restore detail. Use the Sharpness and Noise sliders to smooth tones and create definition. All of these controls require sensible use, since it's easy to overdo it.

More on exposing individual images.

Though the Wolverine's auto exposure is solid, you'll still find the deep shadows burned into black and subtle highlights burned into white. These are common problems with most scanners since light is being projected through the film and emphasizing the dynamic range, which is harder to capture accurately.

If the image is underexposed or overexposed, you may be able to use the Wolverine's Exposure slider to improve the image. Move it down a notch to save highlights or move it up to preserve some shadow. This varies with each image and requires some trial and error.

We think of burned out highlights as white, but Red, blue and green can get so vivid that they burn out details as well. Slide films are sensitive to color, especially red. You may find that reducing red a notch will preserve detail in the red. If the image is excessively green or blue, it's useful to back off of those a notch. Since the final image from the Wolverine is a compressed JPEG, any detail that gets lost in the scan can't be brought back in your photo editing software.

Notes on grain.

Silver film grain is the analog equivalent to digital noise. The higher the ISO, the bigger the grain. And though Kodachrome was a low-ISO film, it's actually dyed black and white film. The grain is finer, but more contrasty and more obvious than the color grain on an E6 process slide film, like Kodak Ecktachrome and Fuji Velvia. High resolution scanners (and yes the Wolverine is high resolution at about 4000 dpi) painstakingly capture the grain or the effects of it.

The issue with grain becomes this: Do you leave it in your scans for its original charm or do you minimize it with photo software for a smoother image? Some noise filters work on grain, but typically require you to crank the processing way up to smooth it. This can get rid of noise, but leave your images looking like plastic.

I think it's best to base the decision to denoise or not on what the image will be used for. If it's for the web and will only show up as a few inches wide, the resolution is probably not big enough to make the noise obvious. But if you're going to do heavy cropping or blow up the image for a print, it might be worth messing with the noise.

The Perfectly Smooth filter in Perfectly Clear for iPad does a good job on smoothing noise without detracting from the sharpness. Also the Photoshop Express and Noisemaster apps can work well.

Notes on film damage.

If film is damaged there's little that can be done to restore it except retouching. Damage can be physical (scratches and holes) or from deterioration.

Film deteriorates over time. How that film has been stored determines how fast it disintegrates. The near ideal to store film and slides is in archival plastic sleeves placed in sealed gallon Ziploc freezer bags and kept in the fridge. So most likely you have film that has been stored incorrectly for 20-60 years.

Death by Vinegar. Modern films have an acetate base that will start to shrink over time and warp or crack the film emulsion layer. The sign that acetate is deteriorating is a vinegar smell. Your best bet is to clean very gently without bending the film and scan, then store the film properly to slow the deterioration.

The nose oil trick. One way to minimize film scratches is to rub a Q-Tip on the side of your nose and rub this into the scratches. It can work with small scratches, but does little for the deep ones.

Working with damaged goods. A bigger problem than the film damage itself can be trying to clean damaged film, which can make the damage worse. Using Pec-12 and a Pec-Pad, clean gently. If it doesn't work, it's probably not debris on the surface, but damage to the film. Further cleaning can rip the emulsion. At this point you're best to try retouching the scan.

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