Nice but way overpriced.

There are four key reasons why the inexpensive 35mm film scanning device from JJC was such a success:

• Under $100
• Assured parallelism of camera sensor and film planes
• Superior definition to that from flat bed or dedicated scanners
• Fast

Checking my LRc catalog I see that I ended up scanning 2300 35mm negatives and slides over an 8 week period working 2 hours or so daily (a rate of 20.5 scans per hour, including processing time at a cost of just 4 cents a scan) and were I using a traditional flatbed scanner I would still have another 12 months of wait time ahead of me …. and with lower definition results. How about 1 hour per high quality scan using a flat bed? Talk of using the wrong technology.

Now a 120 version of the JJC device has been announced by Valoi, using identical design principles but with one big if. It’s very expensive. By the time you add a film holder, duster and the advance mechanism you are looking at $750. Checking my physical albums I count 28 rolls of 120 film negatives and slides, or 336 images which works out to $2.26 and, no, I will not be taking any more film snaps on 120 or any other format, despite the imminent arrival of a gorgeous ‘display only’ Rolleiflex 2.8D from 1955. All this extolling of the purported superiority of film over digital is straight out of Pseuds’ Corner, attributable to people who (rightly) place a very low value on their time. If that’s you and you want to pay twice as much, one of these is just the ticket.

The Valoi 120 film scanning device. Click the image for their web site.

The specs state that 6×4.5, 6×6 and 6×7 (no mention that I can find of 6×9) film format masks are available, each at an outrageous $75 each for a simple piece of plastic.

If a Chinese copy comes along at $200 or less I’m a buyer. Otherwise those 120 film originals can wait. Meanwhile, if you have thousands of originals to scan the Valoi might make better economic sense for you than for me.