Summit Photofix Copier slide scanner

Some of our shining photographic moments are hidden away in dusty old photo albums or in slide cartridges hidden in boxes at the back of the attic. It’s about time they had a fresh airing and were brought into the digital age. Summit’s Photofix scanner takes either three slides or a strip of six negatives from a 35mm film and saves them for posterity in a digital format.

Hands up who takes endless photos and never does a thing with them? Snap. You’re all as guilty as us then. Aside from the very occasional photo that either captures a special moment to perfection or came out especially well despite all amateurish efforts to the contrary, we may be a nation of digital snappers, but we’re not a nation of assiduous home photo printers.

Our theory is that this has something to do with the ease with which we can take photos – every second gadget these days can either take photos or display them onscreen – meaning digital images are everywhere. And we’re in little danger of running out of storage space on even the most parsimonious of hard drives. Even phones have gone multi-gigabyte these days. So there’s not necessarily the need to print out our snaps.

But what about all the photos we used to take in the pre-digital era? In general, we probably took more care with them than we did with today’s snaps. Film was finite, so we had to compose shots with care or risk running out – we couldn’t simply delete those that didn’t quite work, as we could today. Worse, we had to pay for development before we even discovered that we’d taken some truly awful shots.

All this means that some of our shining photographic moments are now hidden away in dusty old photo albums or in slide cartridges hidden in boxes at the back of the attic. It’s about time they had a fresh airing and were brought into the digital age.

Scanners are the obvious option, given a few hours to kill. Failing that, a multifunctional photo printer will do the trick. But scanners don’t usually allow for either negatives or slides.

Those of us taking photographs on slide films have been largely left out in the cold. And those of us stuck with the negatives but not the prints of old photos, are also poorly served. Which is why a device such as Summit’s Photofix scanner is likely to appeal. Load it up with either three slides or a strip of six negatives from a 35mm film and it can magically digitise them, saving them for posterity in a digital format.

What’s really good about the Summit Photofix scanner is its price. At just £99 including VAT, it makes a good present for a long-term photography fan and is the sort of item photo enthusiasts will happily find both a home and the budget for.