Canon scanner

[arunarchi]

Hi Folks

 

I was looking for a slide scanner with more than 3000dpi resolution -

but found out they were pretty pricey! I know that flat bed

scanners with slide adapters might not do a good job - but if I

don''t have a choice - does anyone know about the quality of scans

from a "Canon CanoScan 4200F, 3200x6400 dpi, Letter Size, Flatbed

Scanner" which has an inbuilt slide scanning adapter?? I am mainly

concerned about the quality of slide scanning. Any user input

appreciated - or, doesanyone know of a better scanner in this range?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Arun

[michael_dakin]

I have a CanoScan 8000F. I use it on the MacOS X platform. I use it mainly for general

purpose "office" use but I have also tried to scan slides as well as B&W negatives with it.

By no means have I put the time/care into the film scanning that some people would, so

my results do not necessarily compare to a perfectionist willing to spend a lot of time

actually making it work correctly. I don't know how much this applies to the 4000F but

here are some observations:

 

1. The MacOS X software for the 8000F scanner is very poor. The GUI is flakey and if the

scanner is left connected and software is active sometimes the machine will crash when it

goes into sleep mode. I never have any crashes when the scanner is not connected.

 

2. Canon does not release all the technical specs. for the 8000F so the third party

scanner software support is spotty. Only in the last two weeks or so has Vuescan added

support for the 8000F scanner. As far as I know none of the other third party vendors

support it. Notable for Mac users: Apple's scanner software does not support the 8000F.

 

3. I have tried to scan Fuji Velvia and Fuji Astia slides with the 8000F scanner and the

results were very disappointing. The colors are *way* off. I don't know if a Photoshop

guru could fix them or not, but it is not something that I was able to do to satisfaction

putting a few hours in. I am by no means a Photoshop expert though. The results I got

were not acceptable to me.

 

4. I have tried to scan some B&W negatives. With minimal effort I got acceptable results. I

don't know how it compares to getting the scans done professionally though; at some

point I will do a direct comparison.

 

Personally, I think the software support for the 8000F scanner is a major problem. In the

future I will be much more careful about buying something that is supported by several

third party software vendors to mitigate the risk of the manufacturer provided software

being so poor. I suspect that this problem about third party support extends to all the

recent Canon scanners.

 

As for the "office" uses it has been a fine scanner though and that's the primary reason I

bought it.

[denisbergeron]

Have an Epson 4870, can scan up to 4800 in native and up to 9600 in hardware extrapolation. And on Epson the Driver works. I the recent comparision I read the Epson 4870 is better than the Canon and even better than the 2k$ Nikon flims scanner.