HP G4050

[alberto greco]

Dear Friends,

 

this is my usual workflow.

I shoot mainly films (boths B&W and colors and both negs and slides), I have

them developed and scanned by a pro-lab, I re-touch the best pictures and I

get them printed by the same lab which scanned the films.

 

In order to save some money, I would like to scan the films by myself and I

was thinking to buy a scanner.

My main concerns are (in order of importance):

1. automatism: it is essential that the scanner does not require me to

continuously upload films and spend hours in front of the monitor (i would

like a launch-and-go-to-lunch device);

2. quality; and

3. speed

 

I find the HP G4050 interesting. This scanner would let me scan 30 negs and 16

slides at time, but i have not read good reviews on the web (e.g. it seems it

is not able to focus properly on the slide tray).

Does someone have some experience with this scanner?

Do you think it suits my needs?

Other scanner recommended?

 

With kind regards

Alberto

[fc.moreira]

Hi Alberto. I have the G4050. Of course for U$ 170,00 We're not talking about a masterpiece. The main problem is its slowness to operate, mainly because HP's software bundle is not good at all. I bought an aftermarket software called Vuescan that makes this machine faster and more efficient. Indeed, it is better than I thought it was before buying it. The scanned material is of a decent quality, even printed ones. I've got surprised with its 35mm scanning quality for a low price scanner like this one. If you want something better, try Epson's 4990 or the 700, but they are much more expensive and they are flatbed also. Keep in mind that a very good flatbed scanner is very far in quality from a dedicated and expensive film scanner. With this in mind, and prepared to operate a slow machine, why to pay U$700,00 for an Epson flatbed? It's not the ideal solution in your case. Buy the G4050 for U$ 170,00, get reasonables results, and if once in a while you have some special job, send to the lab for a professional scanning. I hope my opinion had been useful in order to help you make a decision. Good luck!

[peter_koster]

I bought the G4050 a week ago and returned it this morning, with the thought of trying a

few others before making up my mind. I wanted one mainly to do color contact sheets too.

I found that I could use the 35mm film strip frame and lay out up to 30 frames without a

problem, then scan it to a preview image just fine. I also found that it is necessary to set

the color correction manually to achieve a good looking positive, since the scanner is

thrown off (as another contributer wrote elsewhere) by the white areas coming through the

frame when it is selected as a single large image rather than selecting each frame

separately. The single large image scans much faster than the individual frame scans.

What did not work satisfactorily for me was apparently the software responsible for

making the color correction adjustment before "accepting" the final scan. I found that I

could manually adjust the color in the preview until I achieved a perfectly beautiful result.

But when I clicked the "accept" button to make the final scan, it would always readjust the

image automatically and discard my manual settings, resulting in an overly pink final

image that I assume is the result of the white areas shining through the frame. Even after

turning off automatic color correction in the "preferences" menu, it disregarded my

"preference" and always readjusted the color to the overly pink cast just when I clicked the

"accept" button. I spent nearly an hour on the phone with tech support to see if they could

help me turn off the automatic color adjustment so I could keep my manual adjustment for

the final scan, but they could not. My system is a PowerMac G5 with OS X 10.4.10 (Tiger).

This problem occurred regardless of the final destination of my scan (into an application

like Photoshop Elements, the HP photo management software, Apple's iPhoto, or simply to

a tiff or jpeg image saved to my hard drive. I would not have returned the scanner to

CompUSA today if someone could have helped me figure out how to get my manual color

adjustment to stick with the final scan, but I never achieved this. If someone has

experienced this and knows the solution, I'd be very grateful to hear about it. I'd even

consider buying the HP G4050 back again. Otherwise, I plan next to try the Epson 4990.

[michael_przewrocki3]

i have an epson 4990- with not really experience yet but we(hp and i) tried out g4050 at photokina.

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/BB/viewtopic.php?t=3041

look also under powerlook 3000. similar to v700 but with AF. i will buy one next week from a photo-pro-friend for only 200 chf- 170 usd.

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/BB/viewtopic.php?p=34769#34769