I have spent about a week scanning old black and white negatives (not continuously, just about 2 or 3 hours a day) and have the following good and bad things to say about the Canon 8600F
Installation: Fairly straight forward, the Canonscan is pretty large. It looks like there are 2 traveling assemblies, one in the bottom and one in the top for the film backlight. Looks cool - sort of - .
The software took longer to install than I would have liked but was uneventful. I believe I left out one app, can't remember which.
I am running XP on a 1 year old laptop (AMD 64 Athlon - EMachine)
Setting up the scanner buttons (assigning them to applications) was a bit confusing for me; my original scanner had none, but turned out in hind sight to be solid and flexible options.
I noticed some clicking during the first film scan like something was sticking inside on one of the sliding pieces.
GOOD: The software that comes with it is pretty decent, the adobe Photoshop elements 4.0 is feature rich enough for me. It does take me some time to edit the negatives, change the lighting etc but I have had very good results. Though I was hoping for a larger negative scan area I was able to knit together a negative (an X-ray of a jaw in 3D) that was 12"x5" in 4 scans. It was a bit tricky but it was of course my first time knitting. The end result was spectacular since playing with the Adobe elements filters and enhancements I was able to see incredible detail in the negative such as blood vessels in the bone. Something that was invisible holding the original on an x-ray viewing bed. In addition of course it is just cool to have an X-ray positive.
The old negatives were in very bad shape, some were water damaged. The Fare 3 tech. did very well (not perfect but very good) in removing the smaller pieces of dust. Sometimes I didn't even wipe the negatives and they came out great. I was able to put the negatives directly on the scanning surface by taking out the film holders. Most of these negatives were non standard sizes 126, elongated 120 frames and another size not quite half format. I believe that putting them on the glass made the scan clearer and allowed negatives larger than the machine was designed for. I was looking for a scanner that did 8.5 x 11" transparencies but price wise settled on the Cannon. The knitting I did was not with color but I bet with some practice you could do a full size full color.
Once you get into a routine of scanning film with non-standard sizes on the glass it becomes second nature as to where to place them. Don't expect to get it right the first time. The most useful functions for the black and white negatives are the shadow enhancements and the brightness tweaks.
Slide placement is easy, 4 at a time if you use the tray; or if you are ambitious, 10 on the glass scrunched up together. The scanner software will actually recognize all 10 slides if they are light enough. There is a section on the glass (closest to the hinge) that you cannot cover or the scanner will get confused while adjusting its light. If you are doing mass scans of film you can put tape markers on the glass to make sure you don't cover this area. When using the glass, always use the 120 12x6 size in the scanner driver software. It seems to prevent the driver from looking for the film holder boarders. By the way, this can only be done from the advanced settings tab in the scanner driver. So if you wanted to scan 4x5s, you can just use the glass, don?t buy any aftermarket holders.
If you want to scan anything larger, you can knit the images together very well. (at least with black and white)
PDF scanning is simple if not fast.
The copy function is great; I tested it on the back of an Efston science catalog onto photo paper on a cheap HP printer. Looks good and is reasonably fast. The first time you use some of the buttons it will prompt you for some question or another. You can check the "don't bother me again" box and then you won't have to go through it again. Of course if you want to go through it again, make sure you know how to turn it back on first. :)
BAD: The scanner driver is a bit finicky in terms of which options it picks (sometimes automatically and in a way that overrides your choices) for film scanning. I don't have them all figured out but if you have time and patience you can get what you want done. It appears to have several safeguards against counterfeiting. For fun I placed a 10 dollar bill on the machine and it immediately died on the scan. I thought something else was wrong but since it died repeatedly until I took it out and searched around for something else to test with. (the catalog) My 10 was the only thing I had with color on hand at the time - honest. :) 90% of your problems will be solved if you turn off the thumbnail setting in the scan menu. Of course it is a toggle switch and you can?t tell if it is on or off until you actually do the scan.
PDF problems. I was excited about the prospect of being able to scan stuff like old gas bills, so that I could finally through out all those files in the basement. However, the PDF software in conjunction with this scanner inaccurately captures the text! This was very disappointing since it is the #2 reason I bought this scanner. It does capture the PDF documents as an image but does a lousy job with the PDF text. Don't expect to be able to convert those 30 years worth of National Geographic?s into a searchable library so that you can finally ditch the actual paper weighing down your library.
EVEN WORSE: The scanner comes with a locking mechanism on the bottom to prevent the sliding mechanism from being damaged in transport. Great idea - however, I think I mention at the beginning that there are 2 sliding mechanisms. One on the top for transporting the light for the film scans. When I first fired up the scanner, there were clicking sounds - I wasn't sure where they were coming from, everything looked ok and the scans were clear and not stilted. Then after about 50 scans, the clicking got really bad and the light on the lid stopped traversing past half the scan. It would only scan the first film shot, then started jamming etc. Sounded nasty.
Took it back to Future shop. They replaced it without question. Brought the new one home..........it started clicking too. Will see how long it will last, I still have a lot of negatives to scan. If anyone else has that clicking jamming sound coming from the lid, please let me know. If there is a basic problem there might be some easy solution, to prevent the failure, such as moving a wire out of the way inside the lid.
Canon Canoscan 8600F Reviews
in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing
Posted
I have spent about a week scanning old black and white negatives (not continuously, just about 2 or 3 hours a day) and have the following good and bad things to say about the Canon 8600F
Installation: Fairly straight forward, the Canonscan is pretty large. It looks like there are 2 traveling assemblies, one in the bottom and one in the top for the film backlight. Looks cool - sort of - .
The software took longer to install than I would have liked but was uneventful. I believe I left out one app, can't remember which.
I am running XP on a 1 year old laptop (AMD 64 Athlon - EMachine)
Setting up the scanner buttons (assigning them to applications) was a bit confusing for me; my original scanner had none, but turned out in hind sight to be solid and flexible options.
I noticed some clicking during the first film scan like something was sticking inside on one of the sliding pieces.
GOOD: The software that comes with it is pretty decent, the adobe Photoshop elements 4.0 is feature rich enough for me. It does take me some time to edit the negatives, change the lighting etc but I have had very good results. Though I was hoping for a larger negative scan area I was able to knit together a negative (an X-ray of a jaw in 3D) that was 12"x5" in 4 scans. It was a bit tricky but it was of course my first time knitting. The end result was spectacular since playing with the Adobe elements filters and enhancements I was able to see incredible detail in the negative such as blood vessels in the bone. Something that was invisible holding the original on an x-ray viewing bed. In addition of course it is just cool to have an X-ray positive.
The old negatives were in very bad shape, some were water damaged. The Fare 3 tech. did very well (not perfect but very good) in removing the smaller pieces of dust. Sometimes I didn't even wipe the negatives and they came out great. I was able to put the negatives directly on the scanning surface by taking out the film holders. Most of these negatives were non standard sizes 126, elongated 120 frames and another size not quite half format. I believe that putting them on the glass made the scan clearer and allowed negatives larger than the machine was designed for. I was looking for a scanner that did 8.5 x 11" transparencies but price wise settled on the Cannon. The knitting I did was not with color but I bet with some practice you could do a full size full color.
Once you get into a routine of scanning film with non-standard sizes on the glass it becomes second nature as to where to place them. Don't expect to get it right the first time. The most useful functions for the black and white negatives are the shadow enhancements and the brightness tweaks.
Slide placement is easy, 4 at a time if you use the tray; or if you are ambitious, 10 on the glass scrunched up together. The scanner software will actually recognize all 10 slides if they are light enough. There is a section on the glass (closest to the hinge) that you cannot cover or the scanner will get confused while adjusting its light. If you are doing mass scans of film you can put tape markers on the glass to make sure you don't cover this area. When using the glass, always use the 120 12x6 size in the scanner driver software. It seems to prevent the driver from looking for the film holder boarders. By the way, this can only be done from the advanced settings tab in the scanner driver. So if you wanted to scan 4x5s, you can just use the glass, don?t buy any aftermarket holders.
If you want to scan anything larger, you can knit the images together very well. (at least with black and white)
PDF scanning is simple if not fast.
The copy function is great; I tested it on the back of an Efston science catalog onto photo paper on a cheap HP printer. Looks good and is reasonably fast. The first time you use some of the buttons it will prompt you for some question or another. You can check the "don't bother me again" box and then you won't have to go through it again. Of course if you want to go through it again, make sure you know how to turn it back on first. :)
BAD: The scanner driver is a bit finicky in terms of which options it picks (sometimes automatically and in a way that overrides your choices) for film scanning. I don't have them all figured out but if you have time and patience you can get what you want done. It appears to have several safeguards against counterfeiting. For fun I placed a 10 dollar bill on the machine and it immediately died on the scan. I thought something else was wrong but since it died repeatedly until I took it out and searched around for something else to test with. (the catalog) My 10 was the only thing I had with color on hand at the time - honest. :) 90% of your problems will be solved if you turn off the thumbnail setting in the scan menu. Of course it is a toggle switch and you can?t tell if it is on or off until you actually do the scan.
PDF problems. I was excited about the prospect of being able to scan stuff like old gas bills, so that I could finally through out all those files in the basement. However, the PDF software in conjunction with this scanner inaccurately captures the text! This was very disappointing since it is the #2 reason I bought this scanner. It does capture the PDF documents as an image but does a lousy job with the PDF text. Don't expect to be able to convert those 30 years worth of National Geographic?s into a searchable library so that you can finally ditch the actual paper weighing down your library.
EVEN WORSE: The scanner comes with a locking mechanism on the bottom to prevent the sliding mechanism from being damaged in transport. Great idea - however, I think I mention at the beginning that there are 2 sliding mechanisms. One on the top for transporting the light for the film scans. When I first fired up the scanner, there were clicking sounds - I wasn't sure where they were coming from, everything looked ok and the scans were clear and not stilted. Then after about 50 scans, the clicking got really bad and the light on the lid stopped traversing past half the scan. It would only scan the first film shot, then started jamming etc. Sounded nasty.
Took it back to Future shop. They replaced it without question. Brought the new one home..........it started clicking too. Will see how long it will last, I still have a lot of negatives to scan. If anyone else has that clicking jamming sound coming from the lid, please let me know. If there is a basic problem there might be some easy solution, to prevent the failure, such as moving a wire out of the way inside the lid.
<div>
</div>