Good Scanner, Has Its Quirks, Great with Slides
Written: Mar 27 '05 (Updated Mar 27 '05)
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Pros: Good overall scanner, great with slides. Good tech support.
Cons: Large physical size, somewhat unintuitive software.
The Bottom Line: A solid scanner with a wide range of capabilities. Particularly good with slides.
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| lsander's Full Review: Canon CanoScan 8400F Film Scanner (35 mm), Flatbed... |
I agree with the other reviews to date about this scanner's excellent work with slides. It's good with everything else, too. I had previously used a notebook-sized Canon LIDE scanner, which had no ability to scan transparencies. When it died after 5 years of loyal service, I looked for a replacement general purpose scanner, hopefully with slide capabilities. After considerable research on the Internet, this is the scanner I found.
I use it mostly for scanning documents and photos, with the occasional group of slides thrown in. When I scanned my first slides, I was VERY impressed with the ease and quality of scanning. I did my color correction in Photoshop, but in the future I'll try it directly from the scanner.
Print and document scanning goes very well, too, though I miss the small size of my old LIDE. My basic need is for a workhorse scanner that does everything...photos, text as graphics, text for OCR, thick books, and even the occasional solid object. This scanner handles all of them, and it doesn't choke on anything.
One thing worth mentioning is the operation of the four front-panel buttons. At first I thought they didn't work, since pressing them didn't do anything. Canon's tech support, as usual, was readily available and highly communicative. They weren't very helpful with this specific problem, though the scanner was new to them at the time. Finally I figured out that you have to keep the buttons depressed for a half second or so before the system recognizes your keypress. This isn't at all burdensome, but you DO have to remember to do it.
The software takes a bit of figuring out, and as with many Japanese products, the documentation isn't very helpful. The earlier software version with my LIDE was, in my opinion, more functional and easier to use. Software documentation is OK, but nothing to write home about. The bottom line is that the software does what you need, but could be a lot more intuitive.
The bundled OCR software is pretty good, too. A true miracle of modern technology -- accurate, easy to use once you figure it out, and a great way to get text from paper into your computer.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 130.99
Interface: USB
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Epinions.com ID:
lsander
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Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 2 members
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