Not a dedicated film scanner but still good
Written: Apr 29 '05
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Pros: Top quality flatbed, very good at film, lot of scanner for its money
Cons: Not dedicated film scanner quality if that is your primary need
The Bottom Line: 90% users will be delighted. Only film users requiring top notch resolution might be a tad disappointed. I certainly wasn't!
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| hopetest's Full Review: Canon CanoScan 8400F Film Scanner (35 mm), Flatbed... |
The Canon 8400F is proof that we are getting closer than ever to the panacea of scanning: one that can give good results for flatbed scanning whilst also doing negative and slide film scans well.
It would be foolish to suggest this scanner means you can throw away your Nikon Coolscan, Minolta Dimage or Canon film scanner as they are designed specifically to provide top quality with film and not worry about scanning A4 sheets of paper. But then many of us can either not afford or not justify the extra outlay required to go for a dedicated film scanner but want a flatbed than can give reasonable results.
The 8400F gets excellent flatbed results, hard to fault them, especially when using the advanced features of the provided software to customise the final output results. I have also done some beautiful object scans, e.g. scanning a flowerhead and getting a beautiful picture that is sharp across the entire plane due to the natural scanning action. You are going to enjoy using its flatbed facility so not much you need to be told. The resolution is excellent, colour gamut is wide and detail in shadows is all there.
It is as a film scanner that you might be reading this review to find out if you can get successful results without a dedicated machine. Answer: yes. You can get very good results indeed from strips of negatives, mounted or unmounted slides and even negative or positive medium format up to 6x6cms. I borrowed a couple of the latter just to try out and they came out very well indeed. There was a small amount of vignetting at the very edges but not enough to worry about and nothing that could not easily be cured in software like Photoshop Elements, a copy of which comes free with the scanner. Slight let down that it is still only version 2 when 3 has been out for a while but hey, it's free and a lot better than we ever used to get with scanners!
Mounted slides showed more vignetting but that is almost inevitable and again is easily correctable. Mine also had a slight megenta colour cast though that is easy to get rid of with the processing software so not enough to worry about.
This scanner is as close as I have come to finding a flatbed and film scanner that meets all my needs and I am very happy with it indeed. It is good value for money and if you only use it to scan negs and slides now and again like me, you will be delighted. If you have a huge collection of slides from years of film photography that you are planning to scan and archive, you should look at the dedicated range. The rest of us will be well served by this flatbed/film hybrid.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 250
Interface: USB
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Epinions.com ID:
hopetest
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Member: Rob Barron
Location: Poole, UK
Reviews written: 18
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Semi-professional photographer and teacher.
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