I was looking through an old bag of 35 mm photo sets and the though came to me that I should archive these old family photos. How best to do this? Most of the photo envelopes had all the original 35 mm print film negatives. Some only had the original prints. I needed something that could scan both reliably.

After looking over the specifications for a number of flatbed scanners, reading some reviews elsewhere on the Internet, and checking to see which scanners were available in local stores, I decided on the Canon CanoScan 8600F flatbed scanner. Overall, I've been pleased.

For moderate to low resolution reflective surface (documents, print film, etc.) scans, the 8600F is exceptionally fast. Lamp warmup time is tolerable and scan speed is better than expected. I was able to scan the entire platen (8.5" x 11.7") in just over 60 seconds at 48-bit depth and 600 dpi resolution. Scanning 35 mm negatives at medium resolution (1200 dpi) takes about the same time including the automatic dust removal pass. Since I wanted to archive my photos, I began scanning my 35 mm print film negatives at the highest optical resolution and color depth possible (4800 dpi, 48-bit respectively). Including the dust removal pass (which rescans the image at a faster speed with infrared light to detect scratches and dust), each frame of the film took about 11 minutes, which is not uncommon for scans of that resolution and depth.

The scan quality is quite good. Both reflective surface and print film negative scanning (using the built-in 35 mm negative adapter and backlight) exhibit above average results. I found that when scanning negatives I had to reduce the exposure some (thus increasing the brightness of negative scans) so that dark areas of the negative frame could be fully visible. This was especially important on underexposed original 35 mm shots. I had to use the advanced mode to decrease exposure. I also noticed that even though the data size is 48-bits per pixel (16-bits for each of the three red, green, and blue colors), the CCD, it seemed, began to "clip" or wash out details over a certain brightness or under a certain brightness. I'd estimate that the usable bit depth of the CCD is more like 32-bit or 40-bit. I'm sure Canon chose to use 48-bit output for both compatibility with applications (16-bit per channel is commonly used in applications like Photoshop) and for marketing purposes (48-bit certainly sounds better than 40- or 32-bit color depth). In any case, with exposure adjustments, the depth was certainly suitable for archiving of my 35 mm print film negatives, especially for the price of the scanner.

The included software has many features, but lacks currency. Of course, I only tested the scanner using Mac OS X 10.4.10 on a 3 GHz Mac Pro. The included Windows software may be different. Canon includes TWAIN drivers (so you can acquire images through any TWAIN compliant application like Photoshop or Apple's Image Capture application). The TWAIN driver is full-featured. Using both Photoshop CS3 and Apple's Image Capture application, I could scan both negatives and reflective surfaces, though only in standard 24-bit mode. 48-bit scans either produced unrecognizable noise for the image (Photoshop CS3) or produced no image whatsoever (Image Capture). To acquire 48-bit images, I had to use the included "PhotoStudio" software that was included with the scanner. This would not have been a problem except that the program is old and was created for PowerPC Macs, not Intel-based Macs like my Mac Pro. So, although the TWAIN driver is a Universal Binary (runs on both PowerPC and Intel Macs) plug-in, the PhotoStudio application must run under emulation, making it noticeably slower, even on my 3 GHz Mac Pro. It's still quite usable though, as long as all you use it for is acquiring the images and not for actual image editing. Canon also includes OmniPage LE (also only PowerPC) for Optical Character Recognition (OCR). I have not tried it out so I cannot comment on its usefulness.

Overall, I'd recommend this scanner because of the above average image quality for the price and for the relative higher speed compared to other scanners in this price range.

Recommended:
Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 179.00
Interface: USB