Good Hardware, Poor Software
Written: Dec 16 '03
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Pros: Fast, broad capability, FIREWIRE, very reasonable price
Cons: Software that at best is good only for automatic scans
The Bottom Line: A good investment IF suitable software can be found to use with it.
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| rickd6's Full Review: Canon CanoScan 9900F Flatbed Scanner |
As a professional photographer, I needed a scanner for quick proofing of 35mm negative film, reasonable scans of larger format films and to complement my dedicated film scanner. My extensive experience with Canon products (scanners and cameras), along with the attractive price/feature set of this unit (under $400) convinced me it was what I needed.
The unit is compact and well manufactured. Scanning at common resolutions is quick - although it takes several minutes to scan 2 1/4" transperancies at 3200dpi - and the firewire interface shoots the data to the computer much more quickly than anything I've seen over USB.
The software (I access it thru the Photoshop plugin), however, is a major weakness. For instance, there are no controls for levels or color balance. Output size settings are not saved between sessions.
One of the features that particularly attracted me was the ability to scan four 6-frame strips of 35mm film at once. This is possible only with the included film holder (in fact, the scanner will not recognize any film not inserted into the appropriate film holder). I anticipated that I would be able to preview and scan these four strips as strips so that I could assemble a traditional 'contact' sheet for my files. This is especially important with negative film so that I can corrolate the film with my proofs.
The scanner, however, previews each frame as a discreet photo on a screen of 12 (a second screen accessed thru a tab shows the second 12). Furthermore, these are displayed and numbered in a seemingly random order, with no corrolation whatsoever to the frame number. In addition, with negative film, color rendition can be all over the place, with one frame displaying with reasonable color and a nearly identical frame displaying all green.
One can select some or all of the previewed frames for scanning, but since the previews are of such low resolution, it's virtually impossible to evaluate fine detail or whether the image is well focused.
Final scans from negatives render color that's exceedingly difficult to balance in Photoshop. Scans from slides are a bit better, but in neither case are they up to snuff for showing to a client.
My limited experience scanning 2 1/4" transperancies has been considerably better. At 3200dpi, the scans are sharp with good color balance (requiring only minor tweaking in Photoshop). These files weigh in around 100MB. I haven't tried 4X5" transperancies yet but expect similar results.
With flat art and documents, this scanner performs as I have come to expect from other scanners.
I'm now in search of alternative software to use with this unit. Hopefully I can find something that will permit scanning of film strips as strips and provides reasonable color correction and resolution/sharpness for adequate proofs.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 346.00
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Epinions.com ID:
rickd6
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Member: Rick Dieringer
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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