Scanners

[momoffduty]

I have been researching scanners and am totally lost. Looking for one that will scan photos, neg., slides, and can handle books. At Best Buy saw a Cano-Scan 600F and Cano Scan 8800F. Read on a thread here that the CanoScan 4400 was good.

Is there a trusted review site that you use or do you generally google the product? On one site the reviews talked about the plastic hinges breaking and the film strip not scanning the whole thing.

What are some things to look for or watch out for on a scanner? How much is the price dif a factor when looking at a range of $75 to $200?

Thanks

[Chuck Engels]

Do you want one that will scan more than one negative or slide at a time or do you care?
The scanners that scan singles will be cheaper, the ones that scan multiples at a time are lots nicer.
You can spend anywhere from $50 to $10,000 on scanning equipment. Some of them have feeders that you stack up 100s of slides or negatives and they just feed into the scanner.

If I was going to get another one I would probably get one of these
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-CS8800F-Col ... 473&sr=8-7
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-CanoScan-44 ... 473&sr=8-2

I like the reviews at Amazon, they are from real people that have used the products.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

A word of caution. I had a Canon 8000F. It was highly recommended. It cost me £200. In operation it drove me mad so in the end I gave it away.

The big problem was that every time one tried to scan it would give out a message 'Scanner warming up' - or something like that. So it would warm up and one would scan. Then one would try a second scan on another original and again it would report 'Scanner warming up'. It was sooo sloooow that it was unusable.

So, my advice. Check on a demo model of your chosen scanner before you buy.

My replacement scanner is an Epson 4490 Photo.

Compared to the Canon it is BLISS. HTH.

[Chuck Engels]

John, in the Canon software there is a timeout adjustment that can be set for the scanner to go into sleep mode.
This can be set for as little as 1 minute, if you hit that time without using the scanner it will go into sleep mode and need to warm up again.
I always set mine to 30 minutes, no problems.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Thanks Chuck.

Maybe I missed that setting on my Canon 8000F, but having suffered the 'scanner is warming up' frustration I no longer have it (the Canon scanner).

But I am mightily impressed by the Epson......

[Chuck Engels]

Very nice scanner John, and Amazon has it on sale for $161 USD
http://astore.amazon.com/chuckengelsco- ... 23-1821206

For that price I am buying one myself, it has Digital Ice Technology and can handle medium format negatives too, a great deal !

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

The medium format was a plus point for me too, Chuck, on the Epson 4490.

The Canon 8000F would only handle 35mm. The Canon 9000F appeared to be the same physical machine as the 8000F but the 9000F would scan the larger negs; that feature was greyed out on the 8000F. (Hope that makes sense).

[momoffduty]

Thanks for all of the tips and links. Doesn't matter if it only scans one at a time. The priority is scanning pics, then film or books, and last slides. I borrowed a Nikon slide scan to scan old family slides, did a great job and had the Kodachrome feature. It only scanned one at a time and was like watching paint dry.

The biggest concern is quality of scan and the next would be amount of time to scan. The Nikon was very slow.

[Chuck Engels]

Slides and negatives are slow to scan, just the way it is.
Be sure to get at least a USB scanner, they will be faster than parallel (does that even exist anymore?).
SCSI would probably be faster but those units are generally pretty expensive, not to mention you would have to add a SCSI card to your computer too.

[cdeemer]

This is a scat off-topic but if anyone is looking for a small, inexpensive scanner for documents and photographs, I recommend the Canon CanoScanLIDE 25. I've been giving it a real workout in a project I'm doing and it's a work horse.

[Gerry]

...it has Digital Ice Technology

Could you explain what this is? I've never even heard of it before.

[Chuck Engels]

Here is a better explanation than I could ever give
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_ICE

It is available in most very high end scanners
To find it available in the lower cost models is great, from what I hear it does an amazing job automatically.

[momoffduty]

The CanoScan 8800F has a 'transparency unit'...what is this?

Went to the Epson link and what is 'ChuckEngels.com store'?

[Chuck Engels]

A negative or slide is a transparency, also like the large transparencies that are used on overhead projectors.

Amazon.com has affiliates that can offer all Amazon.com merchandise for a commission.
Chuckengels.com is an Amazon affiliate and has a Amazon Store. Anything purchased through the chuckengels.com store provides the site with a commission that helps to pay to keep the web site around.
We are slowly trying to move everything from chuckengels.com to muvipix.com but it is going to take quite a while to do that. In the interim we will pay to keep chuckengels.com around.

Just so you know, the site is not making anyone rich. This year I have received under $200 in commissions from Amazon, the cost of the site is over $400 per year

[momoffduty]

I have it narrowed down to two: Epson 4490 and CanoScan 8800F. The Epson review mentioned the hinged lid to handle large books.

I was just curios about the store with your name. You give out free advice daily and even with my membership I am way ahead, so you might as well have products you recommend. If you took my membership $ and divided it by the number of questions, downloads, etc.....hmmm...you may have lost money if you factor in bandwidth.