Canon CanoScan 8800F Color Film/Negative/Photo Scanner (2168B002)

Manufacturer: Canon List Price: $199.99 Our Price: Too low to display

Canon Scanner....not sure about this product I received this scanner from Amazon in just a few days after my order was placed. The price was decent and it was shipped free. I purchased this scanner so I could convert slides into a file on my computer. The scanner would NOT work on my laptop computer. I kept receiving an error message. There was nothing in the troubleshooting section that addressed this error message. I was able to get the scanner to work on the desktop computer. I've scanned a few pictures and it works well but seems a bit slow. I haven't tried the slides yet. If I have a problem, I'll report back. Scanning medium format mounted positives I own a Nikon Coolscan V ED that I use for 35mm mouted slide scans. I needed something for medium format (2 1/4 x 2 1/4) mounted slides - slides that were in cardboard mounts for projection. I could find nothing that included carriers for this format, but saw that the 8800F would handle 120 film. I figured I would take a chance and see if I could make this scanner work for me. It arrived this afternoon. After unpacking, installation and trying a couple of test scans using the included scangear software, I set about trying to scan my medium format slides. I first treid using the 120 film holder, but with so-so results. The film was held too far away from the scanner glass and the side pressure form the locator pins warped the film slightly. I then took a closer look at the 35mm slide holder and decided that I could make one along the same lines for my larger slides. I used a piece of illustration board the same size as the scanner glass and cut two rectangular holes in it using the 120 film holder as a guide for the placement of the calibration window and the actual slide scanning window. I made the slide windw large enough to take the slides in their plastic holders so that I could remove them form the projection magazines and scan them in the holders without removing them from the support frames. It worked like a charm! The backlight in the cover is wide enough to illuminate the entire slide and the Scangear software allows you to save color correction settings speeding up the process of scanning these very old slides, most of which have very faded cyan dyes making the slides extremely "red". I figure it will take a couple of days to scan the 600 or so slides and create DVDs for delivery to my customer - a job that would have been torturous in the extreme using single slide scanners. I'm very happy with this scanner. Works better than expected OK its been awhile since I bought a new scanner Last one was a Microtek 3700 but it worked fine.. until I decide to go "into production". The speed and capability of this Canon is a great step up. Primarily I have been wanting to digitize pictures and slides from years past. I started scanning in slides. Using the 4 slide caddy made the job move fast with great quality. Using a higher DPI than the default slowed things down a bit but patience is rewarded with a great looking scan even corrected for fading. Being able to walk away while it did 4 slides at once was cool. For prints, it was really fast using 300DPI and it was able to detect multiple prints on the platen and tscan. The software was fairly intuitive and capable with both simple and advanced interfaces. Brings Back the Past! The CanoScan 8800F quickly digitizes my 40+ year-old slides, making them much more readily available vs. the old slide projector. This in itself is a minor miracle. On the down side, the PhotoShop software supplied sometimes has problems with high sunlight/faded slides, and sometimes mislabels saved photos once the user passes forty for a session. To be fair, however, I am still learning the software; the hardware is quite simple.