maximum resolution: 3200 x 6400 dpi * 48-bit color depth * scan up to twelve 35mm negative frames or 4 mounted slides at a time * FARE technology (Film Automatic Retouching and Enhancement) * high-speed USB 2.0 interface *
1 Right To The Point..........
Buy one!! For the price, you won't beat this unit. I'm running Windows XP on a reasonably fast processor with 512 MB of RAM, and the CanoScan 8400F preforms flawlessly. And Canon's support is A1 in my book. My unit had a problem with the AC power pack. A quick, no hassle call to Canon support, and I had a new power pack in a few days delivered right to my door.
2 A negative experience
I purchased the Canon CanoScan 8400F in the hopes of scanning about a thousand 35mm negatives, but I no longer think this is possible. After scanning the first 5 rolls, my experiences are as follows: First, in "automatic" mode the scanner is unable to determine, about 70% of the time, which positions in the tray actually contain film (each position takes over a minute to scan resulting in wasted time). Next, after waiting 15 minutes for a scan, the resulting pictures (of the negatives that ARE present) are too dark about 30% of the time, requiring a re-scan (after manually configuring the brightness or sometimes just pressing the scan button [for 2 seconds] again). Next, about 10% of the time the scanner doesn't seem to know the dimensions of the plastic tray, and the resulting pictures end up needing to be manually cropped to remove parts of the tray. About 5% of the time, after walking away and coming back 15 minutes later, a popup message on the screen says that the scanner found no negatives in the tray, when 8-10 were actually present (and were properly aligned). In "automatic" mode, sometimes I also ended up with a picture of the tray itself, instead of scanned negatives (perhaps the scanner didn't detect the backlight). About 90% of the time, it was impossible to remove all of the dust from the negatives, requiring another re-scan or editing of each photo before printing. After this experience, I am very glad that I now use a digital camera, because scanning negatives has not been a positive experience.
3 GREAT slide scans with Mac OSX
I hooked up the Canonscan 8400F to my Mac ibook (with OS X 10.3.8) and it works flawlessly. The scanner also works well with the Photoshop Elements software that's included in the box.
I'm scanning hundreds of old family slides (from 126 film), and the results are impressive. By the way, if you have 126 slides, they'll fall right through the scanner's 4-slide adapter, but just use a little removable scotch tape to secure them.
Highly recommend for Mac owners!
4 Excellent Scanner, Excellent Price
Have had this scanner for two weeks now. Replacing old UMAX which was not compatible with my new Windows XP system. There is NO comparison.
The Canon is fast and easy to use. First load the enclosed software. Then just plug in the appropriate cables and you're scanning.
There are four buttons right up front on the scanner that allow you to choose Copy, Scan, PDF, or E-mail at the touch of a button. Make sure you hold the button down for at least two seconds or they don't operate. Probably a good feature as they would be easy to press accidently due to their convenient location.
I have scanned in many photos to use at the Kodak Easy Share (formerly Ofoto) website. I've also used the enclosed ArcSoft Photo 5.5 software (I like it better than my more expensive Jasc Photo Shop software) to scan and fix some old family photos that I was worried were lost forever. Dug around and found some boxes of old slides (who doesn't have those!) that I scannned into my computer. Now the pictures are available to look at anytime. This scanner also has a feature that allows you to scan in pictures off of films of various formats.
Text printing from scanned documents is clear and bright. I particularly like the copy feature that acts as a copy machine.
If you are a home user and hobbist who needs an excellent scanner with great software at a reasonable price, you won't go wrong with the 8400 F.
Paid $129.95 at newegg.com. This is cheaper than Amazon and includes free shipping and no tax to where I live. As a die-heart Amazon fan, I let Amazon know that it was available at a lower price elsewhere, but they never met the price.
5 Great Product !
I've had my 8400F for 2 weeks and love it.I searched the net for the best of the consumer models and this one is it. My previous scanner was an HP3300c...it always seemed flimsy ; not the Canon. It's solid and works like a charm. I needed to learn quickly to use the software to reduce scan size since 1.5Mb for a page document really was not needed! It has made me happy and I feel it will grow with me.
6 Great Value for the Price
I've had this puppy for two days, and I'm really impressed with its exceptionaly fast preview mode, fast photo and document scanning, superior color quality, excellent color processing of slides and 35 film negatives, and its great (but not perfect) driver user interface.
Comparing the scanner's auto tone with Photoshop auto levels, you can see that Photoshop does a little better on skin tones and contrasts. For quick jobs, the scanner's auto tone is fine, but I prefer to turn it off and manually adjust in Photoshop (using 3rd party color and shadow correction filters or even the built-in auto levels).
With the slide attachment, you can do 4 slides at a time. The software is intelligent enough to preview all 4 slides at a time, allowing you to rotate in software prior to scanning You do have to pay some attention to slide orientation when you put the slides into the slide tray, otherwise scanning color slides is a snap. Scanner color correction (auto-tone) works very well in this case.
Unlike slides, scanning 35 mm film negatives can be very slow at 1200 dpi (about 1 per minute). However, the quaility is very good. So good that you will see every blemish and lint on the negative.
I'm not using the supplied software, since I have better alternatives, but the bundle seems good enough to manage workflow.
Not a bulk film/scanner by any means but otherwise a great scanner at a great price. I did the Amazon free shipping thing and got it in about 10 buisness days (about 8 days ahead of schedule).
7 Exceeds my expectations
As I'm typing this I'm scanning 35 mm slides taken in 1965 with an Argus Brick. Slide colors have degraded over time but the automatic color correction and despotter are restoring them. About half of the slides are single frame, half normal size from a PenF, and even these are comming out great.
Using the dust remover does reduce sharpness, but a click or two on the sharpening control in you editor pretty much corects it. Beats trying to spot with a clone tool.
The accesories provide for 4 slides at a time, each image and be individually cropped. There is also a 35mm film strip holder for two strips at a time.
Drivers are very stable, this is the first transparacy capable flatbed I've had that worked smoothly with XP. Visioneer never worked at all, both UMax and Microtek needed frequent driver reinstalls. Looks like I won't have to give away this one.
8 superb scanner
This is a superb scanner, combining extremely high resolution and color fidelity, flexibility, speed, and ease of use. It took only a few minutes to install on my Win XP laptop, and to configure the scanner buttons to invoke Photoshop and Adobe Acrobat Pro rather than the supplied photo and pdf software (which are not bad themselves). Includes optical character recognition software that would cost more than the scanner itself if purchased separately! The multi-scan mode, that lets you scan a set of photos at once and automatically crops them into individual files, is terrific. No need to spend more, and it seems foolish to spend less for a less capable machine.
9 Seems to be overrated by most
I recently purchased a new 8400F believing that it would scan my negatives at similar quality as the basic picture cd that comes with prints, but was mistaken. The picture cd, while lower total resolution, was far sharper than anything the 8400F could produce at any size. The 6.99 picture cd is sadly superior. I was quite disappointed in the negative scanning ability both with B&W and color film. The comparisons pretty much say it all. Even with Vuescan, things weren't better and there's no Silverfast software support available.
10 Awesome scanner to medium format film with a great price.
I have some medium format slides that been sitting on the shelf. A decent medium format scanner just cost too much to justify since I only shoot medium format once in a while.
Then I saw this scanner, I'm a bit skeptical at first. $149 scanner to scan medium format? It's just a gimmick right? Well I bought it anyway since I can return it if I dont like it.
Boy was I wrong. The scan output from medium format is pretty darn good. I'm completely happy with it. At maximum dpi it scan my 6x6 to 7000x7000, thats somewhere about 49Mpixel! Dynamic range also seems pretty good. I'm sure Epson's and Canon's $300+ scanner have much better quality output. The 8400F is a very capable scanner, at $149 its an amazing scanner.
11 Satisfied user!
The first unit I received had lint/dust under the glass. Canon support/service wanted to exchange it with a refurbished unit (for a one day old scanner). I promptly return it to Amazon, which sent me a new unit yesterday.
I purchased it primary to archive my family photos. I use the 35mm negative film adapter and the software had no problem detecting the individual photos, which is a great time saver. One gripe is in the advance scanning mode, you cannot select what type of adapter/film (Film Size) you are scanning. The software will detect and select automatically (at least I haven't found out how to change it yet) as I have other types of film I'd like to scan.
The quality of image have been excellent. There is a number of image settings to improve the image quality before the final scan. Scanning at resolution greater than the optical maximum creates minor horizontal striping.
One interesting feature, the software not only can make a sound after the scan is finished, you can select a midi file to play while the scanning is in process. Once the scan is completed, the music stops. This is handy when scanning multiple 35mm negative films which could take several minutes.
12 Very nice scanner for its price
I bought this scanner last week and I have used it extensivly to scann my films. I'm a semi-pro photographer and i got both b/w and color films, both negative and positive, 35mm and 6x6. I have to admit that the image quality is really good, very fine resolution and I can pull a 8Mpix with a much better quality than most of modern digital cams (with my 15 old Ricoh SLR). However the automated contrast and brightness detection works soso, that's why I ususally have it turned off and correct everything in photoshop, but the results are really satisfying. The other weekness is the adaptors for the films. The don't press them so the films are bent which obviously lower the image quality (but remember that it's already really good). Another drawback is that the dust&scratch remover (software) is useless, it doesn't do anything just take more time to scan. The automated color detection works really well and usually I don;'t have to do any corrections at all. Generally I'm quite satisfied with this scanner and I can recommand it as the alternative to digital cameras which are much more expensive and give much worse images (the lenses simply sucks comparing to traditional SLR lenses).
13 Great low price scanner
Got this scanner yesterday and out of the three brands I have had (UMAX, Epson, and nor Canon) this is the best. The color and picture quality are fantastic, so far. I would like to see a stand alone scanner app rather than having to use Image Capture or Photoshop. I work in 10.3 and it works without a hitch. I especially like the fact that the one touch buttons on the scanner actually work in OSX. This is a first for me. I also like that it has a power switch. I think that is what killed my last scanner.
And as an added bonus it does slides and negatives! Haven't tried that yet.
Definitely recommend.
Update: Have finally tried scanning negatives and the scanner did an amzing job. The saturation and detail was amazing! I was blown away by the image quality from the negative!
14 Fast and Reliable Photo Scanner
I have a Canon FS4000 film scanner that has a slightly higher resolution (3200 vs. 4000 dpi). However, I far prefer to use the new 8400 because it seems like it is about 20x faster. Most of this is the USB 2.0 interface. Most digital printers don't support more than 600-720 dpi right now anyhow so the additional dpi of my film scanner is mostly wasted. Also my film scanner I think was about $800 when I bought it several years ago. So I guess what I am trying to say is that this unit is a great deal for what it does.
I have to spend a fair amount of time cleaning hairs off of the surface of the glass of this scanner, but this is something you have to do with any scanner. Other than that, this unit is extremely easy to set up and use. So far, I have been extremely pleased with canon's imaging products!
15 Beware of Canon Service!!!
I recently got a CanoScan 8400F as an early X-Mas present from my wife. After excitedly opening the box and hooking everything up, I found to my dismay a glaring white speck underneath the glass pane. So I called the technical services at Canon to learn that I can take the unit to my local authorized repair shop. When I took it to the shop, the owner told me that it has to be replaced, and that, upon making a call to Canon, he said Canon will replace it with a "brand new" unit. Good, I thought. After all, I just took it out of the box. Well, when the "new" unit arrived a few days later, I found to my second round of dismay that what I got was a refurbished unit!! Not knowing whether the authorized repair shop pulled some neat trick on me or Canon itself, I called the technical services at Canon once more to learn about what has just happened. Here's what I learned: this fellow at the technical services informed me in a firm and unsympathetic manner that "IT IS CANON'S POLICY" that all returned items will be replaced with refurbished units. So I got a refurbished unit as an early X-Mas present from my wife!!!! This fellow wasn't interested in any of my reasoning, so I told him that I'll simply return the unit for a full refund and goodbye to Canon for the rest of my consumer life span.
This isn't the only time I had a terrible encounter with the Canon service and its philosophy. I've always enjoyed their products, but I've finally ran out of my patience with their immensely arrogant attitude. They deserve going bankrupt to learn some valuable lesson about customer service. They think and behave AS IF Canon is the ONLY player in the market!!!
16 So far so good...
Just received my scanner yesterday and it took me about 5-minutes to get it installed. I had a pile of odds-n-ends type documents I needed to scan plus a couple of photos and this scanner handled it all with ease. The scans were beautiful and crisp. I love the various "scan" buttons on the front of this thing but my only complaint is that I have to hold the button down for a second before it starts scanning. I would prefer it to respond a little more rapidly when I press the button but maybe this is to prevent accidental scans if someone were to bump a button by accident. This is only a minor complaint, however.
I think this is an excellent scanner for the money.
17 Canoscan 8400F First Impression
I purchased this scanner to scan some old photos, negatives and slides. I scanned a 4x6, a old 3x5 photo, and some film today and am very happy with the results. Still trying to get up to speed on the software, but seems to work very easily. Scans seemed to be very quick. I use Mac OSX and didn't have any problems. I haven't installed Photoshop Elements yet.
I had an Epson 636 that still works, but this scanner is several generations newer.
Quick service from Amazon as well.
Thanks.
