Canon CanoScan 8800F Color Image Scanner (2168B002) by Canon Office Products
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Digital camera reviews of Canon CanoScan 8800F Color Image Scanner (2168B002)
Digital camera Review: A GREAT Scanner
Summary: 5 Stars
I've owned many scanners. I recently purchased this item to replace a Canon 8400F that I wore out ( scanned 15,000 photos)over a period of 15 months.
I've used the 8800 for a week now ( about 300 scanned items), and I am
so impressed with the quality of the scans, that I am planning to RESCAN
most of the photos again. Yes, the sharpness and color fidelity imparted with this scanner are so good I consider it worthwhile to REDO about a years work of archiving.
I started by rescanning some of the photos to see how the new scans compared with those from the 8400 I had used for my archives. Most comparisons showed the raw scan of the 8800 to be superior, and never less than equal to the 8400. I really liked the 8400. I LOVE the 8800.
The scanner is very fast. The final scan of a 4x6" photo takes about 3-4 seconds.I do about 100 pictures in an hour, even with the need to tweak some using the Canon Navigator software. You can do multiple pictures in one pass, but I like to look at each picture individually and crop it as I scan.
One useful tip is to use the Advanced mode and set the "Paper Size" to fit
the most common size of your photos. My typical photos are 4x6 or smaller so I use the "2 L Landscape" that creates a 7"x5" scan template (i.e. the scanner only travels about 1/2 way down the platen each scan both saving
time and potential wear , and also eliminates the need to "zoom" to get
a good size picture displayed for tweaking and cropping.
Did I mention that I LOVE THIS SCANNER?
Digital camera Review: A Good Machine
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm a fine art photographer that has sent lots of old black and white negatives to various scanning services in recent years. The cost of these services really adds up over time! Sometimes I run into an old negative that I'd like to scan, but it's impractical to send a single negative to a scanning service. I decided to buy this scanner because, at around $160, it seemed like an exceptional value compared with the cost of sending small amounts of work out to be scanned.
After scanning numerous black and white 35mm and 6x6 negatives (and some 35mm color transparencies) with the Canon 8800F, I'm very impressed with the results. I don't believe that the results are quite as good as can be obtained from a professional scanning service or a dedicated film scanner, but a little working with the tone curve in an editing program can greatly improve the results. I'm using Hamrick Software VueScan with this scanner, software I can recommend and that fully supports the capabilities of this scanner, including infrared dust removal and multiple scans.
The machine is very well constructed, definitely a cut above most flatbed scanners I've seen in this price range. Highly recommended!
Digital camera Review: A Great Scanner for OCR
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought the CanoScan 8800F as an upgrade from my trusty CanoScan 4400F which I used for several years as part of a system that converts text to speech, as a reading aid for my low vision. I often scan a hundred or more pages at a time, and the procedure is highly repetitive; I hoped the 8800F would make the process go faster. As soon as I connected the scanner and made the first few scans, I knew I had made a good choice.
The 8800F has two advantages over the 4400F that I noticed immediately. First, there is no warm-up time for the light source in the 8800F. The 4400F has a cold fluorescent bulb that takes about 30 seconds to warm up when it is cold, and if it sits for a few minutes it does another short warm up before it will scan. The 8800F, on the other hand, has an LED light source that requires no warm up at all. The 4400F leaves its light source on for 12 minutes after a scan (this time is adjustable) to shorten the warm up time, whereas the 8800F shuts its light source off after each scan. Second, the 8800F scans faster than the 4400F. It seems to be about twice as fast, though I have not measured the scan times. These two advantages enable me to be about 50% more productive with the 8800F than with the 4400F, which makes the 8800F worth the higher price.
The two scanners have the same size platen (scanning surface) that takes document sizes up to A4. Most of my scanning is of books, and most of the time I can lay the book flat and scan two pages at once, though for larger books I am only able to scan a single page at a time. It would be nice to find a scanner that can accommodate larger formats, but I did not find one among the consumer scanners that I examined.
The 8800F has a power button, which the 4400F does not. Both scanners have the same buttons that you can use to initiate various scan operations. I never use these, as I always control scans through the software. On the 8800F the buttons are on the top rather than on the front, as for the 4400F, where I would often bump them with my arm, causing a flurry of dialogs to open on the screen.
The basic software user interface is the same for both scanners and consists of two applications that work together: ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5.5 and Canon Scan Gear. PhotoStudio is a combination image editing and scanner control program. It calls Scan Gear to do each scan and accumulates scanned images which you can edit and save. The 8800F comes with several utilities which I haven't used, and also comes with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 and 5.0.
If you do a lot of OCRing, as I do, avoid the ScanSoft OmniPage SE application that comes with the scanner. It is old and extremely buggy. I used it after I bought the 4400F and was in OCR hell for a year until I wised up and bought the latest version of OmniPage Professional, which seemed like magic after that. OmniPage can integrate with Scan Gear, which improves scanning efficiency for OCR operations. I also tried ReadIris 11, but it had a peculiar bug that duplicated letters in OCR'd text. ReadIris technical support never responded to my query about that.
The 8800F has lots of other capabilities that I have not tried yet. I understand that it shines as a photo, slide and negative scanner. I don't know if there is a better scanner out there, but the 8800F suits me very well.
Digital camera Review: A Great Scanner!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all, flatbed scanners are difficult to find in retail stores. neither Best Buy nor Circuit City had them. I reveiwed the most recent Consumer Reports testing of flatbed scanners in which Canon scored as a Best Buy for the under $100 model. I came down to two models, the Canon and the HP. The Hp model was lower in the Consumer Reports ratings, but far higher in cost (about $450) but it could scan more slides at a time. For further research, I went to HP's and Canon's web sites for each of the models. that was a big help. I settled on the Canon and I have not been disappointed. I am extremely pleased with my purchase. I have scanned about 1,000 black & white photos that were 40-90 years old. i have scanned about 20 slides. i am scanning photos at 600 dpi, slides at 2400-3600 dpi. Small contact prints from the 1930s & 1940s were easily cleaned up with the "enhance" tools which removed dust spots. The "magic wand" button on the tool bar gives one the ability to improve and restore original contrast and sharpen the photo from a variety of choices. the result is a beautifully restored photo. the same holds true for old color photos and slides (20-60 years old). many color photos showed signs of fading and loss of color. These can be restored to their original quality as described above. slides are a longer process, but you can do 4 at a time. One problem was figuring out how to do slides. you need to open the scanner lid and "remove the white backing" by pressing the button at the top of the lid. then lay the slide holder down on the glass.Digital camera Review: A Happy Camper
Summary: 5 Stars
This works extremely well. Only wish they had included the latest version of Photoshop Elements (got ver 5 while ver 8 is the current edition). Takes about 5 minutes to scan a set of 4 35 mm slides. I've been scanning Kodachrome color slides that are over 60 years old. The combination of rendition by the scanner and the correction by Photoshop Elements is amazing. I am very pleased with this product.