Canon CanoScan 8400F

Review Date
September 1, 2006

Overall Rating
 3 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
1 to 3 months

Visitors rate this review
4.20 of 5, 5 votes

Reviewed by
schan1w , Intermediate

Price Paid
$116.00 at amazon.com

Photography Experience
6-10 years , People

Summary
I bought this scanner so I could scan my 120 color and B&W negatives. I thought the scanner was ok, and the software usable, until I tried to scan on of my favorite images on Kodak Portra 400NC color negative film. The pro lab which printed this negative for me in the past made a beautifully warm and rich print. When I scanned this negative, the colors turned out horrible. Very cold with a green cast in the shadows. I search the net and decided to try using the Vuescan scanning software instead. Wow!! What a difference. The scanned image is beautiful. Wonderfully shape, with little noise, and no color cast at all. Looks just like the print I love. Vuescan is great. It has profiles for different negative films (turns out it is very hard to scan color negatives unless you have profiles) and does multi-pass scanning to get more detail out of the negative. This software turned the Canon 8400F into an incredible scanner. I love this scanner now. It's weird, you spend $116 on a scanner, but the best investment for it is to spend anoter $50 on software. Canon should be ashamed for producing such horrible software to go with their scanner. I give this 5 stars for value, but 3 stars because their software is horrible.

Strengths
Scanner hardware.

Weaknesses
Scanner software. Buy Vuescan to use with this scanner.

Review Date
July 24, 2006

Overall Rating
 3 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
3 Months to 1 year

Visitors rate this review
3.67 of 5, 3 votes

Reviewed by
photophorous , Intermediate

Price Paid
$135.00 at B&H PhotoVideo

Photography Experience
6-10 years , Other

Summary
This is pretty much the only scanner I've used, and I am far from being proficient at the art of film scanning. At the time I got it, I was doing a lot of B&W film work, developing at home and printing in a rented darkroom. I wanted a scanner so I could share my film photos on-line and to email to friends. Also, I could avoid making contact sheets and I use the scanned images to pick which negatives to print in the darkroom. It served that purpose very well. I used it to scan B&W negatives...mostly 35mm and a little 120. As long as you are willing to put in the time to make sure your negatives are clean, it is capable of producing some very sharp images. The 120 images showed much better tone, as expected.

The scanned images viewed on my monitor don't even compare to darkroom prints, but I suspect this is true of most comparisons between an image on a monitor and a print. Tone was not as good, and some shadow detail was lost. I've never printed a scanned image from the computer, but I seriously doubt even the prints would hold up against a darkroom print. I have also scanned a few 35mm color slides and a few prints. They turned out okay, but I think the scanner performed better with B&W. The color images required lots of color correction.

My Overall Rating of 3 Stars is based on scanning film, which is typically done with much more expensive scanners.

Strengths
Value. With out doing a direct comparison to other scanners, I feel like this one performs very well for what I paid. Resolution is more than adequate. Images are surprisingly sharp. I'm sure you can do better, but I think it works great for the money.

Weaknesses
Keeping your negatives free of dust is very tedious and sometimes seems impossible, but this is probably true of all flatbeds. All images require some post processing, especially color correction. Some shadow detail is lost, in comparison to darkroom prints.

Similar Products Used
None.

Customer Service
Not needed.