Canon LPT-99735987 CanoScan 5000F Scanner

I received delivery in an unbelievable 21 hours! I had gone out and examined the Cannon 5000F before I placed the order with Amazon.com. Ive installed it on Windows XP and am pleased beyond expectations. I primarily wanted it for film and slide copying. It does that and copying and photo scanning up to my expectations and standards. I ve been involved in photography (darkroom included) for years and find this great to bring my old technology up into the 21 century.

The Canon 5000F scanner provides high quality scans at a reasonable price. Being a professional photographer and newspaper cartoonist for 15 years, Ive worked with numerous scanner models ranging from HP and Epson to even Microtek units. Yet, for the price, Canon outperforms them all with a print-perfect optical resolution of 2400x4800 dpi. I mostly use the scanner for digitalizing my artwork at a resolution of 1200dpi at an output scale of 100%. The scans appear crisp and clear with well-defined gray tones and contrast levels. Given the ease of the scanning software, its simple to make a slight adjustment during the pre-scan to change the contrast and brightness to fit your needs. Also, the Canon 5000F is a well-built unit. All low-priced scanners consist of a plastic body for weight purposes, however, the Canon 5000F employs a solid and sturdy drive unit to guide the movement of the lamp carriage. I previously bought the HP Scanjet 3970 because of its attractive price, but I also quickly discover its cheap construction, worthless 3-month warranty and its loose connections. Thankfully, I was able to return it for a refund. At work, I used an Epson 2400 scanner, a comparable unit, that fell apart from the hinges inward. The Epson 2400 could not reproduce the color of photographs as naturally as the Canon 5000F. When scanning grayscale images, the Epson 2400 also could not detect gray tones as well as the Canon unit. The Canon 5000F wonderfully reproduces the color of photographs and slides when I scan images to be posted on the web. However, for scanning negatives or slides, I use a film scanner to achieve the best results. When scanning negatives on a flatbed scanner, the machine must scan the images at a higher resolution than you intend to print. For example, scanning at 2400dpi will magnify the negative image and allow for decent printing at 600-1200dpi. For beginners or professionals, the Canon 5000F provides excellent results at a reasonable price. Theres very little difference in scanning speeds when a person scans an image at high resolutions, because were talking about an image file 40MB or bigger. I havent seen where the flimsy HP or Epson models scanned any faster than the Canon models. After all, if you want quality, be patient. It might take 1-2 minutes for a 2400dpi scan of a picture, but you should be pleased with the results. For the best color reproduction, clarity and construction, I highly recommend the Canon 5000F. Note: The Canon LiDE series of slim scanners also provide decent results, but they use a different method of scanning than the Canon 5000F in order to make the scanner 1.5 inches tall. The Canon LiDE series use LEDs for the light source and a contact image sensor (CIS) to capture the scanned image. This system, given the material youre scanning, might not provide you with the color tones youre seeking in order to print large photographs. Instead, the Canon 5000F uses the traditional cold cathode lamp as the light source and a CCD as the scanner element which still provides the best color and grayscale reproduction. Enjoy!

I was able to set up the scanner with no difficulty on my 2.4GHz/512MB P4 system. It took about 20 minutes I guess to install the software and plug in the scanner. I have used the scanner primarily for photos. The multi-scan mode is GREAT. I have scanned 4 pictures at a time and they are put into 4 separate files. Thats a huge time saver, and it works EVERY time for me despite what the editorial review said. I would never buy a scanner without multi-scan mode. The quality is good too. I settled on 600 dpi as the optimal resolution setting (good detail scanned within a reasonable amount of time without files that are too large). I tried scanning negatives once. It worked well, and the quality was better than scanning photos. My only complaint was that switching the scanner back and forth between regular mode and film mode is a little flimsy. Im afraid that sliding the white shield too many times would wear it out. It slides on a groove made of poster board type material. But I dont plan to scan many negatives. I also scanned a magazine page and that worked great. This scanner is a great choice for a multi-purpose scanner at a reasonable price.

I bought this scanner because of the Canon name. My last scanner was a Canon, as is my printer. Both have performed flawlessly. I chose this particular model because of the USB interface so I could use it with both my Mac and my Hewlett Packard IBM Clone, and because it has an attachment to scan negatives. As a basic scanner, its great. Good color. Good sharpness. Though, its a somewhat larger than you might expect based on the pictures. But dont be misteken -- this is not a professional film scanner. Its an OK mid-range consumer product. Colors tend to be off slightly when scanning negatives using the dust and scratch mode. Also, the dust and scratch mode is not available in resolutions over 600 dpi. I get the sense that otherwise, this is a powerful piece of hardware. The problem is that the software for it is horrible. The Mac and Windows versions are identical, and neither is really up to the task at hand. They are poorly laid out with no clear-cut way to perform simple tasks. If youre scanning into something like Photoshop, it can control the scanner through the TWAIN driver. But if you just want to make a quickie black-and-white scan of a piece paper to fax to someone, its too much of a hassle. Again, hardware quality is great. But the software leaves a lot to be desired.

My father always told me I would never go wrong with a Canon. Canon has proven my fathers point time and time again, and they dont fail to do so with the 5000c. I made the mistake of purchasing a lesser-name scanner to save myself [money]. When the quality and reliability were found lacking, I packed the lesser-name up and left the store with the 5000f. Im so thrilled by the quality i dont know if I can write a detailed, fact-based review on the scanner! All I really need to say is ITS INCREDIBLE! DONT EVER BUY ANY OTHER BRAND! However, I know you want details. Here they are: The film/slide scans are AMAZING! Theyre crisp and clear --honestly unparalleled by any scanner (even professional models) I have ever used. Many scanners will blur your slides or provide unacceptable resolution for any serious utility. Not the case here. Standard scans are great. I MUST mention the FARE (Film Automatic Retouching and Enhancement) technology employed by the 5000F. How many times have you been digging through your storage to find a great old photo that has been marred by the hands of time? Using FARE, you wont spend hours retouching the photo in your photo-editing software --its all done AUTOMATICALLY! No example picture could ever explain how well it works. Go to a store and try it yourself. You WILL be blown away. All of these features are tied together with a USB 2.0 interface. Gone are the days where you listen to your scanner scan, stop, send, scan, stop, send. With the increased bandwidth of this new technology scanning is quick and easy. Ill say it to you this time: You cant go wrong with a Canon!

Good stuff at reasonable price.

Being an amatuer photographer, I wanted a scanner that could scan slides and negatives. The 5000F is a flatbed scanner so it can also scan documents which makes a very versitile and useful scanner. Usually flatbed scanners do NOT make good film and slide scanners; the 5000F is an exception. Its actually based on a rather decent CCD technology rather than the cheaper CIS chip (most flatbeds), which is the reason for the very good film/slide scanning performance. It has a special back-lit slot in the cover for slides and negatives. You can scan up to 3 negs or 2 slides at once. It also has an IR dust and scratch removal sensor that works fairly well (but not on scratches). The quality is very very good but the scans are quite slow, even with a USB-2 connection. You must remove a white backing board, insert the negs or slides in provided carriers, and position the carriers in the scanner. The graphics software, Archsoft PhotoStudio, is quite adequate but not nearly on the same level as Adobe Photoshop. Theres MUCH additional software for creating photo albums, photo databases, OCR, etc.. Installation is very easy. It took me 20 minutes to install and start scanning after a bad day at work! The quality of the scans is excellent, the scanning software is very easy to use, the software package is quite comprehensive, scanning negs and slides requires some fumbling, and the scans are slow (but Ive seen slower). The quality of the slide/negative scans is the MOST important feature to me and the 5000F delivers. **For the money**, I am VERY happy with the package overall.

Not happy with the drivers for this scanner. I bought this scanner in March 2003, and the CD-ROM that came with it included non-current drivers that were not Windows XP certified. The manual told me to install these uncertified drivers over the strongly-worded warning from the operating system not to do so. Within minutes of installing the drivers on my new (<1 month old) computer, the operating system experienced three crashes. I removed the drivers, downloaded the new but still uncertified version of the drivers from Canons website, installed the new version, and used Norton Utilities to repair the damage from the first installation. Even after all this, the drivers are still flaky. From time to time the driver will return a general error saying that it could not communicate with the scanner. To correct this, I have to unplug the scanner and plug it back in (because there is no on/off or reset switch). When this problem is not manifesting itself, scanning pictures/prints works fine. Good color and brightness accuracy. The multiple-image scan feature, which allows you to place several pictures on the bed at once and scan them all simultaneously into separate files, is very useful. Scan times for prints is very fast: about 15 seconds total for three prints laid out on the bed. My only wish is that the scan driver should automatically cure mildly skewed pictures because it is extremely hard to place multiple photos on the bed with zero degree accuracy. Unfortunately, it doesnt do this. Scanning photographic negatives is totally different. Scan time is extremely long: about 10 minutes per three negatives at 600 dpi resolution. Also, the software is very unpredictable as to how it determines where one negative ends and the other begins. Often enough to be annoying, the scanner incorrectly sizes the negatives, requiring extensive manual intervention to override it. I have sometimes been forced to do a lot of manual jiggering with the negatives, including using opaque masks over some negatives to make it easier for the software to automatically detect where they begin and end. This feature is so twitchy that I sometimes just press the preview button twice and get differently-sized images. Image quality of scanned negatives is variable: sometimes it is very good indeed. Other times it tends to produce an overexposed image with colors bled out, requiring more manual intervention. Scans from negatives also tend to emphasize problems with the source material that may not have been obvious in the prints made from the same negatives. E.g., In pictures with a fairly flat-field of color in the background (such as lots of sky/water), there is a noticeable tunnel-vision effect which appears to have been caused by the point and shoot 35mm camera which took the photos. This was barely noticeable in the professionally-made prints, but quite apparent in the scan, requiring still more manual intervention to correct. In short, this scanner certainly does a lot of things, some of them very well. But it nowhere near as stable in operation as I would have expected, and it is by no means fast or reliable enough to easily use it for anything like a large volume of slides or negatives.

I have purchased two of these scanners because I was hoping that the first one was defective. It was, and I think the second one was too! The closest I can come to describing the problem is to say that there was condensation under the flatbed glass. It dried and left a residue that shows up on every scan. The first time I thought this was a fluke (although I had read a review that said it happened to them.) so I returned it and ordered another. The same thing happened with this one. When I called Canon to ask about the problem they played dumb and said they hadnt heard of this problem. Well it happend twice to me and at least once to another review so it does exist. The biggest problem I am going to have now is finding another scanner that has the multi-scan feature. It was very cool to pop four pictures on the flatbed, scan them, and have them come out as four different JPEGS. What to do?

I have been extremely disappointed by this scanner. I bought it new a few months ago, but found that little spots appear on scanned photos for 600dpi and higher. Ive cleaned the scan bed and photos. The problem appears to be on the other side of the glass. To get half-way decent scans, you have to hunt for the area of the scan bed with the fewest marks. Cannon sent me a replacement (referb.) which has the same problem but to a lesser degree. A third scanner is supposedly on its way. The whole experience has been less than positive and makes me question Cannons quality control process. Its highly unlikely Ill be purchasing another Canon scanner in the future.