Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner (1306B002) Reviews
Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner (1306B002)
- High resolution, high speed scanning with USB 2.0 Hi speed interface
- Built-in film adapter for scanning 35mm and slides
- 7 easy buttons to quickly copy,scan,e-mail or create multi-page PDF files
- Spectacular scans: Produce scans with spectacular resolution of up to 4800 x 9600 color dpi.
- Rich, vivid color: 48-bit color depth yields over 281 trillion possible colors.
Great Scanning Performance for Photos and Film Great Scanning Performance for Photos and Film.
Ready to produce high-resolution scans of photos, documents, even 35mm film and slides? With the CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner it’s easy. Seven buttons automate the entire scanning process, so it's simple to scan, copy and create e-mails and multi-page PDFs. This smart scanner delivers a spectacular color dpi resolution of 4800 x 9600 (max.) and built-in retouching technology can further
List Price: $ 99.99
Price:
Canon CanoScan 4200F Flatbed Scanner
- 3,200 x 6,400 dpi maximum optical resolution, 9,600 dpi interpolated
- Rich 48-bit color with 16-bit grayscale
- Scans slides or negatives plus photos and documents
- 4 easy buttons to scan, copy, email, or create PDF files
- USB 2.0 interface, cable included; Windows compatible
Canon CANOSCAN 4200F 3200X6400 DPI FLATBED SCANNER
List Price: $ 99.99
Price:
AC Adapter Canon Canoscan D2400 4400F D125OU2F Scanner
 | US $12.99 End Date: Monday May-21-2012 2:10:54 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $12.99 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
 | US $18.89 End Date: Monday May-21-2012 2:11:38 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $18.89 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
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Excellent Bang for the Buck,
My best friend bought me this scanner for Christmas (at my request). I picked this particular model because of the low price, high resolution, and it being a flatbed scanner that can also handle negatives.
I’ve been using it for several days now and I have to say, I LOVE this scanner! It has to be the quietest scanner I’ve ever seen. I was on the phone with my mom while scanning and she never heard it. It is also fast. At the highest resolution, previewing for negative scanning takes maybe 20 seconds. The actual scan takes less than two minutes. The quality of the scans is awesome, regardless of whether you are doing flatbed scanning, color negatives, or black and white negatives (true black & white at that).
Software wise, the TWAIN driver is very very nice with tons of options. It works perfectly on my XP Pro system with a fairly low end graphics card. The bundled PhotoStudio sucks, however, and I don’t use it. I find Irfanview (available free on-line) works quite nicely for most of my needs, including acting as a facilitator for batch scanning to file. I have not tried the included OmniPage, however I have used an earlier version so I expect it will work quite nicely.
The other review here seems to dismiss this scanner as being more cheaply made. Personally, it seems nicely made to me. If you are abusive towards your equipment, then yeah, spend twice as much for something all metal. I, however, treat my equipment well. The plastic negative holder works just fine for me, and is very easy to use. I don’t see anything wrong with the plastic hinge either. It works smoothly and seems well designed. Another nice thing about this scanner is that it doesn’t not weigh much at all! I like this since I have a glass desk which can’t hold a ton of weight. The design is nice too. It looks nice and sleek against my blue glass.
All in all, I would highly recommend this scanner for anyone looking for a good, fast all purpose scanner for under $100. Well worth the money (and the free super saving shipping is a nice bonus). Best Christmas present I got.
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|CanoScan 4400F vs. 8600F,
Its difficult to find comparison specs between some of the new CanoScans. After looking at both the 4400F and 8600F, besides the 8600F’s ability to scan medium-format negatives and being bundled with a lite version of Photoshop, the 8600 is also simply a more heavy duty machine.
A significant difference is the lid. The 8600 has metal hinges and adjusts vertically on metal supports. It will also stay open through 90 deg of motion. The 4400 has a plastic hinge. To accomodate books or thick materials, it has a “break-away” articulating hinge– when you place something of thickness like a book on the flatbed the lid hinge snaps open to accomodate the item. The 4400 hinge will not stay open on its own.
Both lids are rather heavy and solid (the 8600′s more so) which is nice if you scan books or things that need to lie flat. But since the 4400′s hinge is all plastic and has a small piece of plastic that locks the articulating or adjusting part of the hinge, it does not really seem to lend itself to lots of book scans. It seems like this latch or lock will eventually break; as is, it sounds like its breaking each time it snaps open to accomodate a book. (Since I make a lot of book scans I decided that the 8600 was better for this, because of its lid’s adjustment and hinge construction and because of its heavy lid, despite the extra money. If I was typically scanning from photocopies or thin origins, the 4400 would have been fine.) A last thing about the lid construction: the 8600 also has a heavy-duty cable to power the light in the lid, while the 4400 provides power to the lid by a thin tape cable that is visible in the hinge and seems somewhat vulnerable to heavy use.
Otherwise these scanners seem to have the same technology, with the except of FARE (film automatic retouching and enhancement) scratch and dust reduction filter on the 8600. The CanoScan Toolbox software works well. Both have programmable buttons which allow for semi-automated scanning. The multiple-page PDF scanning is great. (This was one of the main reasons that I bought one of these scanners.)
As to speed, although the scans are fast when they get going, it takes some time for the scan to actually get going. (How this compares to other scanners I can’t say.)
A last feature is that the 8600 has an on/off switch, which the 4400 does not.
All in all, although the 8600 is billed as a scanner for photography professionals, it has some features that make it attractive to anyone who does a lot of scanning.
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|Great quality for the money,
I bought this scanner to replace my Canon Lide 35. I wasn’t happy with that one as the quality of the scans seemed only adequate, but it was the only scanner I could find at the time that was the right physical size to fit on the sliding shelf of my computer cabinet. I had to compromise and give up an excellent quality scanner to get one that fit.
Although it only just arrived, I am already thrilled with the Canon 4400F. Not only is it smaller (narrower) than some of the other brands and fits on my shelf, I am extremely pleased with the quality of the scans at several different resolutions, color modes, and sources and with the speed that the scanner accomplishes each task. (The scans of negatives do take a little longer to complete.) I have already successfully scanned black and white documents, color prints, color photos, pages and images from books, and just had my first experience scanning negatives. I was shocked with the excellent quality and color of the scanned negatives and will now plan on getting them all scanned and saved on my computer in the coming weeks. I bought this primarily to scan sections of documents, artwork, and photos, and the negative scanner is an unexpected and very welcome bonus. I likely will not use the buttons on the front, preferring to use the advanced mode on the ScanGear software to have a little more control over the final product.
I did have some problems getting the scanner to work properly at first. After a few scans the ScanGear software and my photoshop CS software would both apparently crash requiring control-alt-delete to force quit the program. I went to the canon website and downloaded their updated driver and installed that and the problem only got worse. I then uninstalled the new driver and downloaded it again, installed it again and rebooted my PC again, and despite my best efforts to get the software to crash, it is working like a dream.
I am thrilled with this product because it works so well and am probably even more thrilled with it because it was relatively inexpensive. Definitely one of my better purchases.
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|Best scanner for under $500,
I simply love the Canon CanoScan 4200F flat scanner for prints and films. It’s fast (both in scanning and transfering to the PC), quiet, and has superb scan quality, esp. on 35mm negatives. (I haven’t tried scanning 35mm slide films.)
Setting the 4200F up is pretty much a breeze, assuming you have Windows XP. (Windows 98 users will need to follow the instructions very carefully.) You first install the software — the scanner driver and the scan toolbar (called “toolbox”) are the only programs necessary for using the scanner; the other applications (photo editing, OCR and Adobe Acrobat) are optional. After restarting your machine (so the scanner driver loads and runs as a service), just connect the USB 2.0 hi-speed cable, and you are set to go.
Using the scanner is also quite simple. You can scan in three ways: directly from your photo organizing or editing program (assuming it supports the universal TWAIN interface, which most imaging programs worth their pennies do); using the Canon Scan Toolbox; or pressing one of the four buttons on the scanner itself, which calls up the toolbox and automatically initiates a scan.
The four buttons are:
- Copy. Your PC must be connected to a powered-on printer for this to work. When you press copy, the Canon scans and sends the file directly to your printer.
- Scan. This is the button for scanning. When you press it, the Canon scans and sends the scanned image to your designated photo editing program, which you specify once via the toolbox. (This button corresponds to the “Scan 1″ icon on the toolbox.)
- PDF. This turns the scanned image into a PDF file.
- E-mail. This button scans and then calls up Outlook Express or Outlook with the image embedded as a JPEG attachment.
The toolbox (toolbar) has more options for scanning. All are pretty straightforward. Each option can be configured in detail, or you can specify that all the settings be done in the driver itself. (The toolbox is simply an interface to the driver.) If you configure things in the driver, you’ll even be able to adjust how the scanned image should look, in terms of color, contrast, sharpness, etc., etc. The options are endless, but in the beginning, using the toolbox makes scanning a breeze and less intimidating.
One thing cool about the Canon is how it makes it easy to understand what resolution you should scan in. First, the 4200F is capable of 3200×6400 dpi (dots per inch). The 3200 dpi is its true optical resolution; that’s how much fine details it can detect. The second number, 6400 dpi, refers to its “stepping” levels, which basically means the sensor can sample each inch 6400 times, but only detects up to 3200 dots. When you scan, the Canon asks you what *output* resolution and size you want, and then calculates the necessary input resolution for you. Say you are scanning a 4×6″ photo but want to be able to print it 4 times as large (or twice the width and length, i.e., 8×12″) and print at 300 dpi. The Canon will then automatically set the correct scan resolution of 600 dpi — which is twice as much as printing 4×6 at 300 dpi. So you’ll get a 2400×3600 file in pixels, which can then be printed at 8×12″ at 300 dpi (2400/8=3600/12=300dpi). This concept of specifying output resolution rather than worrying about input resolution works esp. well for scanning negatives. Say you are scanning a 35mm negative. It’d be a pain to figure out which scanning resolution is best. But if you know you’d eventually want to print a 4×6″ photo in 200 dpi, just tell the driver so, and the driver will do all the work for you and scan properly.
Another feature I love is multi-scan, which lets you scan in several pictures at once and the driver automatically separates them. Here’s how I use my 4200F:
I set up the scan button so it’s linked to Adobe Photoshop Elements 3′s organizer. (You can link the button to any TWAIN-compatible program.) When I press the button, the scanner automatically scans multiple pictures I place on the glass, and separates them (and straightens them if necessary) into individual pictures. I have a checkbox called “confirmation of EXIF” checked, which allows me an opportunity to scan in more pictures before sending them all at once to Photoshop Elements 3. This really saves me a lot of time, without having to switch between the scanner driver and Photoshop Elements after each scan. Finally, when I’m done with scanning all the photos, I click the Forward button, and the driver automatically launches Adobe Photoshop Elements (if it’s not already open) or switches to it, and sends over the newly scanned pictures. This process works equally well for photo prints and negatives. It sounds longer than it actually is. As with any scanning, it’s replacing the photos on the glass or in the negative holder that is the most…
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|Fantastic scans, especially for the $$,
I love the image quality on the scans. Scans of negatives are excellent (although I can’t compare to a true film scanner). Scans of photos are great, too. Compared to the Epson 4180 I returned, image quality of negatives is MUCH better on the Canon.
The software was easy to install on my Windows XP computer.
However, I’ve had some annoyances with this scanner. I still give it 5 stars because image quality is my priority, and I don’t do a high volume of scanning.
* I had to return 2 scanners because of particles under the glass. If you look closely, you can see some “ferning” patterns and white dots near the top of the glass where the light rests (in the EXACT same place on both scanners!). Canon says they apply an anti-glare coating to the underside of the glass which may look foggy or hazy. I’m not sure what happened with my first 2 scanners, but the 3rd has no artifacts under the glass.
* The cover for the film scanning light is a flimsy paper thing. As well, you cannot scan many negatives at once. If you scan a good quantity of film, this would be bad. For me, it’s not much of an issue.
* No driver for Macs.
* So-so photo-editing software. Again not an issue for me since I already have great software.
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|Made excellent scans of 35 mm film,
I had been thinking of getting a dedicated 35 mm film scanner for several years but was put off by the price and that fact that those types of scanners do only one thing – scan film. So my expectations were exceeded when I hooked up my new CanoScan 4200 last night and scanned a slew of old negatives and found most of the results to be excellent. I don’t have a professional film scanner available to compare to, but I believe that the quality of these scans to be more than adequate for the kinds of photos that most regular people take. ( I would call myself a “serious amateur.”) I am certain that the prints I get from these scans will be far better than the original, aging prints which had previously been all I had to look at, so in this alone the CanoScan will have fulfilled its mission as far as I’m concerned. I had tried to scan film with my previous flatbed scanner (which was not designed to accept film) with poor results, so I had pretty low expectations for this item at such a low price, but I was very pleasantly surprised. My only gripe is that when previewing the scan, the interface seems to want to automatically adjust the level of brightness of the preview, causing it sometimes to be completely black or completely white, and I can’t figure out a way to turn this off. But I don’t think this auto level feature affects the final scan when you have the automatic settings turned off. I found the metal (?) film holder to be well-designed and reasonably easy to use, but don’t expect fast, effortless scans – you have to handle and load the film carefully, and a hi-res scan can take a couple of minutes. The maximum resolution of 3200 dpi generates large, clear jpg files for a typical 35 mm photo, on the order of about 4000 x 3000 pixels, which is plenty good for a 8 x 10 print. This is my fourth scanner in ten years and it is by far the best, so if your scanner is a few years old, quit wasting your time and get this scanner!
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