Scanner Reviews

Let me start by telling you that I first has a PIE 1800U scanner, when it stopped working after 2,5 years I contacted Primefilm *the same brand as the Smartscan 2700.

They simply answered me that the CCD stopped working and that happens....

I thought I would have a good deal by buying the Amazon 2700 because I trusted the scanner for what it did.

But here it comes, the same prblem as the 1800U it stopped working, CCD failed. Warranty??? Where??? Till now I am waiting for a response. They only answer I had is the following:

It just depends on how much you use it and if its left turned On by accident. This is the cause of a "lamp or CCD failure". Since you have voided your warranty , your looking at spending between $85 - $100 just on the repairs, parts, and s&h itself so its really up to you if you want it repaired or not.

How much I use it??? Well according to the company up to 3 hours can give problems...

And than the fact if you keep on scanning it seems that it doesn't want to adjust anymore, I mean in better words you have to adjust every picture over and over and keep on adjusting... takes hours to scan a film...

I think if you think about a low price scanner and your not a profesional by the Epson 3170, with the unsharp mask in Paintshop or Photoshop you can adjust enough sharpnes. Scan up to 5 negatives at once and much more option and you also have a good flatbed scanner for the same price.

Look at this page (NOT MY PAGE) http://www.billkee.com/Epson3170/
for an idea about the quality of the Epson

Going for a cheap scanner for nothing???
http://www.ritzcamera.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&productId=622063&topCategory=1004&cat1=5741781
Only 69 dollars and you get a scanner with reasonable quality for small pictures, slides, negatives and more.

If you go for 35mm scanning and want something realy good?
Go for the Minolta Dual Scan III http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/DSEIII/DSEIIIA.HTM , Nikon Coolscan http://hardwarecentral.dealtime.com/xPR-Nikon_Coolscan_IV_ED~RD-78434569860 or Polaroid Sprintscan 35 http://www.cix.co.uk/~tsphoto/tech/filmscan/pol35plus/pol35plu.htm
All 3 are on the market around 300 dollars, the Nikon is just a little bit more the lowest price I saw is $389.99 Try to look for the previous model.

More ideas at http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN1.HTM

Questions? I like to help I scan a lot of pictures and negatives daily. redsfotografie@yahoo.co.uk

Amazon boxes the Smartdisk Smartscan2700 (SS2700) 35mm film scanner and sells it under its own label. And Smartdisk's SS2700 is a rebranded (OEM) version of Pacific Imaging's (PIE) Primefilm 2700. So for $200 USD, Amazon delivers you a Smartdisk SS2700 (versus paying $220 if you direct-order from Smartdisk...go figure!) As far as I can tell, the Amazon product includes everything shown/described from Smartdisk's webpage -- scanner, cable, Mac/PC driver CD, and Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 (PC and Mac.)

Cosmetically, the SS2700 looks similar to PIE's older Primefilm 1800u. Mechanically, the film-tray operates *exactly* like the 1800u. This means the following:

1) Mounted 35mm slides are easy to pop-in and pop-out of the scanner-tray, no risk of scratching precious slides.

2) 35mm film strips (negatives, or unmounted slides) require some careful placement to avoid scratching the picture-area (and to avoid getting your fingerprints on the film!)

3) For a budget/entry-level scanner the manual load/unload is fine. But people who need to scan lots of film, the manual tray is a *bottleneck.* Prepare to spend a lot of time manually moving *each* frame (of a strip) over the scanner-window.

...

Now about the software/driver operation:

Since I have a PC, I can only comment on the SS2700's behavior under Windows 98se (yes ancient, I know.) The SS2700 driver is an old version of the Cyberview 2.50d TWAIN driver. When preparing to perform the scans, Cyberview's preview-window is awfully small, the adjustment/optimization options are hard to use, and the driver has *NO* film presets. All in all, the driver made the SS2700 very difficult to use, and I was ready to return the unit.

But *thankfully*, the SS2700 seems to be fully compatible with PIE's Primefilm2700. Why is this good? From www.scanace.com, I downloaded PIE's Cyberview-X Windows driver (for the Primefilm/2700), ran the update, and the driver successfully upgraded me from Smartscan's ugly Cyberview to PIE's improved Cyberview-X. (The upgrade procedure is a bit tricky. I first installed the SS2700's own Cyberview driver. After Windows recognized the SS2700 USB scanner, I then installed the Primefilm Cyberview-X update. After rebooting, the Cyberview-X TWAIN driver is available to all TWAIN-compliant scanner programs, including Photoshop Elements 2, Vuescan, Paint Shop Pro, etc. If you try to remove the SS2700 Cyberdriver before installing Cyberview-X, the upgrade will fail!)

Cyberview-X is the saving grace for this scanner, because not only is it more user friendly (bigger preview pane, more adjustments with better ability to save/load your custom scan profile), it comes with a bunch of film-profiles. With the 'film-profiles', you pick the exact film-type from a list (Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, etc.), then the scan-driver will autoset the color-profile to match the film's characteristics. In terms of color/brightness levels, the preloaded-profiles will get you in the right 'ballpark.' You'll probably still need to do some fine-tweaking for unusually contrasty, dark, or bright pictures. Believe me, getting the same color-matching with the old Smartscan Cyberview was nearly IMPOSSIBLE!

As expected for a low-end scanner, the unit lacks hardware dust removal. Dust specs and lint are a major annoyance for 35mm film scans, because the dust specs appear 'magnified' over the picture area. It is possible to apply software dust-removal, but that product must be bought separately -- and it is not as effective as a hardware-based solution.

The SS2700 includes Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. Unfortunately, I have little experience with digital photography, and I'm not qualified to comment on this software. As I said before, I successfully used the PIE's Cyberview-X TWAIN driver to acquire scans inside Photoshop Elements.

As for the scans themselves, 35mm slides have a very wide dynamic range. The SS2700 doesn't seem capable of capturing the entire range of a high-contrast negative. 35mm negatives fare a bit better, but the scanner's limited sample-depth (36-bit) causes a lot of 'posterization.' This means a continuous gradient, say a picture of the sky horizon which gradually transitions from light blue to dark blue, contains a lot of breaks and abrupt (visible) color changes. And finally, the SS2700's sensor seems to be very noisy, much noisier than my Epson Perfection 3170 (48-bit) flatbed.

Having attempted 35mm scans (negatives and slides) on both the Epson 3170 and the SS2700, and in my opinion, I think the SS2700 beats the 3170. The SS2700's 2700dpi scans are consistently *sharper* than the 3170's 3200dpi scans. (I suspect the flatbed's resolving-power is greatly limited by the sensor-arrangement: a dual staggered 1600dpi sensor.) In terms of detail-level, the 3170's 35mm film scans were on par with the 1800dpi Primefilm1800u, which isn't saying a lot. However, the SS2700's scans contain more picture noise. I'm not sure whether that's due to the SS2700's better sharpness (and consequently, greater sensitivity to film grain), or if it's electronics-related -- the Epson 3170 flatbed is rated at 48-bit color and the SS2700 is rated at 36-bit. The 3170's noise-level (for film or prints) is visibly lower than the SS2700. Overall, in comparison against the Epson 3170 flatbed, the SS2700's extra-detail outweighs its greater noise.

The next step up is the Minolta Dual Scan III (2800dpi, USB2, 48bit), which is widely regarded as the best $300 film-scanner. The DSIII gives you better color-depth, faster scans, and an (optional) APS-film holder.

In conclusion, the Amazon Imaging SS2700 (which is really a rebranded PIE Primefilm2700) is an good value at $200 USD. It won't win any awards for picture-quality, but it makes usable scans. In terms of detail/resolution, the SS2700 is sharper than any *flatbed* scanner costing up to $400 USD. In terms of noise-level, a good 48-bit flatbed scanner (like the Epson 3170) is superior.

Pros:
Apparently, SS2700 is a rebranded Primefilm2700
*REAL* 2700dpi 35mm film scans for $200
(...don't be fooled by 3200dpi flatbed scanners doing 35mm scans!)
bundled Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 OEM, a $50 retail value
Compatibility with Pacific Image's Cyberview-X driver and Vuescan

Cons:
no 'multisample' mode (for reducing picture noise)
high picture noise/grain (limitation of 36-bit sample depth?)
manual/mechanical film loading tray (single frame)
no hardware dust-removal, no autofocus
USB1.1 (slower than USB2.0)
For a litte more money ($275 USD), Minolta DSIII is better
35mm film only, no APS/110/126 film adapter

I had high hopes for this little scanner. It is certainly not bad, but it has a number of annoying problems. The learning curve can be a bit steep (at least an hour before you're comfortable scanning basic text, saving it to a file and preparing it for download). As for downloading it to your PC for editing, storage or printing, that requires either a IrDA port(most laptops have one) or on most desktops, an add-on serial device or USB device. My impression is that it will wind up in the drawer sometime soon, relegated to that dark corner that 'early adopters' often fill to the brim.

This pen will take you a looong time to get used to. It was a good hour before I could scan anything intelligible onto the screen. Also, even once you do get the hang of it, there will be lots of capilization errors. Still, this tool will prove invaluable once you learn how to use it.

my old scanner burnt out 18months ago or so.... it was very cheap .. and so I thought this time I'll buy better quality.. not so.. the "film adapter unit" consists of a light in the lid of course and, a cardboard like lid liner two pieces of plastic, (with two subpieces)and two pieces of black construction paper ( reminds me of my youth and being the first one to open the new breakfast cereal to get the punchout toys)Canon decided that one piece of paper would suffice for both 35mm slides and 120 ..so made the opening for the larger and tells us to cut our own piece of paper to fill the the 35mm opening .. the lid liner which must be added for prints attaches through some punch holes that I see becoming unusuable in about 10 removals give or take..ALL THIS at a premium price. and it's SLOW.. as slow as my old cheap model the scan is fairly quick the "light adjustment" time is interminable ! save your money !

Using this scanner with a new 533 G4 Powermac running 9.1. Worked perfectly right out of the box, with beautiful scans and software that worked as advertised, including the OCR. And the slide/transparency adapter actually works fairly well. Scans are quite quick due to the lossless compression scheme used by Canon to speed up data throughput with the USB connection. A bit pricey but I think the quality and convenience of this scanner make it a good value.

What's GOOD: Canon MultiPASS has the perfect design, is an awesome space saver, paper has never jammed, faxing is reliable, and is basically easy to use. What's BAD: Printing is very slow, copying is very slow, I spent about 3 hours on the phone with Canon Tech Support when first installed to work out some software bugs, now about six months later, for some reason when I click the print button it does not want to print. Sometimes I have to click the print button to print a basic MS Word document a dozen times before it decides to print.

This Printer,Fax,copier, and scanner is easy to use and fast it prints like a profesional and does not take up much room!!!

If you are using OS9 you will encounter the following problem after installing the included Adobe Type Manager software: "System error type 119." Canon and Adobe are aware of this and the fix is as easy as going to adobe and downloading "Adobe Tpye Manager 4.5.2 Macintosh version" (NOT the deluxe version). At some time in the near future Canon will update the included software, but until then there is no clue about how to solve this problem in the box.

I used a MultiPass C635 for a few years with my iMac Rev. A, and other than a few hiccups in the initial driver release, which were promptly fixed in Canon's next release, the unit was very good to me for scanning, printing, and faxing. Also comes bundled with PhotoDeluxe, a very good photo editor.

I designed and developed the testing and manufacturing software for this scanner on a contract with HP. The CapShare-910 code named "Zorro" is quite an amazing little device. You capture pages using a free-form, Z shaped motion across the page, (Hence the code name "Zorro").

Since it uses optical microscopes (called Pathfinders) to literally navigate on the page's surface, you don't have to worry about wheels skipping and ruining your scan image. It has the capability to capture in regular black and white like a copier, or gray scale which works well for magazine articles containing images. It also has a "Flip Chart" mode which allows you to capture an entire flip chart sized document or full sized newspaper page, store it, share it and print it out on a standard 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper.

You can preview the images in the LCD display and delete the ones you don't want as well as skew and crop images and group multiple images together as a multipage Tiff or PDF file. It has an infrared transmitter which allows you to "Squirt" the images directly into IR capable HP laserjet printers, laptop computers and hand-held devices. You can also transmit the images into your desired device via the supplied serial cable.

The only drawback to the CapShare-910 is it's high price tag. Maybe the price will come down if it catches on. It's a great little B&W/Grayscale scanner for use on the road, at the library or anywhere else you need to capture documents without tearing the page out of the book.

I have to admit, I was a bit sceptical when I first heard about the Capshare. Why would I want to pay all that money for a glorified half-page-width B&W hand scanner? After all, I bought one of those a decade ago (Logitech Scanman, for the curious geeks out there) for far less than the street price of the Capshare.

But my scepticism faded fast as I started to play with a friend's new Capshare. What an amazingly useful electronic tool! The Capshare really works, and really works smoothly. Pages are sewn together seamlessly, and displayed on the LCD panel on the back; no fuss, no guesswork. And ah, the applications! When I'm at the library, no longer any need to remember a copy card or a pocket full of change and find a copy machine (for fair-use copying of course!) Better still, when I get back to the office, I can file the copies on disk, and thus accessible from anywhere, rather than in my filing cabinet. When I get a travel receipt, I no longer carry it for a week before losing it; I scan it, and turn in the scan for reembursement. When I receive reviews or other documents that I need to share with collaborators abroad, simply scan, save to .pdf format, and email. And doubtless there will be plenty of additional applications that will come to light as I get used to having my Capshare around.

The downside? The software. While it is not bad, I do wish that the included text recognition software (conversion from graphics format to actual text) was better, but this will doubtless improve in time. And I really wish that the software ran on Linux, but knowing the Linux community, it's only a matter of time until something even better will.

I use the Microtek ScanMaker 4 in a professional setting as a web designer. The photos scan fairly fast so I have few complaints there. It has an optional tray that can be switched out for different mediums whether slideshow film, negatives, etc. Then, the flatbed on top is legal size, which is standard. I have mine plugged via scsi card and get decent speed.

My primary complaint of this scanner is primarily the size. It takes up a large portion of my work desk and its heavy in terms of scanners of similar quality. It stands about 6" high, about 13" wide and 21" deep (approximations).

If you can get past the size of the machine, it's not bad. This model is no longer in production so you'll likely get it used. It's a decent little machine but I reckon it is becoming obsolete now.

It's big yea....but wow! It does it all and in legal size (14")too if needed! Below is the hype from apsom of it's capability and it worked great for me....The ONLY problem I had is it took up some counter space in the home office....but the unit definately paid for that space on the counter in no time through it's quality and versatility....

It is a 36-bit dual-media scanner that lets you scan photos and prints on its upper bed and film and transparencies in its transparency bay (lower bed).

It is also ready for all Windows or Macintosh operating systems you can get the software upgrades/drivers for all platforms at microtekusa.com. An Adaptec PCI SCSI card is included that works on Windows, as well as with the Apple G3/G4-series Macintosh.

the ScanMaker 4 features 600 x 1200 dpi optical resolution. It also incorporates a patented Microtek design called Emulsion Direct Imaging Technology, or E.D.I.T.. E.D.I.T. allows for scanning directly from the surface of the film without an interfering pane of glass that can distort and diffuse the original image. The result is richer, more accurate color and sharper, cleaner images loaded with detail.

The ideal solution for anyone responsible for putting together business presentations or scanning photos or film for brochures, reports or other projects destined for 4-color printing.

featuring a dynamic range of 3.4 and a color palette of 36-bit input and output, the ScanMaker 4 will scan anything from 35mm film, a photograph up o 14" in length, or a batch scan of several images at once -- even at different settings with different scanning filters applied quickly and efficiently.

Benefits you can expect....

High resolution: 600 x 1200 dpi optical resolution with interpolated resolution of 9600 x 9600 provide exceptional image quality and clarity.

Intelligent Scanner Controller Software: Microtek's ScanWizard magnifies the preview image in high resolution, and stores and saves gamma curve settings for future application.

Batch Scanning capability: ScanWizard allows batch scanning of many standard film formats or reflective originals, even at different modes and settings.

Works on PC or Mac. An Adaptec PCI SCSI card is included that works with Windows, as well as with the new Apple G3/G4-series Macintosh.

Includes an 8" x 10" Glass Template holder for scanning a variety of film formats.

i purchased this scanner because of the dpi and the easy to use buttons on the front - however not being a "computer guru" didn't realize that you cannot use it if you have windows 95. the usb connection is not supported by windows 95. I am not sure how it works but wanted to warn others about the usb issue.

I've owned this scanner for about 6 months. The hardware, including the 35 mm slide scanner, have been trouble free. Photo-quality scans are fast, made in a single-pass. Image quality is flawless. The included ScanWiz 5.0 software from Microtek is easy to use, with 2 interfaces: novice and expert. As stated on PC Magazine and ZD Net review sites, installation was problematic - I've never been able to get the (included) Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2.0 to work with my 2-year old Dell running Win 98SE. Nonetheless, in the [price] range, the Scanmaker 4700 is a great value and I would highly recommend it for users willing to work around, or live with, the software installation issues.

Got this Scanner from Officemax about 8 months ago.Worked very well and scanned really fast during the first few months. The scan quality was also good.

But now when I open Scan Manager (in Adobe Photoshop), it gives a message that the "scanner is locked"(which is not the fact) and then the Scanmanager closes down. Then I open it again, it scans the picture.Now if I want to scan another picture, it does the same thing and I have to open the scan manager again. The PaperPort Program that came with it is even worse and closes down anytime.I am rating this product 3 Star cause of the good performance it gave for first few months.But I dont think its that good for long run.
Really cheap and decent for a short time use.

This was my second Visioneer Scanner and I've been very pleased with it. It worked well with 98 OS. Connection was easy and I liked the software that came bundled with it. (I've used Visioneer Paperport since 1998 for sorting and storing images and been very happy with it.)

Wireless installation isn't as bad as some here say, but it IS annoyingly complicated. It strikes me that, if I can enter my entire phone book and the musical score to the Old Rugged Cross into a cell phone using 12 keys, why is there no way to enter the network name and encryption key into this printer via the front panel keypad..?

Win users, forget the poster and go right to Chapter 15 of the user manual. You don't have to 'reconfigure your network,' you just have to create a new user profile (on one pc) to communicate with the printer temporarily during setup. XP makes this hard, not HP. Hint: revert the control panel to 'classic' view and click on 'wireless networks,' near the bottom.

Once we figured this out, installation was straightforward, but still time consuming. From the moment I was confident I knew what I was doing, to producing a printed page took almost 3 hours, and the installation software reduced my available disk space by one GIGAbyte.

Now that it works, we like it. Print quality is good, even on plain paper, the photo print and scanner/copier work as advertised. If its still working a few months from now, I'd probably give it another star. Note to HP: put the setup routine on the front panel, and give us a 'barebones' drivers install option, and you've got a winner.

After reading the other reviews about this machine, I got the impression from some that I would have trouble installing the software, especially if I elected for a full installation; however I wasn't very concerned, being there were conflicting reviews as well. I purchased the machine on clearance at a local Target retailer - for $175.00 - and I have been quite satisfied with it, and I encountered NO TROUBLE WITH INSTALLATION. I think that the customers who did were probably using less than top of the line computer systems, or weren't reading the instructions. The only downside I've noticed is the photo printing, specifically, having to exchange the black ink cartridge for the photo cartridge every time you want to print a good quality photo (using 6 color ink).

I read all of the reviews here after I had ordered this printed..and I was dreading receiving it.

However after installing it, strictly following the instructions I'm VERY pleased. Since the printer is near my hub I went with wired networking setup, but I tried it with wireless with 128 bit WEP enabled and my Linksys WRT54G in mixed mode (although only for about an hour just to see how it worked as I'm considering buying another one for my office). It worked just fine. The software is large, but it does quite a bit and while people complain about it, I don't see it as any better or worse than any other solution that comes free with printers. The interface is great, especially when you do tasks from the printers keypad. For example, I put a picture on the scanner and click the scan button. On the printer's LCD the scan menu comes up giving me options of 1. Selecting the computer I was to scan to, 2. scanning to HP instant share, or 3. scanning to a memory card that's inserted in the printer. I choose select computer and all the computers I have the printer software installed on quickly appear on the list. I select the computer and I get another list. Do I want to sent it to MS Word, the HP photo software, instan share, email, paint, MS Powerpoint, fax or save to file. Of course I get Word and PP 'cause I run Office 2003 and installed the Office 2003 integration patch available from HP.com. For example, you sent it to the HP photo software and it starts scanning, while the computer automatically receives the scanned image. Couldn't be simplier.

Photo quality is excellent, especially when I use the optional second color cartridge which gives you 6 color printing. People complained that it's slow, it's fast to me (in scanning, sending files back and forth to/from the printer and printing itself) but I have a pretty fast PC (Intel 3.06 P4 o/c 3.19GHz, 1GB DDR400 desktop and an HP ZE4430US Athlon 2400-M, 1GB ram notebook). I also haven't gotten any software errors, but again, I followed the directions and disabled my antivirus ware during the install. I run Windows XP Service Pack 2 Beta on my PC and laptop and the HP software automatically configured my XP softfirewall.

Faxing and copying work great too, for an inkjet fax anyway. Copying is fairly fast and you have buttons for both black copies and color copies. I would recommend looking at the HP pages about other features including printing directly from memory cards which is another great feature that worked perfectly for me.

One thing I did though, was instead of installing from the included CD, there was a full update available of the software from HP. It's a 460MB download, but it's the latest version of the software included on the CD. I followed the install instructions than ran THAT downloaded software and the install went flawlessly.

So if this printer has all of what you need, don't be afraid to buy it. There are tons of people who don't bother reading the directions (like trying to enter hex WEP keys into the ASCII window, then complaining there aren't enough spaces to enter the 26 digit key), or bothering to download updates from HP. If you follow HPs directions and go get the updates before installing the software, you will be very pleased with this printer.

All in all, I'm VERY happy with my purchase.