Canon CanoScan 9950F Flatbed Scanner

I bought this mostly to scan a large collection of color slides for use in Powerpoint presentations; it replaced a HP ScanJet 3500 (about which I had no complaints at all, but needed the slide scanning capabilities). I'm running it off an iMac G5 with Mac OS 10.4, scanning through Photoshop CS2, using the USB 2.0 connection (Firewire 400 also possible).You get a lot in a compact package: scanner, with lid with built-in transparency light, power and USB cables (no Firewire cable, though), 4 transparency templates (35mm strip, 35mm slide, 120 format film guide and 4x5 transparency guide, all of sturdy plastic rather than the cardboard I've seen with other scanners), minimal printed documentation, software CD and Photoshop Elements CD. And it shipped very quickly direct from Amazon.com.The CanoScan 9950F works like a dream--it was out of the box, software installed, scanning immediately. Scanning slides took a little longer for me to figure out, partly because the very brief documentation follows procedures for 35mm film strips rather than slides as its main example. But the results are great--very high resolution (1200 dpi, can go up to 4800), clear, crisp, bright scans (the only downside is that it shows how dusty some of my slides are, but the software even has some fixes for that). And the scans are pretty quick--average of about 30 seconds per slide at 1200 dpi. Scanning paper documents is a snap, and you can do all the usual things like scan to a printer like a copy machine or to a PDF file. The USB 2.0 connection gives fast transfer rates and, unlike some of my other USB devices, putting the computer to sleep is no problem for this scanner--OS 10.4 will recognize it right after awakening. Plus, it looks very cool; scanner design was the least of my concerns here, but it's hard not to admire the sleek black and dark gray case, and it seems pretty sturdy as well.A few notes for the new buyer.... The Getting Started booklet is extremely minimal and skips some important things (the power button on the front of the scanner, for example!). It's mildly annoying that the instructions take you through procedures using the proprietary software ArcSoft PhotoStudio bundled with the scanner software, rather than Photoshop, which anyone who's serious about images will be using. (The scanner does ship with Photoshop Elements on a separate CD-Rom). It's even more annoying the way the software is installed as a group (it doesn't seem to be possible to skip installation of one piece and then go back and install it). None of the print documentation seems to explain the functions of the blue LED on the front of the scanner (OK, continuous means "on", slow flashing "standby" but what about the different speeds of flashing while scanning is going on?), nor are you told when it's okay to turn the machine off altogether (apparently any time when it's not actually scanning). Finally, there is some wiggle-room in the slide templates--I know this will be helpful to accommodate various kinds of slides, but it means that you'll want to make sure the slides are straight in the template before scanning: just slapping them on may result in having to rotate the images a bit later (I've used higher-end scanners with spring-loaded slide templates that do away with this problem).There are certainly much higher-end scanners out there for slides (and other film media), but when you think of the price of the CanoScan 9950F, it's a great bargain. I'm really happy with this so far; once I've scanned all my slides I've got plenty of other jobs to keep it busy!

Given the excellent quality of most Canon products I will give them the benefit of the doubt and not comment on the hardware capabilities of this product. Suffice it to say that their software will preclude your being able to take full advantage of whatever it might be that this device is capable of. I don't know if the people who wrote the code for this scanner's TWAIN driver were actually trying to create the world's worst piece of software or if they just got lucky, but it is truly pathetic.Scanning a batch of slides? There are lots of controls for making adjustments to tone, brightness, contrast etc. But, do you think there is a way to make different adjustments to individual frames? Think again -- any adjustment you make will be applied globally. If there is some way around this, nobody at Canon Tech support was able to tell me how.A touted feature of this scanner is that it can scan at 16/48 bits and up to a hardware resolution of 4800 dpi. Try to scan at 4800 dpi in 48 bit color mode and it will tell you that this is "unsupported". Nice surprise. If I had known that I would not have bothered buying this.And speed -- did I tell you about that? Scanning an individual 35mm slide at maximum resolution, with the dust/scratch removal filter turned on will take perhaps 15 minutes (Mac OSX connected with Firewire).Finally a word about tech support. Don't even bother with the email tech support. All you will get back is a bunch of babble about how they value you as a customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you, and then suggest you telephone a "technician".No, I am not a happy camper with this piece of equipment.

I just bought my scanner 3 years ago and it has slowed down substantially. It worked great the 1st year. It just doesn't have longevity. I would have bought a cheaper one if I knew I would have to buy a new one every 3 years.

If you buy this scanner be sure to get it from somewhere like Amazon.com that will help you return it in case you find quality issues.The first scanner I received had a spec stuck to the back of the glass that appeared in all of my scans. Canon indicated that the unit needed to be serviced and they'd be happy to send me a refurbished one - no way. I returned it to Amazon and just received another, which has 2 specs, although in less conspicuous places. However after about a dozen scans I noticed more dust specs on the underside of the glass and the scan head has a lot of dust on it. It's a challenge enough keeping the dust off of the TOP of the glass, impossible to deal with the bottom. Maybe as the scanner has expanded production, manufacturing facility quality has degraded. So I'll be returning this one as well.The scanner does an excellent job scanning negatives, though it takes about 10 minutes for each 35mm frame at the highest resolution. If you do not plan to scan negatives and slides then consider other flatbed scanners that can scan photos just as well for less money.I have some gripes with the software ("FARE")- the image processing settings (ie backlight correction) are applied to all images being scanned vs. individual frames so the processing often ends up worsening the image characteristics - that's quite a flaw - hopefully it'll rectified by a future software update. I found it better to simply turn off all image processing when scanning multiple negatives and instead use Photoshop Elements or similar software on each - something you'll need to do anyway if you want to restore old images.