Solid construction. Good Canon optics. FARE dust/scratch removal works very well without serious degradation to image quality. FilmGet software, while somewhat buggy, does produce great images with little or no post-scan adjustments necessary (even with negatives). Trays (included) allow for batch scanning of 6 negative frames or 4 slides. For APS (not important to me, but may be for some), a motorized APS transport is included. Very simple and painless install.

Full resolution scans can take 3-5 minutes (I use USB, SCSI option may be faster). Would like to see some minor bugs fixed in the FilmGet software. While color is mostly accurate, I would like to see color profiles for common film types (like VueScan offers).

Because of my limited photography budget, the CanoScan FS 4000 was the logical choice when building my digital dark room -- but not a decision I made lightly. After reading at least 6 reviews and comparison studies, and corresponding with several FS 4000 users, I took the plunge. I'm VERY picky, bordering on obsessive, so the FS 4000 had a lot to live up to, and it did. Scans from negative film have accurate, vibrant color, great contrast, and few defects (thanks to Canon's FARE dust/scratch removal technology). It's operation is simple and fairly quiet, and allows for batch scanning. Enlargements of 8x12" look fantastic (about 450 dpi at this size), and I'm sure I could go to 11x14" without problem. All in all, a GREAT value considering the nearest competitor costs hundreds more.

Customer Service

The first scanner arrived from from B&H DOA (possibly a defect, possibly damaged in shipping). I called Canon Customer Service at 11:45 p.m. on a Saturday night, and not only were they open, they were

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PrimeFilm 1800u slide/negative scanner

Price; relatively small footprint.

Nothing when you take it for what it is --a decent 4000dpi desktop scanner at a good price. By the time it breaks and stops working, higher res scanners will be on the market at the same price as the current FS4000.

When I don't need big prints via drum scans this 4000dpi unit works fine. I didn't bother installing the software and use Vuescan instead. Therefore I can't comment on the software. I don't care about Fare (hey, that rhymes!) and do my touch-up via PS7. I'm on a Mac G4 with OS X. Twain isn't important to me, I actually prefer a stand alone like Vuescan. I have developed a profile for my pigment inks and my Epson and my coated rag papers and prints are easy to manage. The files I get from the FS4000 from 35mm Provia F are big enough for 11x14 and look fine. Instead of shooting B+W film I just go B+W with the Provia F via PS7. Slides scan well with the FS4000. B+W conventional silver halide film doesn't scan as easy. This is a nice desktop scanner for the price. It might take more time (slow scans) and effort but if you don't care about speed and are not a graphic design or commercial photo business and work with single images like I do, this is a worthwhile purchase. It gives me a file about the size of a Pro CD but my lab charges $20 per scan at that resolution and I can now do it myself. For bigger prints and the necessary big file drum scans I still use my lab.

Resolution, speed, price

none at all

I chose between the Nikon Coolscan IV ED and the FS400US. Luckily, I chose the right one, the FS4000US. It runs perfectly under Windows XP. Paired up with Vuescan, this is the combination to go for. The dynamic range is definately good enough for slides and negatives. I capture the pictures with an EOS-1 + L-Lenses, Leica R8 + R7 and the newest APO-lenses (Leica 70-180, 100 APO-Macro,...) on Fuji Velvia and Provia 100F, scan them with the FS4000US and print them with the Epson Stylus Photo 1280 on B+ (in Europe it''s the 1290). And the FS4000US is in line with the quality of the printer and the camera systems. No need for the Coolscan 4000, although Firewire would be great ! It is better and faster to use the SCSI port rather than the USB. 4000 DPI with full image quality (42 bits) generate pictures of 20-25 megapixels and of 120 MB size. At 4000 dpi, you start to see the grain of Velvia, the best outdoor film alive ! And expanded to B+, it''s still sharp and sharper than any lab print can be ! The best paper is Olmec (ICI) 260 g/m3 photo glossy. And cheap compared to Epson, which is not that good. Also very good is the Canon PR101 paper. Although not available in B+ in shops all over Germany. The scanner is fast, reliable, cheap and accurate. A killer product compared to Nikon ! And you get the APS-adaptor for free.

Customer Service

luckily not needed till now

Color, resolution, price, dust & scratch removal

Sloooow. At 4000dpi and 42 bit, it takes ~5 minutes per scan, if not more. Is there a way to batch feed a big job? It is a shame that it does not come with a FireWire link.

Excellent buy. I was worried if the lower dynamic range rating will be limiting, but so far it has consistently pulled out every thing I can see on a light table. No complaints here. Together with Epson 1280 printer, this is an awesome combination to print good sized prints with extremely high quality. The dust and scratch removal works very well and is a must. It seems to work with slides better than negatives, the latter often have color cast (not consistent, sometimes warm sometimes cold) but easy to correct with Photoshop. Unlike the other commentor mentioned, mine works just fine with Window XP. Maybe I got a later build of the scanner s/w? I am sure Nikon 4000ED''s higher DR is good to have, but for the price, FS4000 can''t be beat.

Customer Service

Not used

Similar Products Used:

none

Price - Good colour rendition Negative and slide holder especially great

Slow - 4 slides at top scan, go have lunch. Cannot dust clean kodachrome slides

Used the Canon 2710 first. Good but WILL NOT WORK WITH WINDOWSXP! I see improved scanning with the 4000 over the 2710. My collection is almost all kodachrome which their dust removal system cannot clean. Nikon''s can. Nikon''s scanner also handled seriously underexposed slides better but ignore the last and this is a great scanner with good colour rendition, excellent software and works well with any current or reseasonably current operating system

Customer Service

Incredible in Canada. On line and phone to US I would save the attitude toward resolving problems with the 2710 left me frustrated.

Similar Products Used:

Canon 2710, worked with friend with a Nikon scanner 4000 dpi

Cheap, but delivers accurate scans. The hardware speed is not great (about 1 minute or so to scan at 2000 dpi), but be aware of any software overhead on top! Used with Vuescan, I get good scans with enough depth to get good brightness & contrast. It''s amazing how much you can pull out of underexposed film too! I''ve just used Colour negs (both 35mm and the APS), I''ll be trying slides in the next month or so. 4000dpi is useful having also. This corrilates to 160 lines/mm which is beyond the resolving capability of most film (esp low contrast), but most film can yield more detail than a 2770dpi scan will reveal.

The software! There are many issues that the software has, that really could be better. Firstly, FilmGet takes 1 minute of farting around doing nothing before it starts doing anything, either prescanning, or a full scan. If you are scanning a role of 36 pics, thats 72 wasted minutes! (1 preview and 1 scan per photo). This time is above and beyond any time actually spent scanning! On top of that is it''s insistance of doing a calabration everytime you insert the film carrier. (Ok if you changed the film, but when you are scanning a roll of 36, you are putting the same kind of film in 9 times!) They should have made this an option on a dialog box that comes up when you put the carrier in. The supplied software doesn''t get the best out of the scans either. It''s not too bad, but Vuescan is better. If you have any underexposed photos, Vuescan & Photoshop (full version) can do a fair rescue job. A positive about the software is that it is easier to use than Vuescan, but nowhere near as useful. Don''t worry about using the scaled down Photoshop that comes in the box. Hardware cannot multiscan single pass, but from the testing I have done, the pointing accuracy of the CCD is goo

Good overall product. Hardware delivers great scans, software really needs to be alot better. Speed is average, but when you use third party software, this improves.

Customer Service

The US web site is horrible, the Australian one only slightly better. The best place to get drivers is from www.canon.co.uk I can''t believe that they haven''t released the later FilmGet version f

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No other film scanners used

- Well build - Very sharp details - Outstanding Color rendittion - Fast Prescan - Fast Final Scan - Film Holders well made - Fast loading (film holders) - Efficient Dust & Scratch removal (FARE)

- No Eject Button - Original Sofware « FILM GET » is far from VueScan

I drived it with VueScan. Device connected with the SCSI port. For a color slide scanned at 300 dpi, image size 5x7 inches: Prescan at 18 sec. Final Scan at 23sec. Final Scan with FARE On: 2½ m Tho those who find it slow... I don''t know what they did but... !?!? USB maybe, annyways, forget about it (USB).

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FS 2710 Dîmage Scan Speed Dîmage Scan Dual II Dîmage Scan Elite Dîmage Scan Multi II LS-4500AF

Great image quality, after you pay the price of waiting for it to scan, and after you do the necessary fiddling in Photoshop. And that, after all, is why I bought it.

Slooooow. "Previewing" the scans has been a waste of time, at least for me. Slightly buggy software; it crashed XP once, and appears to hang for a couple of minutes at the end of a full 4000 x 4000 scan -- the task manager indicates ''not responding'' -- but then comes through by itself if I leave it alone.

This is my first film scanner, so I suspect that what I say will be more relevant to those considering the FS4000 as a first scanner purchase. When you buy your ''first'' of anything -- first washing machine, first bread maker, etc. -- you''re going to be in for some surprises. These were mine with the FS4000 : 1) Much, much slower than I''d anticipated, at least with the USB port. I''m averaging about 5 minutes per frame to scan for a monitor resolution of 1600 x 1200, and a full 15 to 20 minutes per frame to get the 4000 x 4000 dpi resolution. That works out to about two and a half hours just to scan monitor resolution pictures from one 36 exposure roll of film. I''m using the FS4000 with a new computer running XP, so can comfortably multitask while the scanner does its thing. But if you don''t have new computer horsepower and don''t trust your OS to multitask reliably ... 2) Even after considerable tinkering with the FilmGet software, the scans usually come into Photoshop in need of lots of adjustment. Don''t get me wrong; after adjustment, the quality is great. But I don''t think that anyone who isn''t well versed in Photoshop editing, or isn''t willing to make the commitment to become well-versed, should buy this scanner. 3) Installation was easier than I''d thought it would be. If installing to XP, incidentally, you don''t need the CD. Just download the latest software from the Canon web site.

Customer Service

Tech support was a pleasant surprise. After reading another review here, I braced myself for the worst. Instead I got through within five minutes on each of the three times I called, and encountered

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None.

Extremely high scanning quality. FARE spot removal does not reduce sharpness. Color is very accurate by default. Very sharp.

Very slow scans. Lousy documentation. Noisy.

I have been using this scanner for a while now. It replaces a previous Canon film scanner, the FS2710. I have to say that this scanner does a much better job than the FS2710. The colors are brighter, cleaner, and smoother. The FS4000US pulls out details and shades of color that the cheaper FS2710 never did. The scans are sharp and perfectly focused. The color is right on the mark. FARE, the equivalent of ICE used in other scanners, is fantastic. Scans made with and without FARE look exactly the same, there is no visible sign of softness using the "normal" setting. So far, there has been no need to use the "strong" setting to get rid of the dust. At 4000 dpi, the files are very large, 65 Meg each in fact. You definitely need a CD-RW drive to store these monsters. At full scan with FARE on, you will wait a long time. Informal timings show that it takes about 5-6 minutes each. Of course, if you are doing smaller scans for the web, the times can be under a minute. But I prefer to store full resolution copies as a "film backup." The film holders for 35mm, both slides and strips, are vastly superior to Canon''s earlier models. You can scan 4 images at a time but there is a caveat: the batch scanning is all or nothing meaning that you have to have enough memory to handle all the scans at once. With my 512 Meg, I can just about squeeze it in using Photoshop 5.5. The film holder feed is extremely noisy. The scanner also comes with an APS holder, I don''t use APS so I can''t say anything about that aspect of the FS4000US. The TWAIN interface is needlessly complex but stable with Windows 2000. The CD-ROM PDF user manuals are poor. Installation using USB was, as usual, fast and easy. Kodak Supra 100 and 400 negatives scan perfectly. Slides, Kodak Elite, Kodak 100SW, Kodak 100VS, Fuji Provia, Fuji Provia F all scan well. Very high contrast slides take some tweaking but still hold up very well. Kodachrome 25 and 64 also do well with some tweaking. Note that Kodachrome can not be used with FARE due to the way the emulsion interferes with the infrared scan. I do not have any B&W film. This scanner is an excellent bargain. It''s quality is equal to the Nikon 4000 except for the speed which is substantially slower. For high volume use, the Nikon is a better choice albeit almost twice the price.

Customer Service

N/A

Similar Products Used:

Canon FS2710, PhotoCD Master and Pro.

Cheap for 4000 dpi and 42 bit. Good scan quality. Excellent dust removal.

Software is inferior, more or less a joke considering the quality of the hardware.

My impression of the scanner (hardware) is very good. It seems well built, produces very sharp scans and the dynamic range is ok even for scanning Veliva slides (for my non-professional use). Also, I see very little noise in the dark areas. Installation (USB) was easy. The Filmget software is however a disaster. The only good thing I can manage to think of is that it is stable. The down sides are so many that I will only highlight the most bothersome. - Adjustment at the scanning stage is almost impossible since (1) the histogram is so small that it is almost impossible to read and (2) any other adjustment than levels (color adjustment etc.) degrades data severely (seems to be that Filmget is doing adjustments in 24 bits although you scan in 42, see http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/Canoscan4000.html). So I do all adjustments in Photoshop, but since it scans 42 bits this should be ok. - It has a tendency to overexpose, this is however hard to check in Filmget since the histogram is impossible to read. Thus I usually scan at low resolution and inspect the result in Photoshop, then go back and adjust exposure, and so on until the scan is ok. However, one substantial limitation here is that exposure setting is only possible in steps of +- 1 stops! Would anybody conceive of building an SLR that only had exposure compensation in 1 stop steps? - The Preview is very slow due to stupid software design, The 3:d party software Vuescan (http://www.hamrick.com/) is much faster. - You can only preview one slide at a time so batch scanning is impossible. All this results in that the scanning process is extremely slow and cumbersome. Dust removal with the FARE technology is very good however, it hardly affects resolution contrary to dust removal in Vuescan, in which the dust removal is a disaster for resolution. If it wasn''t for FARE I would uninstall Filmget and only use Vuescan. Anyhow, I''m happy with the scanner since I don''t need a fast scan process. If you do however, I would not recommend it.

Customer Service

Not used

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Minolta Scan Dual II