Scanner woes and quick dpi comparison

[ekimeno]

I'm a bit confused with my scanner (a CanoScan 8800F). Some shots it seems to scan brilliantly and others.... not so much. Below is an example of a 'so-so' scan comparison done at different resolutions. I can't see much difference, though one thing that is bothering me is that the lower res scan ends up with a bigger file size when resized and saved!

1

35mm Sensia slide film scanned at 2400dpi on CanoScan 8800F & saved as TIFF

CS3 processed using unsharp mask
200% + radius = 2 / Threshold = 1
Then reduced to 800 x 594 using Bicubic Sharper.
Original file size = 19MB (TIFF)
Final file size = 508KB



2

35mm Sensia slide film scanned at 4800dpi on CanoScan 8800F & saved as TIFF

CS3 processed using unsharp mask
200% + radius = 2 / Threshold = 1
Then reduced to 800 x 594 using Bicubic Sharper.
Original file size = 79MB (TIFF)
Final file size = 384KB

Here's an example of a scan that I only noticed afterwards that something was wrong...(HINT - look at the leafy ground area ). Seeing a pattern here?

This is starting to smack of something wrong with the scanner. It's also been doing extremely weird things - scanned a batch the other day where surfaces of objects came out in pixelated shades of brown, but when re-scanned came out fine...

Is it time to cast this scanner back to from whence it came? :bang:

 

[Knikki]

HMM! I just did a Google on the scanner and the reviews seem to give it a thumbs up BUT a friend of mine had one of these and we could not get it to scan consistantly well, colours and focusing were always a problem with it. He eventualy got a Epson 3200 which works very well. It was 2nd hand and cost about £200.

Flatbed scanners always seem to struggle with smaller film sizes, if it was me I would look at the Epson range 4990 or if you have the money V500/V700 series. They are very good for a flatbed.

 

[ekimeno]

Thanks Knikki. Yes, Epson 4490 has been on my mind, but worried that it won't be much of an improvement. Perhaps I 'put up with it' and sell this when I can afford a proper dedicated scanner (ie. Nikon / Polaroid / Minolta).

I can imagine re-scanning 6-months worth of film will be a pretty boring task, but satisfying once done...

 

[Freester]

Ouch I wish I'd read this last week. I ordered one of these from Dabs and it arrived on Weds. Been busy at work so I haven't had time to unpack it and use it. Was planning on doing that this evening. Is it really that bad? Shall I just send it back?

 

[ekimeno]

Ouch I wish I'd read this last week. I ordered one of these from Dabs and it arrived on Weds. Been busy at work so I haven't had time to unpack it and use it. Was planning on doing that this evening. Is it really that bad? Shall I just send it back?

Freester, it may just be the one I bought... I'd keep checking your scans for odd details. I was impressed with the quality of scans for the first 10-15 rolls I ran through it, but then the strange stuff started happening. Taking back to PC world soon and exchange for a V500 methinks...