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Canon CanoScan 9950F Flatbed ScannerPlatform: Windows
Brand: Canon
Binding: Electronics
Features: - 4,800 x 9,600 dpi maximum optical resolution, 19,200 dpi interpolated
- Rich 48-bit color and subtle 16-bit grayscale
- Batch scanning of up to 30 35mm negatives
- Scan documents, negatives, slides, 35mm film, and large format 4-by-5-inch film
- USB 2.0 interface (PC/Mac), FireWire (Mac only)
Canoscan 9950F Driver Issue: Workaround [Posted on 2007-04-29]
A quick note to report that the scanner drivers will not work if you have a lot of applications installed that add to the system %PATH% environment variable.
Although the limit for %PATH% is over 2,000 characters, the CanoScan drivers fail with paths over about 700 characters.
It may be necessary to temporarily shorten your path variable when scanning.
I don't think Canon have been taking this problem seriously, as it has remained reported but not fixed (and not listed in the KB) for years, and seems to occur for multiple scanner models, not just the 9550F.
If you encounter an error message that reports 'rmslantc.dll' is missing (when it is clearly there) and you are advised to reinstall the drivers, you have encountered this bug. Some applications may not report a missing DLL, but may simply report the scanner is unavailable.
A useful workaround is to divide the %PATH% into system and user components, placing non-essential (non-system) path components into the user profile %PATH% variable. The user %PATH% can then be temporarily renamed on the fly (requires logout/login) without any risk of losing path components, as there would be with direct editing.
Excellent value [Posted on 2007-05-13]
I purchased this scanner to replace my microtek flatbed scanner so that I could continue to scan photos as well as some larger format negatives that would not fit into my Nikon Coolscan 9000. This scanner blows away Microtek's products. The quality for the photo scans is excellent, and even the scans of negatives is good. The only two drawbacks are the fact that I wish it could do larger than 8x10, and I also wish the scanning resolution was higher than 1200. Still, I have been able to make fantastic prints from my scans that do not look pixelized or digitzed at all. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! I will no longer be purchasing Microtek products again.
Canon Canoscan [Posted on 2007-07-15]
I have had Epson scanners in the past and was plagued with problems with every one of them. When I bought the Canon, I did not expect too much. I am delighted to say that it has been trouble-free. (I bought it about a year ago and waited until now to write this, so this report is based on lengthy experience.) I have had no technical problems with it whatsoever and it scans cleanly and quickly. I still have a bit of trouble with "OCR" and wish that the documentation were better or that there were an on-line "course" in how to use it. Other than that, everything is great. I would definitely buy it again.
Very disappointing for film scans [Posted on 2008-04-13]
First of all, let me say that I've been using dedicated film scanners for 12+ years, mostly using a Minolta 35mm scanner. I bought this Canon scanner because (a) I need to scan medium format negatives and transparencies, (b) Canon discontinued their dedicated film scanners because they claim this unit gives at least comparable results and (c) dedicated medium format film scanners are very expensive. With my old Minolta scanner, scans were so sharp you could actually see the film grain. With this, nothing was sharp. I spent several hours with Canon support trying to get it to provide better than the completely unacceptable results I was getting. Their answer mostly involved using the "unsharp mask" setting -- in other words, post processing the image to give the appearance of greater sharpness. Even with their recommendations, result were no better than what I had previously done without their help. I suggested that perhaps the unit was defective, but they would have none of that. They wanted me to send them scans of silver based prints and scans made with the scanner directly from same negative the prints were made from. At that point (this was two weeks, several phone calls and multiple rounds of email) I gave up -- I work for a living and they had already cost me more of my time that the scanner cost. Through all of that, we were getting no closer to a resolution, with me insisting that the scanner wasn't performing as advertised and them wanting to do more "tests" (all of which involved lots of time and effort on my part.) They never agreed to accept a return on this unit (for repair or replacement) and never even admitted that it might not be working properly.
All of that said, it's a good flatbed scanner (but I already had one of those and you can get a good flatbed scanner for a quarter of the price.)
I note that this unit has been discontinued and that the nearest replacement (8800F) is under $200. I would guess that Canon recognized the unit's deficiencies or just regards low sharpness in film scans to be acceptable. Live and learn. This is the last Canon product I'll ever buy. Oh, and I did buy a Microtek ArtixScan 120tf dedicated film scanner, and it delivers the quality I expected. It wasn't cheap, either, but unlike the Canon, it delivered what it promised.
Scanner great but problems exist in 120 scans [Posted on 2008-06-20]
I have used this with my Mac G5 desktop and Photoshop for many scans of negatives and positives. Because I had problems scanning 120 black and white with the 120 holder (it would only preview two at a time instead of six) I was on the phone to Canon for an hour or so. I thought we had it fixed, but it went back to the old habits. Finally, I found that there is a little button at the top left of the scanning screen that you click and I was able to turn off the template and scan whatever was in the 120 holder, cropping the negatives with the drawing tool or drawing around them with that tool so that the software would recognize the negatives that it did not see. To deselect, you click on the negative and hit the delete button. After that, I was able to scan some 400 BW negatives of 120 size without problems. In my estimation, the manual can be improved and the software needs to be rewritten to help the user. Quality of scans was excellent.
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