Canon LPT-99735987 CanoScan 5000F Scanner

Hello, I purchased this for christmas 2003. Right out of the box I had the same problem as wshiii from Philadelphia, PA The glass was dirty on both sides and all the images (no matter what the resolution) had white spots all over them. I will call canon tonight to see what they can do. If they cannot fix it, I will look elsewhere for a replacement

Picked up the Canon ScanoJet 5500F from a local store and started scanning medical school applications. I hoped to fill out these converted applications later using Microsoft Word. So this review is focused primarily on the OCR and text scanning capability of this scanner. Image Quality - 5/5 stars: The 5000F scans are very detailed and clear. If the document is to be a copy for archving in JPEG or BMP format, the scan quality is more than sufficient. Speed - 3/5 stars: Scanning a typical letter size document took about 90 seconds at 300 DPI. This is acceptable but not as fast as the comparably priced HP Scanjet 5400. Software 2/5 stars: The OCR wizard is overtly complex, with at least 6-10 menu steps to scan, recognize, translate, and save one page of document. While the scan took about 90 seconds, the whole process took approximately 5 minutes - the output result was not nearly as clean as an automatic graphic scan, then manual OCR conversion. OCR 1.5/5 stars: The bundled character recognition software Omnipage SE performs poorly on both text pages and forms. The software has a tendency to add non-existent punctuations, misform letters, and misalign paragraphs and texts. When scanning an inkjet document, the error grows exponentially since the characters lack the sharpness of laser prints; sample text printed using HP Photosmart 7350 lead to about 5% spelling/typo error. This makes editing Canon 5000F scanned documents a very tedious task; for comparison, the HP Scanjet 5400 & HP software completed the scans on the same documents with no errors. When working with forms, the OCR converted approximately 20% of the form accurately into Microsoft Word. Check boxes are often converted as big block letter O, sometimes as a graphic, rarely as a check box. Overall very poor performance. Recommendation: If your scanner will primarily serve as a photo/graphic scanner, then this is a great value. If the document management feature in a scanner is important, I recommend looking into an HP scanner; there is a trade off - HP Scanners tend to trail Canon in graphic/film reproduction quality.

Good stuff at reasonable price.

I purchased the scanner with a bit of apprehension, due to the price, and the disparity with other scanners. It seemed a wee bit costly -- not overly so, just a bit. Knowing that Canon is a good company, and knowing that poor scanners truly a horrible experience, I bit the bullet and bought it. The software, combined with the scanner, are superb. I highly recommend this product.

I Promise a brief review. +1 SCANS 35mm slides 2 at a time +1 scans 35mm negatives 3 at a time +1 makes seperate files of each item on the glass automatically +1 super fast photo scanner -1 takes about 2 minutes to scan a single slide at 300dpi Overall the price and picture quality beat the time it takes to scan a slide (which is why i bought it). I had a pacific image prime film that was awful (ok if you are a yambag) and returned it. I HIGHLY RECCOMEND THIS ITEM

Being an amatuer photographer, I wanted a scanner that could scan slides and negatives. The 5000F is a flatbed scanner so it can also scan documents which makes a very versitile and useful scanner. Usually flatbed scanners do NOT make good film and slide scanners; the 5000F is an exception. Its actually based on a rather decent CCD technology rather than the cheaper CIS chip (most flatbeds), which is the reason for the very good film/slide scanning performance. It has a special back-lit slot in the cover for slides and negatives. You can scan up to 3 negs or 2 slides at once. It also has an IR dust and scratch removal sensor that works fairly well (but not on scratches). The quality is very very good but the scans are quite slow, even with a USB-2 connection. You must remove a white backing board, insert the negs or slides in provided carriers, and position the carriers in the scanner. The graphics software, Archsoft PhotoStudio, is quite adequate but not nearly on the same level as Adobe Photoshop. Theres MUCH additional software for creating photo albums, photo databases, OCR, etc.. Installation is very easy. It took me 20 minutes to install and start scanning after a bad day at work! The quality of the scans is excellent, the scanning software is very easy to use, the software package is quite comprehensive, scanning negs and slides requires some fumbling, and the scans are slow (but Ive seen slower). The quality of the slide/negative scans is the MOST important feature to me and the 5000F delivers. **For the money**, I am VERY happy with the package overall.

Not happy with the drivers for this scanner. I bought this scanner in March 2003, and the CD-ROM that came with it included non-current drivers that were not Windows XP certified. The manual told me to install these uncertified drivers over the strongly-worded warning from the operating system not to do so. Within minutes of installing the drivers on my new (<1 month old) computer, the operating system experienced three crashes. I removed the drivers, downloaded the new but still uncertified version of the drivers from Canons website, installed the new version, and used Norton Utilities to repair the damage from the first installation. Even after all this, the drivers are still flaky. From time to time the driver will return a general error saying that it could not communicate with the scanner. To correct this, I have to unplug the scanner and plug it back in (because there is no on/off or reset switch). When this problem is not manifesting itself, scanning pictures/prints works fine. Good color and brightness accuracy. The multiple-image scan feature, which allows you to place several pictures on the bed at once and scan them all simultaneously into separate files, is very useful. Scan times for prints is very fast: about 15 seconds total for three prints laid out on the bed. My only wish is that the scan driver should automatically cure mildly skewed pictures because it is extremely hard to place multiple photos on the bed with zero degree accuracy. Unfortunately, it doesnt do this. Scanning photographic negatives is totally different. Scan time is extremely long: about 10 minutes per three negatives at 600 dpi resolution. Also, the software is very unpredictable as to how it determines where one negative ends and the other begins. Often enough to be annoying, the scanner incorrectly sizes the negatives, requiring extensive manual intervention to override it. I have sometimes been forced to do a lot of manual jiggering with the negatives, including using opaque masks over some negatives to make it easier for the software to automatically detect where they begin and end. This feature is so twitchy that I sometimes just press the preview button twice and get differently-sized images. Image quality of scanned negatives is variable: sometimes it is very good indeed. Other times it tends to produce an overexposed image with colors bled out, requiring more manual intervention. Scans from negatives also tend to emphasize problems with the source material that may not have been obvious in the prints made from the same negatives. E.g., In pictures with a fairly flat-field of color in the background (such as lots of sky/water), there is a noticeable tunnel-vision effect which appears to have been caused by the point and shoot 35mm camera which took the photos. This was barely noticeable in the professionally-made prints, but quite apparent in the scan, requiring still more manual intervention to correct. In short, this scanner certainly does a lot of things, some of them very well. But it nowhere near as stable in operation as I would have expected, and it is by no means fast or reliable enough to easily use it for anything like a large volume of slides or negatives.

I didnt buy the Canon Canoscan 5000F from Amazon.com, but this was the place I checked for all the specs, and where I read the reviews. I have been very pleased with the 5000F. I bought it yesterday, and in three hours last night, I was able to scan in nearly 200 photos. (200 photos singly; I havent tried the multiple scan feature yet, but I cant wait to go home and try.) Its very simple to use, and the quality is fantastic. It works as well or better than Id hoped it would. I especially recommend this to other serious amateurs like me!

the scanner is very easy to use but the quality come up short from my exspectations

You can still get this scanner new at eBay or at some camera places. I got it solely because I wanted a film scanner, but could not afford a real one. Flatbed scanners are considered inferior for such things. Well, if this scanner is making inferior scans of negatives or slides, I cant tell! I think they are wonderful. It even has the FARE system, which is usually found on more expensive models. The software bundle has loads of photo software, as well as an OCR program. I have used the OCR program once...there were too many words it couldnt read...and I could have typed up the article faster than proofreading the mistakes.But I have not read up on everything yet, mainly because there is no printed manual, only a Quick Start Guide. But at least the QSG tells you more than most. Its still confusing at times, though. Even things Ive done before can be confusing to repeat. Its just not the easiest software on the face of the Earth.But as I said, it scans negatives and slides beautifully, as well as photos. It does far better with photos than my HP All-In-One. It should, however, since it is a photo/film scanner.And its a nice priced one at that!