Friday, May 7, 2010

Canon CanoScan 9000F Film Scanner

Attention Canon: Lies and re-iterated useless crap we film users are all god damn sick of makes me fucking angry.

So Canon have released a new film scanner.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=120&modelid=20411

It accomodates 35mm and 120, but not sheet sizes, unfortunately it is yet another fucking flatbed.

Apparently it's "been designed with film-faithful photographers in mind" - Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, you think these idiots would have learned by now we are god damn sick of their incompetent flatbed rubbish, no it has not been designed with film-faithful photographers in mind, it has been designed by marketing with dollar signs in mind, it is clear they are fucking incapable (read: unwilling) to improve 3 critical things in flatbeds since 2 decades ago:

1. Signal to Noise ratio, the sensors have nasty nasty noise, and typically scan at slightly different exposure times per line, which you can see when you need to stretch levels due to the scanner's shithouse dMax that's actually half of the advertised value.

2. DMax, has such poor DMax values, and the entire range isnt useable, the shadow and highlights section of the scanner are both so poor in quality, as to render an unusable image if your film falls on either end of it and not in the middle of the range.

3. True Resolution, these idiots want to up the sensor resolution, but they will not put in even $20 worth of optics to even be able to resolve anywhere near 50% of the claimed optical resolution.

Canon, Epson and others are LIARS and are committing FRAUD, they state a number like 4800 or 6400 dpi for optical resolution, when the optics they put in the scanners do not have that resolution, they are taking the sensor resolution and calling it optical resolution, that is plain fucking lying, it is also fraudulently misrepresenting the true performance of the scanner.

In the 9000F's case, it is 9600 dpi, fat chance they are putting in optics capable of resolving that sensor resolution, if Canon even put in optics that could resolve even a third of that (3200 dpi) I'd be over the moon and buy one to replace my piece of shit V500 for scanning 120 straight away soon as it was available.

Canon once made a great 4000 dpi scanner called the FS4000US, but what happened? It was discontinued with flatbeds as the replacement! Fuck me!

It's not impossible to make a flatbed form factor/design scanner with a high dMax, good SNR and with sharp optics, it is just not done for some reason, and I would love it if Canon have put that kind of equipment in their 9000F, it would make me happy to have available a good scanner on the market than can scan 120.

Currently, there is no such thing as a good 120 scanner available, they're all fucking shit, you have to find the ridiculously high priced 2nd hand dedicated scanners.



9600 dpi is just another fucking figure gimmick to complete with Epsons "6400" dpi, and probably to try and steal some market away from Plustek's 7200 dpi scanners given the indicated price point is just under the plusteks.

These scumbag marketing tactics while providing an inferior product are disgusting.


If you want a good 35mm scanner, the Plustek 7400 and 7600i are the choices available apart from 2nd hand dedicated scanners.

Even without the optics to support the resolution, if the 9000F had sheet film scanning, with a decent sensor (ACTUAL USEABLE capable dMax rating), with a good SNR, and non-varying exposure between each set of lines, then it'd be an awesome buy.

6 comments:

Phil in Japan said...

rant much?

enjoyed the rant. was shopping for a scanner and stumbled on this.

cheers

Dan said...

Yours was the first link I found that mentioned DMAX so that plus having the same name as you meant I had to look. I'd been hoping that I could find an affordable print scanner with decent optics and DMAX but just couldn't judge from what I'd been able to dig up whether they existed and it now sounds like they don't.

I already have a good medium format film scanner but it doesn't handle prints and I now have a bunch of really old family prints, many in bad shape (not flat and scratched), so I'd really appreciate it if you had any scanner recommendations -- if they all have bad DMAX anyway I'd consider getting a low end CanoScan LiDE except that they have no depth of field to handle non-flat prints and they are supposed to break pretty quickly.

Anonymous said...

Yes, scanner manufacturers publish inflated resolution specs. That said, some low-end scanners are not all that bad. Some PlusTek and Reflecta have some merit. Eg. the Reflecta CrystalScan 7200. has a real resolution of 3300ppi. http://www.filmscanner.info has some reviews, including resolution *measurements*. Take a look.

Image Scan Software said...

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Image Scan Software said...

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Anonymous said...

I came across PhotoDan's rant while looking for a scanner for 120 film, and it saved me from making a mistake. Thanks, PhotoDan!

Too bad the manufacturers won't produce something nice. The best thing I can get to scan my 120 negatives with is a crappy Epson V700 (unless I want to spend $4000 on a 10 year old Nikon scanner).