canon canoscan 8800f

Fast, Accurate Photo Scanning

Canon's recipe for the 8800F seems simple: Start with the previous generation-the CanoScan 8600F-as the foundation, boost the scan quality, replace th elight source with LEDs, and, unfortunately, raise the price by about 20 percent. The result is a scanner that does an excellent job with photographic prints, does a reasonably good job with film, and just misses out on earning an Editos'Choice.

Like the 8600F, the 8800F offers 4,800-pixel-per-inch (ppi) optical resolution and similar scan speeds. One noteworthy limitation, however, is that the 8800F can scan only four slides or two six-frame strips of 35mm film at a time.

The Twain driver of the 8800 offers Simple, Multi-Scan, and Advanced modes; backlight and color correction; and features for restoring color and removing dust and scratches. Scan quality photographic prints was excellent-and actually a bit better than what you get with the current Editors'Choice, the Epson Perfection V500 Photo. Scan quality for film, however, was not as good as that of the V500. The 8800CF's LED light source gives it a fairly consistent scan speed, resulting in a zippy 8 to 12 seconds for scanning a 4-by-6 at 300 ppi and saving the scan as an uncompressed TIFF file. For slides, it took 20 seconds to prescan, and 1 minute 11 seconds to scan one slide at 2,400ppi. But the lack of an automatic document feeder (ADF) means it's not great for office use.



Although the 8800F doesn't offer enough to replace the V500 as our Editors'Choice, it is worth considering.-M. David Stone

PC Magazine November 2008.
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