Customer Reviews

CanoScan 8600F

5 star:		(102)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this product for my wife to replace an old scanner. The pre-scan time is lightning fast. The quality of the scans are HUGE and clean. We have started to scan some negatives and they are some what slower but the quality is better then any picture can scan in. It is the best scanner I have seen on the market and I would recommend it to anyone. Also it comes with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4. That software runs for $99 by it's self. This scanner is well worth the money.

I had the 8400F at home and was pleased with it, so I bought the 8600F for work when I needed to scan in a bunch of graphics. For this job, I found it to be a really fast scanner. Both the preview and the final scan of the color graphics were speedy. Sorry, but I did not use the scanner to scan negatives, so I cannot comment on that.

You can tell more about a company when something goes wrong than when everything goes right. The scanner I received had problems with streaking during the scans. I called Canon and got right through to tech support. They spoke English (meaning, it didn't sound like an overseas call center) and determined after 20 mintues that the scanner was bad. Two days later I received a brand new replacement that worked great. I highly recommend buying the Canon brand based on this experience.

I have no regrets buying this scanner, but here are a few things that Canon could do to improve it:

1) The USB cable was a tad short (about 4.5 foot). A 6-foot cable would have been better.

2) The top of the "scan area" is by the hinge of the lid. That means you have to open the lid wide to put something in. For areas where you are limited in vertical space, it would be better if this were moved to the front of the scanner.

3) The scanner cuts off just a hair along the edge of the item being scanned. The edges are how you keep an item "squared" on the scanner, yet 1mm or less along the edge was not included in the scan.

The software that comes with the CanoScan is good, especially Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0, which is always rated well in the PC magazines. The CanoScan driver is flexible with plenty of options for the advanced user, as well as basic options for the not-so-advanced user.

I expected a good quality scanner, and was surprised at the speed. I recommend the CanoScan 8600F to you.

I looked at a number of scanning devices, and features offered by the CanoScan appealed to me. I had never used a scanner, but I wanted to put some slides on disks, and I found that a number I had taken some 40 years ago had faded and turned pink. I wasn't too hopeful, but I put in some of the worst slides, and I was totally amazed by the results. Pictures of sea and sky were restord beyond belief. I have only been using the scanner for a few weeks, but thus far, I believe it was worth every cent. Wonderful results at a reasonable price. Amazon delivery was very prompt. I can't attest to the highly technical aspects of the CanoScan, but from my view, a worthwhile buy.

Only have the unit for a week or so. I upgraded to it to do a family archive of pictures and negatives going back to the late 1800's. So far it is performing better than I expected. It is not as fast as my Epson 1660 but has far greater dpi which may be the reason. For me the extra few seconds do not make a difference. The Adobe software Elements 5.5 that comes with it is great and would cost $99.00 by itself. All in all I can greatly recommend this scanner, wish I had a few more very technical comments to make but many of you are like me and just look for the great performance and results.

Scanned some samples from the hundreds of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides in my archives. Excellent results!! Same with color negatives.

The software is also very good and easy to use.

I highly recommend the 8600F for digitizing slides and negatives.

(Amazon needs to pack the merchandise more securely, though.)

I bought this to scan 35 mm slides. Period. Opened it up, set it up, followed the instructions. Didn't work with slides. Tried it on two more computers. Still didn't work with slides. Studied and re-studied documentation (real men don't ask for directions). Kept getting error message saying that I should check for "protective sheet". Tried the internet and Canon web site for help, couldn't find what I needed. Finally broke down and called them. It seems that the "protective sheet" is a 1/4" + piece of hard black plastic with a piece of black foam attached and a white background on the whole thing--try sleeping on a sheet like that! After talking with the tech reps (all spoke perfect, understandable English) got it working. It does a great job, making old slides look like new (and I'm talking OLD--like 40 years old).

It's a great low-cost high-function scanner that does the job that you may have to pay $1,000 for in a dedicated scanner--sure beats paying 50 cents to $1 to have each slide scanned by a service. The process is slow--does 4 slides at a shot and takes about 5 minutes to do the magic. The magic is just that--the scanner hums and whirrrs for many cycles but turns lead into gold (almost). This thing comes with a nifty slide carrier (in addition to raw film carriers and others) and does all sorts of other scanning tasks. I bought it only for the 35 mm slide thing so can't comment on other scanning abilities.

All of this said, it's a great machine, well made, low cost, and does an excellent job.

Amazon rocks, naturally. I did the free shipping thing yet got the machine only 1 day after ordering. I didn't check other prices but with Amazon service, who cares.

I've used the CanoScan 8600F scanner for two weeks now scanning about 300 color photos, size 4" x 6". It works great with my 3 year old Dell PC running Windows XP with only 512 MB of RAM.

I started off scanning negative film of my photos but noticed that even after careful cleaning of each 6 image strip that, more often than not, I'd see specks or fuzz on the scanned image which took a bit of time to correct using the included Adobe PhotoShop Elements 4.0 software (the dust/scratch removal software too often takes off image details that you will want to keep). I decided to try scanning my 4" x 6" prints instead of the negatives and got better results. I couldn't tell much difference in the resolution AS VIEWED ON MY 1280 x 1024 LCD monitor. I don't usually make prints so I couldn't say how the quality for scanning prints vs. negatives would compare in that department. The good thing was that scanning prints almost always gave me a cleaner image than scanning negatives. And prints scan faster than negatives.

You wouldn't think you could scan prints faster than negatives since you can load two 6 image strips (12 images total) into the holder that comes with the unit vs. being able to place only 4 of the 4" x 6" prints on the platten. What happens is that the unit scans negatives ONE IMAGE AT A TIME vs. scanning the prints all in one pass. It takes the scanner about 1 minute per image when scanning negatives. It also takes only about 1 minute to scan 3 or 4 prints so the result is a faster operation when scanning prints than when scanning negatives.

One drawback of the software for me was that I found I could scan only 3 size 4" x 6" prints at a time if I wanted to use the "auto-crop" feature. Putting 4 images on the platten resulted in them being too close together for the software to detect them as individual prints. Yes, I could crop them in Adobe Elements but that added more problems with not having specific EXIF information for each image. Bottom line: I scanned 3 prints, size 4" x 6", at a time and was very happy with the speed and quality. The scanner processed faster than I could load/unload the images (I was pulling them out of a protector sheet-style photo album for scanning).

I've had no trouble with the unit or the software but I can tell you there is a somewhat steep learning curve if you intend on scanning a lot of images. Figuring out how to customize the lid-mounted buttons/screen-based toolbar (they are duplicates of one another) is essential for faster operation.

None of the included software allow you to do any significant EXIF editing. You'll need a different software package for that function. Yes, you can plug-in date of original and a few other items but it is a one image at a time operation and is very time consuming. Get a shareware program like EXIF Utilities to do this on a batch basis.

I'd buy this same unit again if faced with the same decision. It is a good value for what I paid at Amazon.com and it came quickly plus was well-packaged.j

Note also this unit has a one year warranty vs. the 90 day warranty for the error-prone HP models of equivalent specification.

I purchased the CanoScan CS8600F for the main purpose of making digital copies of color slides, as well as black and white negatives. So far, I have been greatly impressed by high resolution scans that are obtained using this device. I have printed several 8x10 black and white enlargements from the scans of negatives and found the sharpness of the picture to be remarkable. The bundled software is top rate with many great features. The only drawback I can see is the time, several minutes, required for high resolution scans but often the higher dpi settings are not needed. This is a great scanner at a good price. I would highly recommend this product.

I bought this scanner to digitize about 500 old 127 format film slides which had faded over the years. The Canon product literature clearly states that this scanner will accept these slides. Well, the literature is incorrect, and the Canon tecnical representative admitted, to his surprise, that there was an error. 127 film slides are mounted in the standard 2x2-inch mounts, same outside dimensions as 35mm slides; however, the image is much larger than 35mm, being 40mm square (about 1.5 inches). When set up to scan slides, the CanoScan 8600 automatically crops the scan area to 35mm film size and cuts off much of the 127 slide image. The Canon tech rep was able to find a work-around that allows me to scan these slides at full image, but it is a rather crude way to do it, resulting in many more manual steps to accomplish the task. BUT, it does work after you get used to the process.

By the way, I did not find any other scanner on the market that says it would scan 127 format slides.

This scanner comes with Photoshop Elements 4.0 as well as other software. I also purchased the book "Photoshop Elements 5.0, The Missing Manual" by Barbara Brundage. If you are new to scanning, and especially if you are new to Photoshop as I was, I HIGHLY recommend that you buy this book. It literally holds you by the hand and guides you thru the steps to do whatever it is that you're attempting to do with your scanner. Elements does not come with an instruction book, only "on-line" help is available, and it is not easy to use because it assumes you already know how to use Photoshop Elements, which is very powerful, but also very complicated until you spend a lot of time with it. Buy the book, you'll be glad you did!

I've used the scanner for photos, negatives, and slides and found the results to be outstanding. I especially like the ability provided by the canon software to correct the image before scanning. Many of my old color photos have faded and the fade correction adjustment prior to scanning did a better job correcting this than any of my photo program.