Canon CanoScan 9000F Color Image Scanner

by Canon

• Fare Level 3 delivers automatic dust and scratch removal as well as fading, grain and backlight correction
• Zero warm-up time and lower power consumption with White LED
• "Auto Scan Mode" automatically adjusts settings by detecting what you are scanning
• Maximum Document Size: 8.5 x 11.7 Inch (21.6 x 29.7cm)

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 18.9 x 10.7 x 4.4 inches ; 10.1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B003JQLHEA
• Item model number: 4207B002
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (457 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #9 in Electronics > Camera & Photo > Printers & Scanners > Scanners > Flatbed & Photo Scanners
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 4, 2010

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Enjoy high-speed scanning for everything from photos to documents, to even 35mm film while also enjoying superb quality. The CanoScan 9000F scanner delivers an incredible maximum film scanning resolution of 9600 x 9600 (Optical) dpi¹ with built-in features that also make it easy to use.

The CanoScan 9000F's sophisticated design and rich features will impress you from the moment you power it on. View larger

The all-new Auto Document Fix feature automatically analyzes and corrects both text and images so your document text will remain clear and your pictures will maintain color tone and contrast. For additional ease of use, the Seven EZ Buttons enable you to scan, copy or create a PDF faster than ever.

Speed & Quality Superb Scanning Resolution: When you combine 9600 x 9600 maximum color resolution1 (film scanning) with a vivid 48-bit color depth and over 281 trillion possible colors, the results will astound you. Continue your scanning brilliance with tremendous 19,200 x 19,200 (Interpolated) software enhanced scans. Ease of Use EZ Buttons: Utilize the Seven EZ Buttons to automate the entire scanning process. Copy, scan and create email attachments or PDF files simply with the push of a button. Auto Scan Mode: With the press of a single button you have the ability to bring eight steps into one as you scan your photo, document or personal notebook and have the type of original automatically recognized. In addition, the original is automatically cropped to proper size, scanned and saved in the appropriate file format. 35mm Film: Make your old photos look virtually brand new again with the special film scanning guide frame and Film Adapter Unit by scanning one film strip at a time at a maximum 9600 color dpi1. Auto Document Fix: Auto Document Fix delivers beautiful and easy-to-view scan results by advanced image analysis and area-by-area data correction, automatically. Text characters stand out and are sharp, and clear; while pictures maintain their color tone and contrast. FARE Level 3: This built-in retouching technology delivers automatic correction to photos and film removing much of the dust and scratches while restoring its color all at the same time. Restore the life of your memories automatically instead of having to spend lots of time manually retouching them. Gutter Shadow Correction: This built-in correction removes the shadow typically seen when scanning a page from a book. This “gutter” is eliminated delivering a clean scan of the page – not the dark gutter. Connectivity USB 2.0 Hi-Speed: Scan and transfer images to your computer at the fastest possible scanning speeds with this connection. The USB 2.0 Hi-Speed Interface also allows for quick previews of your images to your computer.

The CanoScan 9000F's 7 EZ Buttons automate the entire scanning process for you. View larger With the included film adapter unit you can scan up to 12 frames of 35 millimeter film, both positives and negatives, or 4 slide frames at the same time. View larger

Features

 

What's in the Box?

CanoScan 9000F Color Image Scanner

Document Kit: Adobe Photoshop Elements DVD, Photoshop Elements Sheet, Cross Sell Sheet, Quick Start Guide Setup Software & User's Guide, CD-ROM Warranty Card

Film Guide Mount

Film Guide Strip

Film Guide Medium Format

Film Retainer Sheet Mid Format

Power Cord

USB Cable

 

 

 

Disclaimers
1. For document types other than film, the maximum resolution is 4800 x 4800 dpi.

Product Description

The Canon CanoScan 9000F Color Image Scanner features Fare Level 3 delivers automatic dust and scratch removal as well as fading, grain and backlight correction, Zero warm-up time and lower power consumption with White LED, “Auto Scan Mode" automatically adjusts settings by detecting what you are scanning, Zero warm up time, Lower Power Consumption with White LED, 9600 dpi and 48-bit input/output.OS Compatibility 4 Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP/2000 and Mac OS X v10.4.11 to 10.6.x.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1,112 of 1,127 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous performer in this price range! August 9, 2010

By Kam G.

I sold my Epson V750-M Pro to get the CanoScan 9000F instead. I'll divide my review into three categories: speed, quality, and user interface. ____ SPEED: I just couldn't get around to scanning anything with the V750 because the wait with every scan is just agonizing. It sounds like it has to rev up its engine every time. On the other hand, The speed and agility of the 9000F are impressive. I place several pictures at a time on the glass to scan, and the software lets you independently select the settings for each picture, mixing resolutions and corrections. Then it goes and scans each one separately. And because the LED light requires no warm-up time, it works immediately you can just get so much done! I scanned over 150 pictures in the first few days of having this scanner -- more than I did in the two years I had the Epson. However, do keep in mind that when scanning film and slides, scanning speed will be reduced drastically -- that's just the way it is, regardless of the scanner. _____ QUALITY: The V750 is a professional grade scanner (hence the almost $800 price tag) does a slightly better job with dust and scratch removal using Digital ICE. The 9000F uses FARE, which works well, but seems to not be quite as effective. Scans on the 9000F tend to be slightly more blue, but you can tweak that correction easily. ______ INTERFACE: The user interface is a bit clugey (is that how you spell it?), but it does everything it needs to, and while you're scanning a large number of pics it stores them in its own catalog until you're finished, then saves the files in one single sweep. The software seems to not retain some settings (I keep having to uncheck a box to create subfolders by scan date), but overall works very well.... _____ CONCLUSION: If I had to choose on one hand between having the best scanner (V750) and never using it, and on the other hand having a great scanner (9000F) and using it like crazy, I would definitely take Option B. I highly recommend the 9000F for its beautiful design, easy setup, very good scanning quality, easy photo correction settings, ability to scan several pics at once, and impressive speed! Read more ›

295 of 299 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good scanner with a few limitations January 22, 2011

By Keith McLaren Photography

Amazon Verified Purchase

I purchased the CanoScan 9000f recently and wanted to review the scanner as I begin to work through the process of learning this unit. To set the stage, I am a photographer and I have never gone back and scanned my old film photographs. I have about 30 years of film and the task is a large one. I finally decided that I needed to buy something since I have my wedding photo proofs and they are now 15 Years old and I know that they will not last forever.

My objectives in this project gave me a few requirements for a scanner. Here is what I was looking for...

1. Since this project is about scanning my wedding photos, I wish to remain married. This means that I cannot buy multiple scanners, spend $1000's on a scanner or fill my office with large quantities of gear.

2. I wanted a device that would make high-ish resolution scans of both film and prints. I need to scan my wedding proofs since I have no negatives. I also need to scan a large quantity of 35mm and a few medium format film frames.

3. I want a solution that allows me to scan multiple 35mm frames without manual interaction. I have used other scanners in the past and I know that each scan takes a while. Thus I also know that if you can scan multiple frames at once then you can walk away and load the thing up again later. This helps to speed up the arduous process of scanning film.

After reading MANY reviews I saw the good and bad of the 9000F and decided to give it a try. The biggest complaint was that the quality is substandard to high end film-only scanners. I decided that since a $1,000+ device is not in my current budget that if under $200 this unit was worth the risk.

When I received the unit it installed in less then 10 minutes without any problems.... It's sure not a bulletproof design, but it seems to be made reasonably well for a machine at this price point. It has all sorts of nice easy to use features to scan various kinds of doc's with a press of a button and they seem to work as advertised, but for my needs I don't really use these. I quickly dug into the advanced mode in the scan driver since I am looking to use this thing to its limits.

What is really nice here is that Canon gives you a suite of tools that allow you to use the driver without calling the driver from a TWAIN compliant program. This is nice for bulk scans since there is no need to have the overhead of having a program like photoshop open just to call the TWAIN scanning program. You have a button dashboard that lets you choose and action and in my case I hit "Scan". This opens another utility that allows you to select your scan options. One of these options is to set your setting in the TWAIN driver itself and this is going to be the choice that you want to use if you are doing more critical work. When you hit scan it opens the TWAIN driver where you can choose the "Advanced" tab to get down to the nitty gritty.

This is where I find some cool features and some frustrating limitations. What is really nice is that when you scan film it automatically crops each frame and you don't really need to deal with multiple frames or cropping. So far, the cropping has been spot on for my film. However, there are some serious limitations. The first one is that the Canon utilities limit your scans to 10,000 pixels and about 100Mb is size. The size limit is not the output size limit but the incoming data size. (H x W x Color Depth) Thus your 100Mb files actually end up at about 5-7 Mb JPG files at output. (unless you choose to use TIFF Files)

Another big limitation is that the driver does not give you effective control over sizing your images. In todays world we care about images in a digital world. We care about resolution in Pixels not paper size. The resolution is most important since we generally allow our printing software to scale images to fit the output device's resolution and paper size. Where the Canon scan driver is lacking is that it does not give you any control over the input from the device but rather has you setup the output settings in terms of DPI and Paper Size. The best solution that I have found is to set a custom paper size and set it to Pixels in place of inches and then set the size to 6666 x 10,000 which gets you to the 10,000 limit but gives the right aspect for a 35mm frame. The downside to this method is that once you do this the driver is no longer able to pass along the direction of the images and you must rotate them manually after they are scanned. (with the automatic settings, the driver can actually rotate your images which is a nice feature)

The second limitation that I see is that after you scan in the driver, the photo's are in some sort of a cache. You need to exit the driver in order to have the utility copy them to your selected location. This slows down the process since the copy locks up the software for about a minute as the copy happens. You then must Press two "scan" buttons again to get back into the advanced scan dialog. This is a small complaint, but it's unnecessary.

Now for some positives. I am VERY happy with the scanning output of this device. I cannot tell you what the scanner resolution is when I scan since the only resolution setting you can change is output resolution. (in other words, I can set the output to 9600 DPI / 1" x 1.3" and get the exact same output as if I use 4800 DPI / 2" x 2.6". Both images would be 9600 x 12,480 with the difference being in the EXIF data) What I can say is that I am getting crisp images with an output resolution of 10,000 x 6666. The images are a bit soft since I do not use the "unsharp mask" feature. I have been doing my sharpening in lightroom and the NIK software tools and I prefer the results. However, if you are not a professional photographer and don't understand the intricacies of sharpening manually, the unsharp mask seems to provide a reasonable result for basic photos and prints. Another feature that works well is the "FARE" dust and scratch removal. This is the only automated feature that I am using, but it works well and provides results that I could not achieve in post processing. (due to its ability to look at the film with infrared technology)

Now, back to the output files. The resulting files are reasonably good considering the source material. The film I have scanned to date is all from the mid/late 90's and the colors are crisp. They output is a bit overly contrast-y on some of the images, but it's are to tell yet if this is a function of the scanner or the photo's. Prints can EASILY be blown up to 8x10 and likely 16x20 with a little bit of work in post processing. Photo's generally need some sharpening and noise reduction and also require a bit of adjustment in terms of contrast and curves to bring them down from that heavy contrast look.

Here are some quick comments for those who are skimming the article:

SCAN SPEED: 35mm Film @ 10,000 x 6,666 pixels x 24 bit color --- ~8 minutes per frame

MAX USABLE RESOLUTION: 10,000 x 6,666 with just Canon utilities when scanning 35mm Film

INCLUDED SOFTWARE: Good, but has some limitations.

SETUP TIME (HARDWARE): 15 Minutes

SETUP TIME (SOFTWARE): 10 Minutes to Install. 5 Minutes to get first snapshot quality scan.
4 hours before I got a scan to look the way I wanted at 10,000 x 6,666.

I will continue to update this review as I work with this scanner more. Read more ›

605 of 621 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably the best overall "A4" size flatbed scanner under $700 September 27, 2010

By L. G. CHARLOT

Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought this scanner primarily to digitally archive my 35mm film and slide collection. The scanner I was using, a 9 year old Microtek 4900 flatbed, was barely up to the task, with a maximum optical resolution of 2400 dpi, and it had no built-in color correction to remove the orange mask from color negatives, let alone automated dust/scratch removal. And at 2400 dpi, it was far too slow, taking almost an hour to scan a 6-frame film strip. How does the Canon 9000F compare?
1. "Street price", at Amazom.com, was $235 total, almost $500 less than the semi-pro Epson 700 flatbed film scanner. The 9000F can only scan 2 strips of 35mm film in one pass, whereas the Epson can scan 4. The 9000F can scan 4 mounted 35mm slides at a time, the Epson can scan 8. But for most amateur photographers, the $700 price tag of the Epson is pretty steep, and unless you have many thousands of slides or filmstrips to scan, the higher capacity of the Epson may not be worth the extra cost. The scanning rate of the 9000F is at least four times faster than my old Microtek at all resolutions between 300 & 2400 dpi. At higher resolutions, the 9000F slows down appreciably - a single 35mm film frame at 9600 dpi took about 20 minutes, with FARE enabled. During the scan, the drive motor in the 9000F is quite smooth, relatively quiet, and gives me the impression of pretty good quality. Other cheap scanners I have used sound like a concrete mixer.
2. Image quality. I have tried the 9000F on 35mm color negative film at 2400dpi, 3200dpi, and 9600dpi. The quality of the three scans are all excellent and appear to be about equal in consistency.... I also tried scanning a regular 8x10 color photo enlargement at 600 dpi; the 9000F was very fast and the scan quality was incredible, resolving tiny details of the photo, plus dust specks and cat hairs that were invisible to the unaided eye. I have no reservations about the image quality of the 9000F, and can't imagine any other scanner at this price point could better it. A word here about the maximum scan resolution of the 9000F and what it means in the "real world". For reflective media like photo prints, the scanner can crank out 4800 dpi, and for transparencies (film or slides), 9600 dpi. But do you really need that much resolution? My one test frame of a 35mm color negative scanned at 9600 dpi had an interesting and unexpected result: The scanner's resolution exceeds the film's resolution by a substantial amount. Turns out that scanning that film strip at anything above about 3600 dpi did not yield any extra detail, just a huge increase in file size. It's possible that the extremely fine grain size of Kodachrome 25 or Panatomic "X" film might allow the 9000F to pull out extra detail at 9600dpi, but none of my film or slides are extreme-fine grain types, so I can't test that hypothesis myself. As for speed, scanning film at 9600dpi on the 9000F is very slow, about 20 minutes per frame with FARE enabled, so you probably won't want to go above 3600 or 4800 unless you really need to. A 3200 dpi scan of the 35mm film frame took a bit less than five minutes with FARE enabled. This resolution produced the maximum detail from my film; a slightly smoother result than a 2400 dpi scan, but you have to look very close at 200% zoom in Photoshop to see the difference. With the 9000F set to 3200 dpi, a film scan results in a 14 megapixel RGB image, but don't let this number mislead you into thinking that you can see tiny details out of 35 mm film scans. A typical digital SLR, with a 12~15 megapixel CMOS sensor (for example a Canon 50D), produces much sharper images than my film scans with the 9000F scanner, and that's not even with a high-priced "L" series lens on the camera. I DON'T mean to imply in that last statement that the 9000F is a poor performer, just that you shouldn't expect miracles out of scanning color negative film. I'd love to see how the 9000F performs scanning test charts shot on Panatomic "X" or Kodachrome 25. As for scanning color photo prints, you will probably not need to go above 600dpi most of the time. Although the 9000F is capable of scanning reflective media at 4800 DPI, most color photo print paper doesn't have anywhere near this fine of a grain size. However, for forensic scanning of "real objects", for example coins, flower petals, leaves, or documents, the 4800 dpi resolution could be useful, giving you the ability to see surface details that would be invisible other than under a microscope.
3. Speed of film scanning. The 9000F is way faster than my old Microtek, but probably not as fast as a $2500 Nikon film scanner. On the other hand, the 9000F can scan anything that will fit on the platen, at 1/10th the price of a dedicated film scanner. Loading of film and slides takes longer on a flatbed like this, and you can only scan 4 slides at a time, compared to unattended batch scanning of a hundred or more slides with some dedicated film scanners.
Following are my actual scan speeds for film scanning:
a. Scanning 8 frames of 35mm color negatives at 3200 dpi with all of the options enabled, including FARE (the infrared dust/scratch removal feature, set to "medium"), Unsharp Mask, High Quality, and Grain Correction, took 38 minutes, or 4.75 minutes per frame. The results were really nice, and all I had to do in Photoshop was rotate the horizontal frames to Landscape orientation (all 35mm Film scan frames are output from ScanGear in Portrait orientation). A few of the really big artifacts were not removed by the FARE engine; these appeared to be cat hairs that escaped my pre-scan cleaning and were still on the film.
b. Re-running the same 8 frame, 3200 dpi scan with the options turned off was 3 times faster, or 1.56 minutes per frame. I think that the slower speed of the first scan was mostly due to the FARE processing. However, the output of the second scan, although much faster, required a lot more manual repair in Photoshop, especially "healing" of dust specks and other artifacts. At 3200 dpi, some of the dust particles on my film were invisible to my eye, yet they still made huge white spots on the output image, as much as 8 pixels across. My opinion here is that it's well worth the extra time to use the FARE system.

What resolution to use depends on your film. For standard grain color negative or slide films, I suggest you start each session with a scan of the smallest possible crop area of your negative, setting the crop frame on something with fine detail like text (a road sign for example) or a human face. Scan this crop at 2400, 3600, 4800, and 6000 dpi, then tile the 4 scans in your graphics editor at the same apparent size, so that you can see them side-by-side, then decide for yourself which resolution yields the most detail. If you decide that your film has a maximum resolution of 4000 lines per inch (157 line pairs per millimeter), use 4800 dpi; you won't get any more detail by going higher. NOTE: The highest resolution color film currently available on the consumer market is probably Fuji Velvia, which has a resolving power of about 160 line pairs per millimeter (and even then, only with high quality lenses). Scanning this film at 4800 dpi will probably bring out all of the available detail. The only film I know of that's finer grain and still available is Kodak Panatomic X Aerographic film, a 9" wide roll film used in aerial mapping cameras. This film is capable of 500 lines pairs per millimeter, which is an astounding 12,700 lines per inch. If you actually had a frame of this film, you might be able to get the most detail out of it with the 9000F set at 9600 dpi, but it wouldn't even fit on the platen glass without trimming, so it's a moot point. BTW, Photogrammetry shops that digitize this film use scanners that cost about $50,000, and the output files are several gigabytes for each frame.

4. Long-term durability. I have only had this scanner for a few hours, so only time will tell if it has the quality built in to keep it running for many years, but it runs, sounds, and feels like a well built device, and the output image quality is everything I hoped for. The case is mostly plastic, like most all electronics nowadays, so it doesn't have quite the "battleship" feel of the $8000 Canon EOS 1Ds camera, but it's not bad for $235.
5. Bundled software and drivers. The 9000F TWAIN Driver and scanning engine, called "ScanGear", has a well thought out user interface with "basic" and "advanced" modes. It automatically senses the size of your source image and adjusts the scan boundaries accordingly, or you can select a scan boundary manually. When scanning film or slides, ScanGear automatically sets crop boundaries around the visible edges of each film frame, so you don't have to scan the entire film strip then manually crop each frame in post-processing (unless you want to for some reason). ScanGear presents you with several options for processing and retouching, including dust/scratch removal (called FARE), fade correction, High Quality, Backlight correction, Grain correction, and Unsharp Mask. These corrections can be applied to all of the film frames, or set individually for some of the frames but not others. The effect of the color, Unsharp Mask, and backlight corrections appear immediately in the preview so you can decide if you want to enable them or not before doing the actual scan. The scanner is bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements v8, an $89 dollar value by itself (I haven't installed this since I already have Photoshop). It includes three film guides, one for 35 mm strip film, one for Medium format (120) film, and one for 35 mm slides. These film holders are thin plastic and don't feel like they would withstand much abuse, so treat them gently. You might want to consider buying a couple of extra film guides from Canon Parts Department (if possible) for the size of your film, before the 9000F goes out of production and extra film guides become unobtanium. Note that the film guides have to be set on the platen in a particular orientation or the scan will not be calibrated properly (the colors and brightness will be wrong).
The software CD also contains an application, MP Navigator, for file management of your scanning projects, and SilverFast SE, for adjustment of film scans, plus ArcSoft Photo Studio. I have not tried the bundled software yet.

Conclusion: The Canon 9000F scanner will scan any reflective media up to "A4" size (8.5" x 11") at up to 4800 dpi, or transparent media (film, slides) at up to 9600 dpi. It's very fast at average resolutions (1200 dpi or less), and has automatic dust/scratch removal and color adjustment built-in. Scans of color negative film are automatically compensated to remove the orange color mask and inversed to a positive image before being sent to your graphics software. The dust and scratch removal feature, called FARE, can be set to "low", "medium", or "high". I tried it on Medium and it seems to work, but on zooming in really close there are still plenty of dust speckles in the image (these are tiny and probably won't be visible on a re-print up to 4" x 6"). For what you get in terms of image quality, optical resolution, and speed, plus the ability to scan reflective media, film, or slides, I'd say the 9000F is probably the best under-$700 scanner available currently (October 2010). Highly recommended.

Also, delivery of this item from Amazon was incredibly fast - 3 days, and that was with the Free Super-Saver shipping! Read more ›