Canon CanoScan 9900F USB Flatbed Color Image Scanner

by Canon

Product Details

Product Manual [1.90mb PDF]

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Data Sheet [87kb PDF]

• Item Weight: 11.5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 18 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00008IOQM
• Item model number: 8132A002
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 29, 2004

Product Description

Canon Computers Systems Color Image Scanner 3200x6400

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Scanner, May 3, 2003

By 

Michael Casey "Michael" (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Canon CanoScan 9900F USB Flatbed Color Image Scanner (Office Product)

Perhaps the most versatile scanner yet. Has a true optical resolution of 3200dpi, which means it is very usable as a film (neg/trans) scanner. Canon includes neg/trans holders with the bundle, both for 35mm, medium formats, and 4x5. The software bundle includes Photoshop Elements, an OCR software, and some lesser programs. One great software program that comes built-in is the Canon FLARE 2 dust and scratch removal tool. Unlike ICE, FLARE 2 works on Kodachrome slides. It does not work on B&W. The one-button scanning ability is great if you do a lot of document scanning into Acrobat or an OCR program, but the single button film scanning really isn't useful, as you'll want to go into the Canoscan software and adjust the setting for most scans.

I have scanned both transperencies and negatives and the results have been very good. When compared to my Nikon Coolscan IV (a 2600dpi film scanner) the results hold up very well. Several newer Velvia trans looked very good at 3200dpi, even when compared to the scans from the Nikon. The scans are very slow from the 9900F, but the fact that I can scan multiple slide or negs at one time makes up for the lack of speed.

Scanning a 6x4.5 medium format neg the results were very sharp but a bit on the dark side. Note that I do not usually adjust for brightness during the scanning process and choose to wait until the image is dumped into Photoshop to do such work. Once adjusted, the scanned image looked excellent -- although the file was over 60mb in size.

About the only complaint I have is that Canon chose to make this scanner 8.5x11 instead of 8.5x14 -- having the ability to scan legal size, or oversize prints, would have been a plus.

I was very pleased with all of the scans I've done so far, including the 35mm and medium fomrat scans of negatives. The FLARE software really does work well, and is comparable to ICE. The 3200dpi scan gives some huge medium format file sizes, but that is what we want! An excellent scanner at a great price.

72 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT scanner, but...., August 25, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Canon CanoScan 9900F USB Flatbed Color Image Scanner (Office Product)

I purchased this scanner for the purpose of scanning old B&W negatives (film size A116), color 35mm slides, and large format (Hasselblad) color negatives and slides...in addition to B&W and color photo scans and the occasional text scan.

I found the directions well written and the scanner and software easy to install on my computer. The test scan I took came out as beautiful as the original. Then, I randomly selected one of the B&W negatives for scanning...the picture that looked back at me took my breath away!!! It was taken 70+ years ago (and has been crammed into a metal matchbox for about the same number of years), and it was absolutely stunning...yes, this scanner was everything I had hoped it would be.

Then, I attempted to save this scan...and the problems began. It seemed that both of the softwares included were not happy with my computer set-up. I settled on using Photoshop Elements 2.0, because I was more familiar with it. I would load the software, do a preview (which brought up a large thumbnail), then do a final scan. After the final scan, I received an error message that said it could not perform that function. I then performed the scan a second time, and everthing was fine. I could then save the picture. However, if I tried to scan a second negative, the software locked up, forcing me to go into Task Manager applications and end the task. I discovered that if I closed Photoshop Elements after each saved scan, then restarted it, things worked okay. For me, this was NOT acceptable! My plan was to contact Canon tech support the following week...

Since this was a Friday, I decided I should take a second look at Canon's system requirements for the 9900F, since this had all of the earmarks of a memory (RAM) issue. I was running a Windows XP Pro (upgraded from Windows 98Me), a 1.4GHZ processor, 256MB of RAM...the minimum that Canon recommended for Windows XP (w/USB 2.0) is 566 MHz and 128 MB RAM! Hmmmmm... I figured that boosting the RAM would help, but the cost of the type of RAM I had was kind of high, so my son talked me into upgrading the entire system (new 2.4 GHz processor, new motherboard, and 1024 MB of RAM, and a fresh install of Windows XP). Well, now it works PERFECTLY...no problems.

I had heard prior to purchase there were software issues with the Canon 9900F, but I have been very happy with other Canon products I own, so I went for it! Maybe I was in need of an upgrade anyway...HOWEVER, I do believe that Canon's system requirements were way off with regard to the RAM required to use the scanner and effectively operate the software. I might have knocked half a star off for this, but I don't believe these shortcomings should reflect poorly on what is otherwise an OUTSTANDING scanner.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mac users beware:nice scanner, terrible software, no support, June 26, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Canon CanoScan 9900F USB Flatbed Color Image Scanner (Office Product)

I assumed that, having a Firewire interface, this scanner would have really good Mac OS X support. Boy was I wrong. The CD came with no obvious installer, but a bunch of unintuitively named installers deep inside folders with no clues about the order of installation. I was able to download better installers from Canon's web site, but even so, the installation was painful. The installer would actually install another installer and then launch Internet Explorer to give you instructions on what to do next. There were several pieces of software to install, each one using this Byzantine method. At least the instructions in IE were clear.

The scanner driver is quite bad. The layout of the interface is poor (not to mention ugly) and the software sucks up all available CPU power when idle (strangely, CPU power goes down to 5 or 10% during scanning). Also, the installers load daemons that watch for button presses on the front of scanner. These suck up 5 or 10% of the CPU when the scanner is disconnected and output error messages continually to the system log files (they to grow to hundreds of megabytes and it becomes very difficult to find anything useful in them.)

Now, scanner software has a reputation for being bad and I just assumed that if Canon's were terrible I would buy the fantastic VueScan shareware program. I should have done my homework: Canon uses a proprietary communication protocol with this scanner, so it will only work with THEIR awful software. I recommend checking carefully and only buying TWAIN scanners, unless you KNOW the software that the scanner comes with is good.

Finally, I keep having a problem where, in the middle of a scan, the driver tells me that it has lost communication with the scanner and to check the cable. Once this happens, only a reboot will restore communication. Disconnecting the scanner, power cycling it, changing the cable, etc have no effect.

I sent tech support queries to Canon several times about these problems and never received a response.

On the hardware side, the negative scanner insert is pretty flimsy (though it hasn't broken yet) and does not hold the negatives flat. The lid does not quite close all the way. I usually have to put a small book on it to get it flush with the glass.

The scans that I have made are quite nice. But the pain associated with them has meant I have not used the scanner as much as I intended and have spent far too much time making those few scans.