Customer Reviews

HP PhotoSmart S20 Photo Scanner

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After wistfully wanting a slide scanner but knowing they were out of my price range, I jumped at the chance to get one under $500. Normal scanners just don't have the resolution to do slides or negatives. I was expecting a lot of hassle, as is typical with periperhals, but this little scanner was really easy to set up and use. It lets you make corrections to contrast, color level, brightness, etc., before you actually scan. I take a lot of slides and can finally make prints from them easily on my printer (before i had to pay big $$ to have slides printed, since they have to make a negative and then print from that, resulting in major quality loss). I also take a lot of black and white portraits, but don't have a darkroom. I can finally tweak the image just like I'm developing it myself with chemicals.

Scanning is fast and the results are sharp and colorful. It's pretty amazing for the price.

Thank God for H/P! I do a lot of photography and being a purist (using film and a darkroom) I resisted the move to digital imaging mainly because I couldn't find what I needed without a second mortgage on my condo. I needed to be able to scan negatives mainly because the scan quality is higher resulting in better print quality. When I saw the S20's bang for the buck, I knew that my digital imaging time had come. This scanner is the greatest thing since sliced bread as far as I'm concerned. And knowing H/P quality to be what it is, I bought my S20 with every confidence and not a second thought. My faith has been well-rewarded. I couldn't ask for more for what I have invested. Anyone planning to scan photos, slides, and negatives need look no further than the S20. Thanks H/P!

Although the cost of this scanner is still prohibitive to some, the fact is that this is a professional-quality film scanner at an excellent price.

Initially I purchased the much cheaper Epson Perfection Photo 1200. It had dead spots along the scanning array - turned out the entire batch of a few hundred scanners was faulty. I then decided to splurge and got the HP S20, and I have not looked back.

Installation is tricky - so be sure to read the instructions in the (VERY POOR!) manual. Once you have that going, the rest is a breeze. The included software is fantastic in that it's analysis of the image and automatic adjustment of colour, balance, exposure, etc, is dead right 9 out of 10 times. Under- or over-exposed slides and negatives are no longer an issue. I love the exposure control, which allows to adjust exposure separately for light, medium, and dark regions - most scanner software only has a single exposure control. This allows you to make excellent repairs to a face that came out too dark in a sunny picure.

Resolution of course is spectacular - a bit too spectacular perhaps since every single microscopic dust particle gets duly represented on the scanned image :-) Seriously though, the results of blowing up about a fifth of a slide and printing it as a full page on an HP PhotoSmart P1000 printer were excellent.

The scanner is a bit noisy, and also very slow - especially at the high resolutions, as can be expected. Slides, negative strips, as well as photographs are dealt with relatively easily.

The only problem that I see is that the scanner is unable to scan a single frame of a negative (only strips of two or more). This is an issue with slides when you want to scan the maximum frame area - i.e. scan the slide without the mount. I think the solution will be to buy a slide mount that is easily re-openable, and use a craft-knife to cut out a larger viewing area.

In summary, if it is convenience and speed you want, then perhaps this is not for you - however if scan quality is the overriding priority and you take your hobby seriously, then this is it.

"~The HP scanner is amazing. Color from negatives and even prints is clear, sharp, and accurate. I originally bought the Olympus ES10 and returned it because it was very finicky with certain negatives. It seems to really exaggerate negative that were slightly overexposed and created very blueish scans from certain negatives which were hard or impossible to correct through the clunky Olympus scanning software."~ for a wide range of under/overexposed shots and color biases.

I've been using the original PhotoSmart S10 for about four years to scan lots of negatives and an occasional slide. While I agree with everyone here that it is a good product, I would point out that it has a few weaknesses. If you are a serious photographer, you may want to keep reading...

SOFTWARE The software that comes with it (v1.0) is laborious to use if you are trying to scan more than a couple of images. It does annoying things like spit out the negative after one scan, and you have to reinsert the negative to scan the next image. It also resets all of the image controls you set by hand (contrast, gamma, color balance). Fortunately, there are some good shareware scanning applications that work with the PhotoSmart that fix these problems... I have also found the automatic settings do not set the color balance correctly in many cases. It may be close, but try one of these sharewares I mentioned, and you will see a huge improvement in image quality.

HARDWARE Other gripes come from the corners HP cut to make this scanner more affordable, but if they are important to you, you may want to consider a higher-end scanner:

Doesn't work very well with dense slides. Its limited dynamic range is evident when trying to scan a dark slide, and you get nasty moiré patterns in the dark areas (compare to Nikon LS2000 or Minolta Dimage Elite).

No scratch/dust removal (compare to Nikon LS2000 or Minolta Dimage Elite).

Lack of a slide feeder (compare to Nikon LS2000).

It appears to be a fixed-focus design because sometimes you have a slide or negative that has a little curve to it, and the image won't be very sharp. Some of the more expensive scanners will actually auto-focus before each scan. This is probably more of a problem for film you develop yourself (e.g. B&W) than the stuff you get back from you 1-hour lab.

CONCLUSION The PhotoSmart is a great product for the casual user, but if you're going to do any volume scanning, you may want to consider a high-end scanner...but be prepared to pay $1500 for one! For that kind of money, you can get a really nice digital camera!

I am not rich and I paid a lot of money for this product.

Thankfully, it was worth every penny and I have been using it happily for over 3 years.

There are better scanners out there, but for the dollar, this is a fabulous machine: thus, the five star rating.

That said, please note that this unit ***DOES*** in fact work with Windows XP. At one point I thought it did not work either, but it does. HP released an XP driver/software for it.

At 70 MB, it's a hell of a download, but worth it for those of us that have moved into the 21st century.

You can download it from the HP website.

- Go to HP.com.
- Select 'Home & Home Office.'
- Type 'S20' into the Search field.
- The HP Photosmart S20 and a photo will appear.
- Select 'Download drivers & software' from this screen.
- Select 'Microsoft Windows XP.'
- Select 'PhotoSmart Scanner (SCSI) and S20/S20xi Photo Scanner (USB) Software.'
- Click 'Download now' to being downloading ps804en.exe.
- Follow instructions (or common sense) to install the software.
- A Windows-based message will appear during installation that recommends stopping installation because the HP Photosmart software has not passed Windows Logo testing.
- Despite your usually better judgement, ignore this and click 'Continue Anyway.'

I was terrified to do this, but I called and e-mailed HP directly and was told in both instances that HP had tested and verified compatibility of the HP Photosmart software with Windows XP.

My Hewlett-Packard PhotoSmart S20 scanner now works like a charm on my Windows XP.

Hooray for HP.

Hewlett Packard's PhotoSmart S20 desk-top scanner is a wonder. It is easy to set up and easy to use. Our biology department owns the one that I use. It's ease of set-up is therefore important. When I need to use it, I just go pick it up (it's light enough to carry easily), plug it into the USB port on my office computer, and it's ready to go (once the software is installed).

I have tried a number of different ways to transfer my 35mm slides (I have 1000s of them) to a digital format with only marginal success UNTIL I found this little unit!

I routinely use 35mm slides as I teach my biology and environmental studies courses, and with the advent of better and better presentation software (e.g., PowerPoint), I wanted a way that I could use my slides in making presentations and digital slide shows for my classes...this is IT!! I also use images digitized via this unit to support web page development for my courses, etc.

This little unit (12"x8"x4") is does a great job of digitizing mounted slides, images from negatives, and from prints and anything else about that size. This scanner lets you determine the size of the image, the quality of the scanned image, and provides some on-screen editing capabilities. After a preliminary scan you are shown an image that you can edit (blocking, brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc.), name the file, and then tell the scanner to run a final scan and it generates a final image. That who process takes a couple of minutes per image. I must confess that I use this gadget primarily for scanning, but for editing my images I usually use Adobe Photoshop (another wonderful tool!).

The operation of this scanner is largely intuitive. I like that. There are only two buttons on the front of the unit. The first one tells the unit whether you want to scan a slide, a negative, or a print. The second one is an eject button if you need to get the original out before it would normally come out. And that's it.

I highly recommend this piece of hardware to anyone who is looking for a good method for converting their collection of slides into digital images.

5 stars for ease of use and for quality of results!

Have fun!

Alan Holyoak

We got this scanner because we were just not satisfied with the results from trying (reasonably priced) digital cameras. Plus we had several very good standard cameras at home. Digital cameras are fun and have some specific uses (quick shots for websites, snapshots at parties) but for really good quality photography, we didn't want to spend the money on a top end digital camera when we had a good SLR already.

This scanner is the perfect way to get digital photos from your camera. We take our film to the photoshop and for a few bucks, we have it developed without prints. Then we scan in the negatives and get remarkably good, digitized photos. Some places will develop the film and make a thumbnail index for you. This is helpful for choosing which negatives to scan in first.

Plus points: This scanner has a reasonably small footprint so takes up little space on the desk. It isn't hard to install. The software is easy to use. It can do prints, negatives and slides. While standard flat-bed scanner can do prints, it doesn't do negatives or slides.

Also, you have the flexibility to make regular photo paper prints from the negatives, or just transmit your photos digitally. This is nice. We store our negatives scanned in as a reference and can quickly see which photos we really want to print. The others are stored digitally and we don't have shoe boxes full of prints cluttering up the desk drawers.

Negative points: We get streaks when scanning a print. The negatives come out clean. Don't know why this happens. But since we just use it for negatives, we don't care.

It is also a bit slow to scan in each negative. So a thumbnail index is helpful to decide which negative to scan in first. Doing a whole roll of 36 exposures takes some time.

But we can UNRESERVEDLY recommend this scanner. It works, it's great and it gives you so much more from your camera.

After 5 months of experience with this machine, scanning 500+ slides, I have several things to say about this devcice:

The Hardware is basically OK, also the results are satisfying. The way to achieve the results is another story. The software is cumbersome. My primary application is to scan unmounted slides.

1.) The algorithm to find the pictures' boundaries produces random results in 50% of the cases, meaning that you always have to check and manually adjust. This is especially true with Kodachrome film.

2.)There is no 'quickscan' option, in the sense that you can scan a strip of slides without preview for bulk scanning. Meaning if you want to do a whole role of film you need time.

3.) Third, the USB implementation of HP seems not to be as clean as sony's and causes trouble every once and a while (same applies to my HP Scanner, Printer)

The most important thing is, that the result is really good, but the way to get there is not a quick and trouble free one. Therefore three stars.

I've owned this unit for a couple of years & love it. Very handy, dependable, easy to use, never had any problems & love the results. I do not work for HP nor do any of my relatives or friends & I do make money from my photos. That out of the way, I must confess that I resent "reviews" which take to task other users and arbitrarily classify us as "professionals" or "amateurs" based upon our level of agreement with the author. Most of the gripes I've read about seem to fall into 2 categories: (1) the Windows 2000 incompatibility: Hey, boxes are cheap - why not get a dedicated PC with compatible platform (e.g. W98)? - that's a common "professional" solution, or (2) the dust/lack of ICE software syndrome: Hey, try a little old-fashioned housekeeping! ICE is nice, but you also get degradation of detail with it, the usual technological trade-off...or maybe that doesn't matter when you're just doing wedding photos.