Microtek ScanMaker 5900

by Microtek

Product Details

Product Manual [13.47mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 10 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006IRZZ
• Item model number: 1108-03-540001
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #100 in Electronics > Camera & Photo > Printers & Scanners > Flatbed Scanners
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 29, 2002

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Packed with high-performance hardware, Microtek's ScanMaker 5900 offers 4,800 x 2,400 dpi optical resolution, built-in 4-by-5-inch transparency adapter, new Hi-Speed USB (USB 2.0) interface, and eight function buttons for automating the most common scanning tasks. Plus, with its slim, sleek design, this powerhouse is the ideal choice for small office or home users who demand the highest levels of performance, style, and value. Compatible with Windows XP and Macintosh.

Product Description

48BIT USB 2.0 WINDOWS/MAC

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars If You Want To Scan Film - AVOID THIS!, May 8, 2003

By 

Greg Bulmash (Lynnwood, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microtek ScanMaker 5900 (Office Product)

One of the ways my wife and I kept down the costs of photography at our wedding was to use a photographer who gave us the proof prints and negatives and let us make the albums ourselves.

I'm a photo editor for a major web site, so I felt comfortable with this arrangement. I've scanned thousands of slides, photos, and negatives in my time... of course with my employer's fairly expensive equipment.

I was at [store], just browsing, and the advertising on the box said this could scan negatives and slides at 2400 DPI. Ummm... yeah.

When I started trying to scan negatives they came out horribly. The color was terrible, even with manual adjustment, and the images came out extraordinarily grainy.

I went to Microtek's support web site to see if maybe I was doing something wrong without realizing it. The support form made me state the problem in 250 characters (approx 42 words) or less. I described the poor quality issues as best I could.

Microtek advised me to use certain settings... the exact settings I'd been using, but couldn't include in my 42 words or less. I told them that's what I was doing, but they still came out poorly. Microtek's response was that I should buy a dedicated film scanner, like their ArtixScan, if I wanted better results.

Let me say that the flatbed scans of regular photos came out just fine. But you're paying extra for a transparency adapter that will let you scan slides and film, and then does a poor job of it. If you just want to scan prints and documents, buy a less expensive scanner without this half-baked feature.

I did a LOT of research on flatbeds that could do good film scans, accomodate multiple film sizes, and do it at a decent price. I finally settled on the Epson Perfection 3200, though the price at [store] was a bit more than double the price of the Microtek.

I have since returned the Microtek and am very happy with the test results I've had from the Epson so far.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Microtek 5900 scanner, December 1, 2002

By 

Onajide Shabaka "Art_Thirst_Projects" (Hallandale, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microtek ScanMaker 5900 (Office Product)

Well, recently I purchased the Microtek 5900 scanner because I need a transparency scanner to handle my 35mm, 120, and 4x5 films. I went back to scan some film I took as far back as 1966 (b&w) and also tried out some 6x7 negative and positive film (6x7 slides), and 4x5 negs. I opened the scanning program and found the "simple" settings not to my liking and switched to the advanced settings where I could scan for various outputs: desktop printer, web, print (such as brochures, postcards, etc.).

I was very satisifed until I ran across problematic review on the scanner. I went back to check out some of the things the reviewer mentioned, "The scans were littered with red pixels (in a moire noise pattern)! They were also INCREDIBLY blurry." I found that by having the proper settings there was no problem such as the reviewer mentioned. I did notice some differences in the quality of the scans but, I also noticed the worse scans came from the film that was not developed very well. I made the original mistake of not taking the film to a professional lab for processing.

In addition to the normal type of scanning you do I eventually got around to scanning text. This scanner allows to scan text and then manipulate it in several forms: html, pdf, and plain text. I did find the text scanning did have some problems diacritical markings of French, Creole, and Yoruba (three languages I work with in my work). However, even with those limitations I felt it was worth having most of my scanned text editable.

To sum up, I think this scanner is just fine. I'm sure there are better scanners out there but, for the price, this one is among the best I've seen and used. I've used several different flatbed/transparency scanners in this price range over the past several years but decided to purchase my own instead of using ones in an educational graphic labs at the three colleges I have access to.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars decent for money, April 25, 2003

By 

"paulcgi" (Mt. Pleasant, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microtek ScanMaker 5900 (Office Product)

I started with a visioneer scanner... it was very fast, but had poor image quality and couldn't handle my 120 film. I took it back and got the 5900. The driver came up as untested in Vindows XP but I installed anyway. True as stated elsewhere, microtek's OCR would not install but it comes with ABBYY which installed fine.
Compared to the Visioneer, this thing is super slow but the image quality is MUCH better. A 600 dpi scan from the Microtek compares to a >1200dpi from the visioneer.
The scans from my 120 film negs are outstanding even only at 600dpi.
My only complaint with it is (at least on USB 1) scans are very very slow (my 6x4.5cm negative @ 600dpi took almost 20 minutes!)

All in all, even with the slow speed, I am very happy with the quality of the scans.

-UPDATE- I downloaded the latest driver from microtek's website. it fixed all of the issues I was having with this scanner. After turning off the instant preview, I have not had a single problem with this scanner and would definitly recommend it. Only issue for others might be a 15 meg download on a modem