This page illustrates the problems I have had with my Canon “CanoScan” 9900F scanner, which I bought for the express purpose of scanning in old slides and negatives.
The images on this page are reduced in size; to see the originals, click on the image in question with the mouse.
I would prefer for them to do both. I am not interested in returning the unit, in which I have invested a large amount of time and effort.
In this view, slide 1 is at top left, slide 4 bottom left, slide 5 top right, and slide 8 bottom right. There's nothing obviously wrong with the slides on the right-hand side; in particular, slides 7 and 8 are very well defined.
This framing isn't just a cosmetic issue: the scanner uses it to decide what to do during the final scan. For example, compare the raw scan and the finished image here:
There's no excuse for this kind of breakage, but fortunately it's usually possible to fix it with software like xv, as long as the exposure hasn't suffered too much as a result.
This problem isn't because the slide is inserted in landscape format: the software does cater for that, and it frequently makes the opposite error and assumes that portrait slides are in fact landscape.
Things get a lot worse if the slides have an even marginally dark background. In the following example, the scanner has managed to decide that frame 5 is the wrong way round:
If you move to the raw display, everything looks fine. It sometimes helps to turn the slide in question through 90°, as has been done in this example. The images look good, and the scanner appears to have been able to locate the first slide correctly, to judge by the frame around it. Note that it has been told that the scanner contains 35 mm slides (field on the right).
Sometimes this works, in other cases things go to hell, as in this example. Returning to the thumbnail screen we find:
Here the software appears to have decided that these are negative strips, although it has been told that they're slides. This is confirmed if you go back to the full view: the field now shows 35mm strip, though nobody has changed it. In other words, instead of taking the advice as to the kind of film in the scanner, it not only ignores it but changes it. What use is that?
To add insult to injury, when you return to the raw view and try to change it back again, it insists on clearing the previews:
It didn't do that when converting (without permission) in the other direction. Note also where it has moved the frame in this example. It's hardly even worth mentioning the bad grammar of this particular message.
I don't know how the algorithms work (or in this case, are supposed to work), but it seems probable that they recognize edges. In this case, this software has failed catastrophically: it has ignored the information at its disposal and spread the real edges of the slides around the “thumbnails”.
One theoretical workaround is to scan in the entire set of images as one image and use real software to dissect them later. That doesn't really work: the driver includes the black frames in the exposure calculations, resulting in a really washed-out image. You can also mark the frames individually and scan them like that. The latter takes for ever, and due to the low resolution of the thumbnails, about 50x70, it's also prone to incorrect exposure. The fact that the software chooses a line cursor for this function also makes things more difficult.
The exposure is usually not correct.
Having to rescan individual slides makes it really easy to get the slides out of sequence.
I responded that the symptoms were indicative of a software problem, and that service wouldn't be able to help.
Uninstall driver and reboot the machine.
I asked him why, and he said that maybe some parameters had got mixed up. OK, this is Microsoft, so maybe it might work. He told me—correctly—how to “uninstall” it, and I did so and rebooted. To my surprise, the driver “reinstalled” itself. I wonder what “uninstall” means. The problem didn't go away, of course.
Try a different program to access the driver. I had been using a program which identified itself with the descriptive (or is that “intuitive”?) name ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5. I also had another CD with a program called Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, which I had not installed because it had asked for a serial number. After a bit of searching, found the serial number in the waste paper basket on the paper envelope in which the CD had come (I had since put the CD in a jewel box). Installed that, and of course it didn't make any difference: it called the same driver, which was as broken as before.
Next, Ejaz asked me to try a different computer.
I asked him why, since this was so obviously a software problem, and he said that it might be a problem with my computer (which has performed flawlessly despite the Microsoft software on it). I told him that I didn't have another computer (not true, but the last thing I want to do is to install Microsoft on another machine, and in any case, that would be in breach of the license). I asked him, if that attempt were to be unsuccessful (i.e. the same problem would continue to occur), whether he would then ask me to go interstate and try it there.
He replied that Canon second-level support wouldn't accept a report until we had gone through all these steps. That at least sounds plausible. I asked him whether Canon in Adelaide could do this, but no, they're not prepared to do that. But they expect that of a customer. Finally we came to the conclusion that I would send him a mail message with a detailed problem description. That's this web page, which has taken me three hours to put together. At my consulting rate, that's worth $750, more than the scanner.
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