This is the third scanner I've tried and tested since the new year began. The first, a budget Veho negative scanner, was awful. The second, an Epson v330 was initially impressive, but developed serious problems very early on and was unceremoniously sent back for a refund. But the Canoscan 9000f? I can't find fault with it.
Let me start by saying I scan negatives and only negatives - I can't vouch for this machine's performance when it comes to scanning prints and documents, but I would assume the same outstanding quality would be found in these functions too.
The scanner is quiet, first of all, which is a real blessing when you're scanning negatives for hours on end (I have a lot of archiving to do!). It is by far the quietest scanner I've tried, including other document scanners I've used in the past. It is also quick. I've read reviews on here that claimed otherwise and frankly, I'm not quite sure how much faster they think a scanner producing high quality scans can work! In addition to this, you can load 12 negatives at a time, meaning that you don't have to baby-sit it quite so much as other scanners that can only take 6 negatives at a time.
For professionals and enthusiastic amateurs, there is also a medium format negative holder that can hold between three and four 120 negs, depending on frame size.
In terms of installation - couldn't have been easier. Absolutely no expertise is required, as is standard with today's installation software.
As for the most important aspect of the scanner - I have nothing but praise. I'm what you might call a bit of a demanding customer when it comes to image quality. I needed a scanner that could produce high resolution, clean scans from which I could produce large scale prints. This scanner does just that. You have to play around with the settings in the scanner driver (such as switching off the unsharp mask, ramping the DPI up to 3200 and switching on the 'high quality' setting) but this is all very straight forward and user friendly.
In short, unless you have the money to spend on something like Nikon's Coolscan, which runs into the thousands, you won't find a neg scanner better than this. It might be pricier than some of the other flatbeds available, but if you're a photographer you will know by now that you almost always get what you pay for, and with this scanner, that's a lot.