Canon Canoscan 9000f Film / Photo And Document Scanner (9600x9600dpi, 48 Bit Colour Depth)

This is an excellent scanner for films: 120 size 2.25 x 3.25 inch negatives and longer lengths of 120 film, 35 mm slides and 35 mm negative film strips as well as documents, photos etc. It is straightforward to use and produces very good results. Adobe Elements 8 is included in the package which is able to make even 60 year old 120 films look good with a bit of adjusting. Before this I used a Nikon Coolscan III for slides and this Canoscan produces better results and much more easily. Advent Data from whom this came delivered it within 24 hours of my ordering it! Thoroughly recommended.

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.

I purchased the Canon 9000f in June 2010, this item being the fourth Canon scanner I have owned over the past ten years. I run a website and my scanners have all been heavily used in order to scan documents and images which are eventually uploaded for permanent residence on the site as reference material.

The three stand out features of this scanner are:

1.) Zero warm up time. The scanner is available to use immediately it's switched on.

2.) Scan Speeds. While I haven't timed the thing with a stop watch, it's very quick! As would be expected scanning times slow down as image resolution is increased. However it is still quicker than my last Canon scanner, an 8800f.

3.) Photoshop Elements 8. The scanner comes bundled with a host of software including the latest version of Photoshop Elements (8). I had been looking to update my existing version (5) and was prepared to spend the £60+ necessary to compliment my new scanner - I was delighted to find that there was no need to do so.

All the usual film and negative mounts are also included. The seven shortcut buttons on the top panel include 4 for PDF creation but these have received little use to date, although the 'Copy' button is helpfull for those without an 'all in one' printer.

The one neagative I can think of concerns the weight and bulk of the thing. It does take up a lot of valuable desk space and it definitely could not be considered portable in any way. Perhaps the reason for the increase in weight over the 8800f is that the AC Power Adaptor is now incorporated within the body of the scanner itself and does not 'sit' between the the mains cable connection to the machine and the wall socket. Some will no doubt see this as an advantage.

The Canon 9000f appears to be well made and its black, silver and grey finish will probably match the rest of your computing equipment as these colours seem currently to be the industry norm. While its colours will please some and not others its performance should please everybody. Many of the scans I make are from 80 year old magazines and the information I am now able to retrieve from foxed and faded pages is amazing, certainly a marked improvement over the earlier Canon. The Canon 9000f receives a thumbs up from me.