Padu Merloti
30-May-2007, 10:43
A little background on me first:
I'm not experienced with scanners, the only scanners I've ever owned were the very cheap ones (such as the $50 canon lide25). I've been "scanning" my 4x5's by photographing them on a light table using my dslr and although I can get some pretty decent results that way, I wanted something that would give me better quality.
My goal is to have a scanner that will allow me to have web-res images as well as prints as large as 11x14". Anything larger than that and I'll send it out to my pro-lab to be drum scanned.
Now to the review:
Quick drive to my local staples, they had it in store. Paid $215 including tax, they have a 14 day return policy without restocking fee, so it was plenty of time to install it, do a few tests and return for refund.
I tried to install it on my Vista machine. Big no no. The HP website gives you some provisional drivers that as they state will provide basic functionality. Basic functionality doesn't include scanning transparencies. I called the HP's tech support and for my surprise, in less than 3 minutes I was speaking with a (indian) tech support guy. He confirmed the info, saying that they are working on a full functionality driver for Vista and will release it very soon, but he didn't tell me when. I understand that. I'm a software engineer and I should be working on the Vista compatibility issues of our software right now instead of writing this review...
So, Vista right now is a big no no.
Repeated the whole process on my XP machine. Normal process, in less than 10 minutes it was done.
The scanner is supplied with a few adapters: for 35mm strips (5 strips if I'm not mistaken), 35mm slides, medium format film (120?) and one specific for 4x5 (one sheet). It's plastic, seems to work fine.
I didn't like the user interface of the software. Looks old and it is confusing. I liked the buttons on top of the scanner. It's a nice shortcut to launch the software.
I got one of my trannies that I sent out to my lab (scitex eversmart pro), so I could compare with something I know is good quality. Then I scanned it at different resolutions and parameters. I'll show you below, but here are my conclusions:
1) The quality of the scitex is greater than of the g4050, but for the same size scan (8x10 @300dpi), I'd be plenty satisfied with the g4050.
2) For large scans (greater than 1200dpi), it is veeeeery slow.
3) You can define dpi and a "resize" parameter. In some situations, if you define the resize to larger than 400% (600% or 800% for example), it will completely mess up. The scan will be stretched horizontally and the RGB layers will be misaligned.
4) Even though HP software will warn you against it, I found it better to set resize to 100% and calculate the dpi in order to scan at a given output. For example, I found that scanning at 1200dpi will give me a good quality scan without taking the whole day to perform the scanning.
5) Given its slow speeds, I doubt I'd be using it to scan lots of 35mm film
6) It says it has digital ICE, I honestly couldn't tell if it was enabled or disabled... I had to spend some time in photoshop cleaning my scan (luckily my film is very clean).
7) The 6-color scan: either it is pure myth or I didn't know how to use it. I saw no improvement on quality and it took longer to scan. I wouldn't use it.
8) I tested mounting the film directly on the glass, with another sheet of glass sandwiching the film. Focus was identical (sharp) to mounting the film on the adapter.
9) Given 8 above, I felt tempted to wet mount the film, but since I wasn't planning on keeping the scanner, I didn't. When viewing at 100%, you can see some artifacts typical of dry scanning, I guess that it can be improved a lot when wet mounted.
My final opinion:
I will buy this scanner again at a later time for two reasons: 1) Because it is very cheap compared with others. 2) Quality is reasonable.
I'll post some images here for comparison.
I'm not experienced with scanners, the only scanners I've ever owned were the very cheap ones (such as the $50 canon lide25). I've been "scanning" my 4x5's by photographing them on a light table using my dslr and although I can get some pretty decent results that way, I wanted something that would give me better quality.
My goal is to have a scanner that will allow me to have web-res images as well as prints as large as 11x14". Anything larger than that and I'll send it out to my pro-lab to be drum scanned.
Now to the review:
Quick drive to my local staples, they had it in store. Paid $215 including tax, they have a 14 day return policy without restocking fee, so it was plenty of time to install it, do a few tests and return for refund.
I tried to install it on my Vista machine. Big no no. The HP website gives you some provisional drivers that as they state will provide basic functionality. Basic functionality doesn't include scanning transparencies. I called the HP's tech support and for my surprise, in less than 3 minutes I was speaking with a (indian) tech support guy. He confirmed the info, saying that they are working on a full functionality driver for Vista and will release it very soon, but he didn't tell me when. I understand that. I'm a software engineer and I should be working on the Vista compatibility issues of our software right now instead of writing this review...
So, Vista right now is a big no no.
Repeated the whole process on my XP machine. Normal process, in less than 10 minutes it was done.
The scanner is supplied with a few adapters: for 35mm strips (5 strips if I'm not mistaken), 35mm slides, medium format film (120?) and one specific for 4x5 (one sheet). It's plastic, seems to work fine.
I didn't like the user interface of the software. Looks old and it is confusing. I liked the buttons on top of the scanner. It's a nice shortcut to launch the software.
I got one of my trannies that I sent out to my lab (scitex eversmart pro), so I could compare with something I know is good quality. Then I scanned it at different resolutions and parameters. I'll show you below, but here are my conclusions:
1) The quality of the scitex is greater than of the g4050, but for the same size scan (8x10 @300dpi), I'd be plenty satisfied with the g4050.
2) For large scans (greater than 1200dpi), it is veeeeery slow.
3) You can define dpi and a "resize" parameter. In some situations, if you define the resize to larger than 400% (600% or 800% for example), it will completely mess up. The scan will be stretched horizontally and the RGB layers will be misaligned.
4) Even though HP software will warn you against it, I found it better to set resize to 100% and calculate the dpi in order to scan at a given output. For example, I found that scanning at 1200dpi will give me a good quality scan without taking the whole day to perform the scanning.
5) Given its slow speeds, I doubt I'd be using it to scan lots of 35mm film
6) It says it has digital ICE, I honestly couldn't tell if it was enabled or disabled... I had to spend some time in photoshop cleaning my scan (luckily my film is very clean).
7) The 6-color scan: either it is pure myth or I didn't know how to use it. I saw no improvement on quality and it took longer to scan. I wouldn't use it.
8) I tested mounting the film directly on the glass, with another sheet of glass sandwiching the film. Focus was identical (sharp) to mounting the film on the adapter.
9) Given 8 above, I felt tempted to wet mount the film, but since I wasn't planning on keeping the scanner, I didn't. When viewing at 100%, you can see some artifacts typical of dry scanning, I guess that it can be improved a lot when wet mounted.
My final opinion:
I will buy this scanner again at a later time for two reasons: 1) Because it is very cheap compared with others. 2) Quality is reasonable.
I'll post some images here for comparison.