Continuing with my saga of pointless tests on cheap scanners, I bought a canoscan 8600F. My first surprise: the slit on the top of the scanner isn't wide enough to cover a full 4x5 tranny. Big show stopper.
Since I had it in my hands, I decided to go ahead and use my test tranny and see how it compares with the scitex, the dslr and the hg g4050.
Well, it at least had drivers for vista. If you have 35mm negatives, slides or 120 film, this scanner may be a very good option (paid $180 at best buy). It does a very good job at identifying individual frames and the speed is not so bad. Comparing the 8600F and the G4050 is like comparing a bicycle and a gsxr1000.
I scanned the tranny in two parts and merged it later in adobe elements. I didn't have photoshop in my laptop, so I had to struggle a bit with elements. The driver software is a bit cumbersome, especially when you're trying to scan something directly from the glass.
Anyways, here's a comparison again:
hp g4050
canon canoscan 8600F @1200 dpi, 100% crop
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