Picked up a scanner tonight, as it’s the next step in the whole photo taking, archiving, etc process that we seem to have started into. I got the HP Scanjet 4570cxi. It does 2400×2400, has a negative and slide attachment, can take a feeder system, and is USB 2.0.
In buying this I discovered a new tactic for buying at Futureshop. They had the new scanners, and then also three refurbished ones at $100 less (or $50 if you take into account the $50 mail in rebate that the new ones had). So while deciding which one to get I decided on this one for a couple of reasons. The first would be that while it’s not exactly the same model, it’s the closest they had in the store to the 5370C model that is mentioned in the Popular Photography and Imaging Top 10 Scanner roundup, which has high marks in all areas.
The second reason was price. I got the refurb model for $100 less (or $50) and go the lowest level of warranty that assured me a straight exchange for a new model (not another refurb) should anything be wrong with this one. So basically if the slightest thing is wrong or goes wrong, I get a brand new one for $25 (or $75) less than if I paid for it new. And if nothing is wrong, then hey, I got $50 (or $100) less.
The scanner is pretty good, though their advertised “no lamp warm up time”, “7 second preview” and “20 second scan time” only works with the 200dpi resolution. Turn it up to 600 and suddenly these times go right out the window. Also if you are scanning with the film scanner the lamp warm up time is a lot longer than “none”. Still, it doesn’t totally suck.
As shown by this scan there are some artifacts on the glass (you might need to get the full size to see them, in the black in the bottom right). Might be dirt I missed while cleaning the glass, might be nicks in the glass (there are some on there). Will have to see if affects things enough to make it worth it to take it back and get the “free” upgrade to a brand new one. The scans of film negatives work well, as evidenced by this scan of my favorite shot from the weekend.
There’s definately nothing wrong with the scanner that I’ve found yet, however, there are some things that I muttered about.
It still has one of those huge ass wall wart plugs (I was secretly hoping that it’d get it’s power from the USB cord and I wouldn’t need to have another cable in the mess that’s there already). Even with a powerbar that had extra far apart plugs to take into account of these it still didn’t fit and I had to rearrange various plugs to give it room 🙁
And while not a major problem, when scanning negatives it didn’t do any sort of auto-slice-and-dice to the scanned image. It did scan them into TIF, which was cool, but I still had to rotate and chop up the image. Another thing that will have to see if it’s a big PITA or not.
Still, new toy, now I can archive and display the nifty pics I have stuffed in a box in the closet and A can print out the good stuff from the gallery(s).