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So I wanna buy a scanner
I'm not that rich, but I was looking for something between 70-170€, if there even is something that cheap.... Guess it'll mainly be for A4 sized stuff I guess?

Need some tip on brand etc. In our local "PC" store here and we got flatbed (if correctly translated i think..) film and document scanners, they all kinda look the same, and I don't wanna feel like and idiot going there asking for which one I should by and for "what" purpose >.<
I bough a refurbished Canon Lide25 for 25EUR on ebay (shipping included), works fine.

See pool #473
I bought a Epson Perfection V200 for about 90$ at my local Fry's.

It has done me well so far.
Shuugo said:
I bough a refurbished Canon Lide25 for 25EUR on ebay (shipping included), works fine.
See pool #473
same. I recommend you the newest canoscan lide. my currently scanner is canoscan5600f for fast whole book scan, but its price is bit high. lide is slowscanner, but quality is same to higher price scanners regardlees of its cheapness.
midzki said:
same. I recommend you the newest canoscan lide. my currently scanner is canoscan5600f for fast whole book scan, but its price is bit high. lide is slowscanner, but quality is same to higher price scanners regardlees of its cheapness.
That 5600 has the bad WIA drivers that won't give 16-bit output, which means you're limited to 8-bit output with Vuescan. I don't know if other Canon scanners have the same problem.
A tip, "never" buy an epson scanner different from the Perfection series that aoie mentioned..they're all shit (i've tested 3 of them so far).
I have a Epson Perfection 1670, no complaints with it so far....
epson perfection 1650, but a bit slow imho :|
not sure about quality...

thought CIS (lide25) would totally suck, and only CCD is good... well its still the photosoftware pissing me off the most
all produts released recently have same quality for most people's eyes :P
buy the cheapest one, and if you noticed some flaw of its quality, then hammer it, & buy the better one :D
midzki said:
same. I recommend you the newest canoscan lide. my currently scanner is canoscan5600f for fast whole book scan, but its price is bit high. lide is slowscanner, but quality is same to higher price scanners regardlees of its cheapness.
Yeah lide25 is slooooow. It's "green" hardware so it doesn't make use of electricity directly, it just uses the energy from the USB wire so you can guess why it's so slow.
syaoran-kun said:
A tip, "never" buy an epson scanner different from the Perfection series that aoie mentioned..they're all shit (i've tested 3 of them so far).
Epson Stylus DX7450 series here, couldn't complain about it yet.
I have the Epson perfection 4490. It does ok for me.
petopeto said:
That 5600 has the bad WIA drivers that won't give 16-bit output, which means you're limited to 8-bit output with Vuescan. I don't know if other Canon scanners have the same problem.
I guess all products from canon have similar problem, but for who are adjusting colors directory using scannerdriver not using any photoapplications provided by canon, it's not the critical problem :P
Scanning in 16-bit is just so fundamental that it's absurd for Canon to screw it up. It'd be like nVidia releasing graphics drivers that only support 800x600, and just going "Oops!"
petopeto said:
Scanning in 16-bit is just so fundamental that it's absurd for Canon to screw it up. It'd be like nVidia releasing graphics drivers that only support 800x600, and just going "Oops!"
I can scan at 16bit just fine with my lide25. Maybe it's the platform?
I'd explain what's up on my scanner.
when using the default driver, input is always 16bit. but couldn't save at 16bit without particular applications like CS.
if I use vuescan instead of the default driver, input is always limited at 8bit regardless of output file showing "this is 16bit file" :P
however, I won't use vuescan because it seems couldn't handle fast scan by LED technology (with my scanner driver, 10sec/300dpi).
And here I am after I've been busy with IRL, and I seriously have no idea who I should listen too anymore... I just need a "decent and not so cheap/expensive" scanner that can do the job that I've seen other people doing.

I'm not that "high-tech" but I do have some common sense about scanning, but since we have so many "scanners" here I'd like to hear your opinion on; THE scanner(s) that has the fastest speed/best result in which is processes the "picture" and has decent amount of settings to filter out X. I don't mind waiting as long as it doesn't take a decade, or spits out half-decent scans that has color issues. I understand that settings/profiling is the key to "win", but the rest can be done in PS no?

@ Wrath:
I read a little about Epson Perfection 4490 rather simple setup, and it seems okay for me, just a bit a higher price of what I had expected, was mainly looking for something around 150~ euros. So unless someone can comprehend I'll order this one next week.
Any of the more recent Canoscan LiDe series sound like what you need then. Cheap, easy to use, fast enough, and good quality scans. And it's not as bulky as the other options.
That one goes for $150 in the US; you can get scanners for cheaper than that...

It'd be useful to have a list of scanners and data, eg:
- manufacturer and model number
- type (flatbed or autofeeder, bed size)
- availability (US, EU, JP) and typical prices
- scan time for one A4 page at 600 DPI
- warmup time
- unusual quirks (driver bugs; excess dust accumulation behind the glass; no 1200 DPI support or no 16-bit support; unusually large for the bed size; poor build quality; etc) and unusual features (like the OpticBook bed's flat edge--as obvious and simple as it is, it seems uncommon); if you didn't like it, say why

It's hard to get useful information from reviews, which tend to focus on bundled software, lower resolutions, builtin descreening, OCR, nothing relevant to us; and it's hard to get it from marketing specs, which tend to give scanning times for lower DPIs (since that gives them nicer numbers), etc.
I wouldn't recommend the OpticBook, its not sealed and dust gets under the scanning bed very easily and you can't take it apart without voiding the warranty...have to go though a RMA process which takes a few days...big hassle
Feito said:
I just need a "decent and not so cheap/expensive" scanner that can do the job that I've seen other people doing.
Every newest flatbed scanners can do the best job because the quality is 99% depending on man's skill :P

the main difference is scanning speed. if you mind slowness of scanning speed, buy LED models. or not, lide is enough.
Anyone have a scanner that can scan at 600DPI in less than 10 seconds?
Well, my scanner is BenQ Scanner5000, it's cost about $1500 NTD, but I buy it for CG illustrating, not for high quality scanning, so I don't really know much about color scanning in this machine, but this for me is fine.

In 300dpi resolution, it scan a A4 size picture for about 40sec ~ 1 mins, thats slow I know. However, this thing is 3~5 years ago's product, and I mainly use it for grayscale scanning (For CG illust use, you know it....) , so I think this machine is OK for me.

I think it's color scanning is fine, just need to tolerate it's slooooooow speeeeeeeeeeed............

I think software is important than the hardware, cause software cau adjust all the things....like contrast, color or curve.
You can always get better scanning software (and you'll usually want to).
cheese said:
Anyone have a scanner that can scan at 600DPI in less than 10 seconds?
the fastest flatbed scanner might 15~20sec/600dpi (mine 20~25sec).
ofcause there are more fast scanner types, but their quality is less than flatbed. I don't need these less quality scanner :P
TaiwanBeer said:
I think software is important than the hardware, cause software cau adjust all the things....like contrast, color or curve.
if your driver has 48bit color input & color adjustment by curves, it's enough :3
I always cut off any other supports provided by scanner companies. FREE GIMP can beat them all :p
I've got a HP ScanJet 5590, primarly used for document scanning (it's got ADF and duplex - but duplex is useless, because it takes about 3 times longer than scanning one side, then manually scanning the other side). It needs slightly longer than 20 seconds to warm up when it was turned off (I unplug it when I don't use it, because the power supply emits high-pitched sound), and needs a bit less than 50 seconds to scan a full page at 600DPI (from flatbed - while 600DPI works from feeder, the vertical resolution seems to be limited to 300DPI).

Speaking of quirks, the scanner has 3 drivers - a basic WIA interface, "consumer" TWAIN driver and "commercial" TWAIN/PixTran driver. The consumer TWAIN driver doesn't work with Paint Shop Pro to scan from glass - only scanning from feeder works. Only the consumer driver seems to support 16-bit scanning.
Epson renewed all scanners into one-color LED models even if the cheapest one (80usd), so they all must be able to fast scan :)
LiDE uses three-color (RGB) LED whose scan speed is 3 times longer than one-color or monochrome :(

ps: syao, 80usd epson must be better than the scanners all you have even if it'll crash only 1year :P
midzki said:
Epson renewed all scanners into one-color LED models even if the cheapest one (80usd), so they all must be able to fast scan :)
LiDE uses three-color (RGB) LED whose scan speed is 3 times longer than one-color or monochrome :(

ps: syao, 80usd epson must be better than the scanners all you have even if it'll crash only 1year :P
I'll take the advice then, next one is gonna be that..when i find some money :D
Canoscan5600f 48bit scan speed.
200dpi 6sec
300dpi 7sec
400dpi 25sec
600dpi 30sec
800dpi 135sec
I left data if someone needs to know as reference