Rating: 
Summary: Image Quality Stinks!
Review: I have purchased two of these scanners because I was hoping that the first one was defective. It was, and I think the second one was too! The closest I can come to describing the problem is to say that there was condensation under the flatbed glass. It dried and left a residue that shows up on every scan. The first time I thought this was a fluke (although I had read a review that said it happened to them.) so I returned it and ordered another. The same thing happened with this one. When I called Canon to ask about the problem they played dumb and said they hadn't heard of this problem. Well it happend twice to me and at least once to another review so it does exist. The biggest problem I am going to have now is finding another scanner that has the multi-scan feature. It was very cool to pop four pictures on the flatbed, scan them, and have them come out as four different JPEGS. What to do?
Rating: 
Summary: WHAT A GREAT DEAL AT UNDER $120!!!
Review: I Promise a brief review. +1 SCANS 35mm slides 2 at a time
+1 scans 35mm negatives 3 at a time
+1 makes seperate files of each item on the glass automatically
+1 super fast photo scanner
-1 takes about 2 minutes to scan a single slide at 300dpi Overall the price and picture quality beat the time it takes to scan a slide (which is why i bought it). I had a pacific image prime film that was awful (ok if you are a yambag) and returned it.
I HIGHLY RECCOMEND THIS ITEM
Rating:
Summary: Simply wonderful
Review: I purchased the scanner with a bit of apprehension, due to the price, and the disparity with other scanners. It seemed a wee bit costly -- not overly so, just a bit. Knowing that Canon is a good company, and knowing that poor scanners truly a horrible experience, I bit the bullet and bought it. The software, combined with the scanner, are superb. I highly recommend this product.
Rating:
Summary: Great Scanner - Unbelievable Delivery
Review: I received delivery in an unbelievable 21 hours! I had gone out and examined the Cannon 5000F before I placed the order with Amazon.com. I've installed it on Windows XP and am pleased beyond expectations. I primarily wanted it for film and slide copying. It does that and copying and photo scanning up to my expectations and standards. I 've been involved in photography (darkroom included) for years and find this great to bring my old technology up into the 21 century.
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for the right scanner? The Canon 5000F is it!
Review: I waited months to purchase a scanner after a bad experience with a Visioneer product shortly after I switched to XP (home edition). Goodness, was it worth the wait! I purchased the Canon based on my excellent experiences with other product lines, and knowing that this was the next, XP-designed generation. Truly plug'n'play, I was up, operational and scanning within five minutes. Do follow their advice and install the software BEFORE you plug the scanner into your USB port. I have an older USB port, and it has worked wonderfully right out of the box. Again, note that your computer may put up a little dialogue box saying "You are using a hi-speed USB device on your lo-speed USB port," but ignore it,as Canon advises you to. Everything works and works well. I use it to scan documents almost exclusively, but was favorably impressed with the accessories for film/negatives/slide scanning. The software is a little cumbersome, but that's a minor quibble.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for slide & platen scanning, weird reboot problem
Review: I was able to set up the scanner with no difficulty on my 2.4GHz/512MB P4 system. It took about 20 minutes I guess to install the software and plug in the scanner. I have used the scanner primarily for photos. The multi-scan mode is GREAT. I have scanned 4 pictures at a time and they are put into 4 separate files. That's a huge time saver, and it works EVERY time for me despite what the editorial review said. I would never buy a scanner without multi-scan mode. The quality is good too. I settled on 600 dpi as the optimal resolution setting (good detail scanned within a reasonable amount of time without files that are too large). I tried scanning negatives once. It worked well, and the quality was better than scanning photos. My only complaint was that switching the scanner back and forth between regular mode and film mode is a little flimsy. I'm afraid that sliding the white shield too many times would wear it out. It slides on a groove made of poster board type material. But I don't plan to scan many negatives. I also scanned a magazine page and that worked great. This scanner is a great choice for a multi-purpose scanner at a reasonable price.
Rating:
Summary: Everything I Hoped For
Review: I was able to set up the scanner with no difficulty on my 2.4GHz/512MB P4 system. It took about 20 minutes I guess to install the software and plug in the scanner. I have used the scanner primarily for photos. The multi-scan mode is GREAT. I have scanned 4 pictures at a time and they are put into 4 separate files. That's a huge time saver, and it works EVERY time for me despite what the editorial review said. I would never buy a scanner without multi-scan mode. The quality is good too. I settled on 600 dpi as the optimal resolution setting (good detail scanned within a reasonable amount of time without files that are too large). I tried scanning negatives once. It worked well, and the quality was better than scanning photos. My only complaint was that switching the scanner back and forth between regular mode and film mode is a little flimsy. I'm afraid that sliding the white shield too many times would wear it out. It slides on a groove made of poster board type material. But I don't plan to scan many negatives. I also scanned a magazine page and that worked great. This scanner is a great choice for a multi-purpose scanner at a reasonable price.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent image quality at very reasonable price
Review: I was researching scanners for a long time and finally debated between the Epson 2400 and the Canoscan 5000F which cost about the same. The Epson 2450 Photo seemed to have better image quality but cost about twice as much, and the Canoscan 8000 is only a bit faster and allows you to scan more slides at once than the 5000 model. Reviews seemed to favor the Canon model for color accuracy and the Epson model for speed. Moreover, Epson's support for Mac OS X is flaky and you have to download extra drivers from Epson's website. Well, I got the Canoscan and I'm very pleased with my purchase. Both image quality and speed surpassed my wildest expectations as I had an Umax Astra 1200 before. The scans are fast and colors are absolutely brilliant. Since I mostly scan color slides, I was again pleased to find out that the quality is really, really good. Scanning slides at 300dpi for 4x10 prints is a good compromise of quality and speed. You can scan two slides at once, which takes about 5 minutes. Slide scanned at 2400dpi take about 10 minutes and result in very large files of 250MB or more in Photoshop. Again, scans at this resolution are absolutely brilliant and are great for 8x10 enlargements. The local camera shop can't produce any better enlargements. Canon supports Mac OS X out of the box. No need to send in a card to Epson or download beta-version Twain drivers from their web site. Just install the software, reboot, plug in the scanner and you're all set. The included software works well with PhotoShop and offers many customization options. All in all, if you're looking for a high quality scanner at a reasonable price, the CanoScan 5000F is probably the best you can get.
Rating:
Summary: Canon continues to do what they do best!
Review: My father always told me I would never go wrong with a Canon. Canon has proven my father's point time and time again, and they don't fail to do so with the 5000c. I made the mistake of purchasing a lesser-name scanner to save myself [money]. When the quality and reliability were found lacking, I packed the lesser-name up and left the store with the 5000f. I'm so thrilled by the quality i don't know if I can write a detailed, fact-based review on the scanner! All I really need to say is IT'S INCREDIBLE! DON'T EVER BUY ANY OTHER BRAND! However, I know you want details. Here they are: The film/slide scans are AMAZING! They're crisp and clear --honestly unparalleled by any scanner (even professional models) I have ever used. Many scanners will blur your slides or provide unacceptable resolution for any serious utility. Not the case here. Standard scans are great. I MUST mention the FARE (Film Automatic Retouching and Enhancement) technology employed by the 5000F. How many times have you been digging through your storage to find a great old photo that has been marred by the hands of time? Using FARE, you won't spend hours retouching the photo in your photo-editing software --it's all done AUTOMATICALLY! No example picture could ever explain how well it works. Go to a store and try it yourself. You WILL be blown away. All of these features are tied together with a USB 2.0 interface. Gone are the days where you listen to your scanner scan, stop, send, scan, stop, send. With the increased bandwidth of this new technology scanning is quick and easy. I'll say it to you this time: You can't go wrong with a Canon!
Rating:
Summary: Nice scanned image quality, flaky performance
Review: Not happy with the drivers for this scanner. I bought this scanner in March 2003, and the CD-ROM that came with it included non-current drivers that were not Windows XP certified. The manual told me to install these uncertified drivers over the strongly-worded warning from the operating system not to do so. Within minutes of installing the drivers on my new (<1 month old) computer, the operating system experienced three crashes. I removed the drivers, downloaded the new but still uncertified version of the drivers from Canon's website, installed the new version, and used Norton Utilities to repair the damage from the first installation. Even after all this, the drivers are still flaky. From time to time the driver will return a general error saying that it could not communicate with the scanner. To correct this, I have to unplug the scanner and plug it back in (because there is no on/off or reset switch). When this problem is not manifesting itself, scanning pictures/prints works fine. Good color and brightness accuracy. The multiple-image scan feature, which allows you to place several pictures on the bed at once and scan them all simultaneously into separate files, is very useful. Scan times for prints is very fast: about 15 seconds total for three prints laid out on the bed. My only wish is that the scan driver should automatically cure mildly skewed pictures because it is extremely hard to place multiple photos on the bed with zero degree accuracy. Unfortunately, it doesn't do this. Scanning photographic negatives is totally different. Scan time is extremely long: about 10 minutes per three negatives at 600 dpi resolution. Also, the software is very unpredictable as to how it determines where one negative ends and the other begins. Often enough to be annoying, the scanner incorrectly sizes the negatives, requiring extensive manual intervention to override it. I have sometimes been forced to do a lot of manual jiggering with the negatives, including using opaque masks over some negatives to make it easier for the software to "automatically" detect where they begin and end. This feature is so twitchy that I sometimes just press the "preview" button twice and get differently-sized images. Image quality of scanned negatives is variable: sometimes it is very good indeed. Other times it tends to produce an overexposed image with colors bled out, requiring more manual intervention. Scans from negatives also tend to emphasize problems with the source material that may not have been obvious in the prints made from the same negatives. E.g., In pictures with a fairly flat-field of color in the background (such as lots of sky/water), there is a noticeable tunnel-vision effect which appears to have been caused by the point and shoot 35mm camera which took the photos. This was barely noticeable in the professionally-made prints, but quite apparent in the scan, requiring still more manual intervention to correct. In short, this scanner certainly does a lot of things, some of them very well. But it nowhere near as stable in operation as I would have expected, and it is by no means fast or reliable enough to easily use it for anything like a large volume of slides or negatives.
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