Canon 9900F review

One of Canon's strengths is its unique FARE (Film Automatic Retouching Enhancement) technology, this performs a number of image clean up steps on a film scan including removing dust and scratches. The 9900F uses an infrared light in combination with software to find and remove your unwanted extras. I am surprised at how well this worked, image quality did not suffer either. The dust removal didn't work right up to the edges but removed the bulk of the dust, this feature should save you hours of work with the clone tool.

Old images never die, they just Fade away


Without Fade correction	With Fade Correction set to Hard

Although possibly not the best example, the London scene above shows what the Canon can do with a picture taken in 1968. Colours have been restored to a degree, using Auto Colour in Photoshop has exactly the same effect.

Going against the grain


Stage shot at ISO 800

No Grain Correction	Grain Correction set to High

The other feature is Grain Correction, this removes the grain structure of high ISO films. In my sample above I have set it to High and it has smoothed out the grain, but at the expense of image sharpness. I personally don't mind grain in a picture, but I know several photographers who cringe at the sight of grain.

I have previously said that the USM in ScanGear was too basic, i.e. it's either On or Off. Here is what you can expect from the filter, in all fairness it's not too bad at all. I have included a example of what you can do within Photoshop.

One thing that has had me baffled over the last few days, is why the Colour Settings option is greyed out. I have just discovered that if you zoom in on a preview then all the Colour Settings, 48 bit etc. are greyed out. If you make your selections before zooming then they will remain in place when you zoom in. Clear enough? It does get more complicated when you select a profile in Colour Settings your ability to correct colours via curves etc. are removed as is the Fading Correction. Having made your colour corrections in ScanGear doesn't guarantee they are going to be right when opened in your imaging application - see screenshot above.

A feature that should be useful to photographers is the ability to load four strips of 35mm. This will enable scanning of up to 24 frames - I know most professionals shoot their film in 36 exp. lengths, but its 12 frames more than the Epson 3200 offers. When previewing you can view the complete set as four strips or as thumbnails. ScanGear will also create an index print of all 24 images and send it to your imaging application. When in thumbnail mode you can select individual frames, or press the Select all Frames to scan every frame.

The Canon 9900F scanner

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