Bafflingly, you also get ArcSoft photo Studio 5 – which isn’t a terrible choice for image editing but definitely surplus to requirements in this company. It’s a powerful, full-featured application, and its inclusion here is an obvious bonus. The best inclusion is Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 – which was our A-Listed photo editor until this month. You do get an impressive amount of software for your money, though. Again, the Epson Perfection V350 trumps it for quality, managing darker, richer colours, leaving the Canon’s images looking over-exposed by comparison. Colours are well reproduced, with a pleasing lack of grain. We waited for just under 20 minutes for all eight of our frames to be captured, although the quality of the final slides matched that of our reflective sources. Scanning these at 2,400dpi (giving scans equivalent to around eight megapixels), the 8800F failed to live up to its initial impressions as a speed demon. It’s not devastating, but archivists seeking absolute colour accuracy should bear this slight weakness in mind. The Epson’s colours are richer and more accurate – lush purples look exactly that – whereas the 8800F relies on curve and level adjustments to get colours closer to those of the source. It isn’t quite the last word in quality, though, as the Epson Perfection V350 pulls ahead for sheer quality when scans are viewed side-by-side. Colours are reproduced well, and scans were generally good enough to use without further tweaking in an editing program. Image quality is as good as we’d expect from a device that the manufacturer claims is top of the range.

Pages of text also appear swiftly – at 150dpi you’re limited only by the mechanical speed of the scan unit, and our page was ready to go in just eight seconds. Even a 600dpi 10 x 8in print appeared in just 20 seconds. We struggled to hit Canon’s claim of seven seconds for an A4 photo, but nine seconds at 300dpi is still far from sluggish. With the lamp already warm, the time dropped slightly to eight seconds. The white LED reaches peak brightness almost instantly compared with traditional cold-cathode lamps, and we had a preview image in just under 10 seconds. The specifications read like a wish list for anyone who wants a scanner for permanent image archiving: a maximum resolution of 4,800 x 9,600 means that top-quality images weigh in at 46 megapixels the maximum colour depth that the 8800F will output is 48-bit, and Canon claims it can scan a colour A4 source in seven seconds.Ĭanon’s speed claims turned out to be reasonably accurate.

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