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Scanner: HP Scanjet 5470c |
I bought my first HP scanner back in 1994: a sturdy HP IIcx, which had an optical resolution
of up to 400 dpi. It could not handle slides at all, but it was surprisingly good for medium
resolution scans of photo prints. In April 2002 I decided to upgrade my scanner, mostly
because I wanted to scan slides as well. As I was very satisfied with my old HP, I looked
at the current Scanjet series. Finally I purchased the HP Scanjet 5470c, which comes with
a transparency adapter.
The software installed quickly, and I was up and running in about 30 minutes after unpacking
the device. The scanning quality of photo prints is okay-ish, but definitely better
than my old scanner. That was not a surprise to me. I expected the technology to be way better in 2002
than in 1994. The HP Scanjet 5470c allows for up to 2400 dpi optical resolution, so it is
sufficient for slides. Or so I thought.
In the past, I gave slides for the Web site to a service bureau, which burned a Kodak PhotoCD
from the slides. High quality, very convenient and fast, but a bit expensive. This was the
benchmark. I would expect this quality from a slide scanner.
The truth is, that the HP Scanjet 5470c can neither compete with the Kodak PhotoCD nor with
the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II at all. It is
impossible to get reliable results from slide scanning!
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Problem #3: Speed |
The HP is slooooow. It takes forever to scan a slide, even at 1200 dpi.
I know, it is a lot of data that needs to be transferred, but a scan from a slide should
not take longer than a scan from a photo print. I guess that the high resolution still poses
a problem to the HP. While the Kodak PhotoCD is even slower (waiting 10 days for 100 scans),
I do not waste time with scanning, plus I do not need to archive the stuff as it comes on
a CD-ROM. |
Problem #4: Quality of Photo Scans (added April 2005) |
Okay, we see that the HP lost out when it came to scanning slides. However, when I wanted to
scan a huge amount of old black & whites in December 2004, I discovered another major flaw
of the Scanjet 5470c, which finally lead me to buy a new photo scanner, the
EPSON Perfection 4870 Photo.
So what's the problem? While the scanner offers a real resolution of up to 2400 dpi also for prints, you
better not make use of this resolution, because you will see grain all over the scan, which clearly
does not come from the original photo! When I saw this, I was completely baffled, because I did not
really expect such bad results. Here's the evidence:
The photo is from an old photo album in the 30s. It measures 97 x 68 mm, and I scanned it using 24-bit RGB
at 1200 dpi resolution. The left image gives you an overview, the second image is a detail of the original scan,
and the third image finally provides you a blown-up version (400%) of a detail of the front right tire.
The "digital grain", chunks of oddly coloured pixels, can clearly be seen here. :-)
As the JPEG compression alters the grain to a certain extent, I provide the 2nd image as uncompressed TIFF to you.
But beware! The download is not for the faint hearted: slightly over 1 MB! Click here for TIFF
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Summary |
If you want a scanner just for photo prints to show off on the web in low resolutions, you may consider the HP
(but ask yourself whether you want to pay for a transparency adapter that you won't use, and for optical resolution that you
won't use). If you want to scan slides or negatives or high resolution prints, forget it. It is not worth the trouble.
I decided to get rid of the HP and to go for better devices, targetting at semi-pros. Today I am a happy user of the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II
and the EPSON Perfection 4870 Photo.
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