I've finally worked with my 4470c for a while. (After I bought it, it sat
for a month before I installed it and tried it. Bad idea as the store's
return policy ran out.)
At $149 it's affordable but man, it's not a nice film scanner or even a
moderately competent one. I had hoped to get low res film scans out of it
and it does that. But what I learned is that you get a scan that looks like
*crap*. It does very wierd things that don't look like film at all. At
1200 dpi on negs, it sometimes decides to shift about 40 cc too blue. If
you correct for that, you'll find that the highlights and mids go in
different directions. Meaning that you might have a seriously red face and
a seriously blue or cyan highlight. You can spend lots of time in Photoshop
adjusting the mids and highlight color balance and that's what I'm stuck
with since I can't return the scanner. I wouldn't recommend it to someone
though.
In addition, the slide attachment is completely unable to capture anything
like a decent scan. With a flat bed scanner on 4x6" prints, I'd had
accurate colors. I thought I'd get a low-res scan with sharp, correct
colors. Not even. No matter what res I scan slides in, I get a completely
blurry mess. To be clear, I mean if I scan at 1200 dpi, sharpen the heck
out of it (until there are all kinds of artifacts, then back off one
iteration), then reduce the image size to 400 pixels in the long direction,
I **STILL** get garbage. As a photographer, I won't put any of these
scanned slides up anywhere. I even tried scanning slides with the emulsion
up and flipping the image but to no benefit.
It's almost okay for C-41 web use. My ebay ads look okay after I adjusted
the mids and highlights balance SEPARATELY but my TOPE 10 entry is a
compromise. After balancing the color, I'm sometimes still left with green
noise that looks like chunks of green grain. To assume that Photoshop's
interpretation of where a mid ends and a highlight begins will exactly
overlap with the non-linearities of this model is a pipe dream. I'm willing
to spend 20 minutes on each individual shot for ebay ads only because
1. I have no money for a real film scanner and
2. I can't take the 4470c back.
Whether that level of quality is a good deal for $149 is something only you
can decide. I guess I'd recommend looking at the $199 Canon that even uses
a fast USB2 interface. Haven't seen any results but I'd urge you to
evaluate whatever you buy immediately. By the way, the $149 HP has a 1 year
warranty and is made in China. Can you imagine buying a telephone or tv
with a one year life? My HP computer's mother board died suddenly about 4
months after the warranty expired and the repair people said "they'll do
that" (HP is notorious for cheap boards). So, just because you may have had
a great experience and a ridiculously long life 10 years ago with an HP
LaserJet3, don't expect that to be a predictor of your scanner experience.
Don't expect anything good for very long and you may not be dissatisfied.
We're a long way from buying a Zuiko that will last the rest of our natural
lives.
Lama
ps, sorry to go on but I guess I had lots to say.
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