I have a Canon 4200F scanner at home. The quality is pretty good for my purposes, but unfortunately, the drivers are Windows only. My wife's old Windows laptop is getting slower with passing months, making it a bit of a hassle to use the scanner. In the end, we decided to buy a printer/scanner combo.
I saw Macworld has a pretty good review about Kodak 5100. The ink related costs per photo is apparently about half or even less compared to let's say, Canon. As the ink cost is usually where they get you, I was intrigued and decided to give it a try. However, the scanner part disappointed me. Clarity is not very good (with some very small green patches here and there), but even worse is the color accuracy. The blue (let's say blue jeans) come out more like a vivid cyan. The greens (trees, grass etc.) comes out florescent, not just saturation wise, but it seems there is too much red or yellow. Green issue was not that hard to fix it with "curves" of a photo editor, but I could not fix the "blue". I have used curves, hues, saturation etc, but I could not make the look right. I don't think I am very picky, but this just was not good enough.
Here is my question: Is this kind of color issue common with these combo scanners with CIS optical devices (compared to CCD scanners like my Canon 4200F?) Or Kodak just could not manage to design a good one? Is there anybody who used an HP C5180 or LIDE 25/50/75 to scan photos? Would they be better? I am trying to see whether I should stick with CCD scanners.
Thanks...
PS: In case, anybody is interested in its printer capabilities: The photo quality is not that bad. It loses some shadow detail and it is a bit under saturated, but still I'd say fairly good. I also noticed a slight green hue in one picture that does not exist on screen (taken at night with flash), but you'd have to pay attention to notice.
I saw Macworld has a pretty good review about Kodak 5100. The ink related costs per photo is apparently about half or even less compared to let's say, Canon. As the ink cost is usually where they get you, I was intrigued and decided to give it a try. However, the scanner part disappointed me. Clarity is not very good (with some very small green patches here and there), but even worse is the color accuracy. The blue (let's say blue jeans) come out more like a vivid cyan. The greens (trees, grass etc.) comes out florescent, not just saturation wise, but it seems there is too much red or yellow. Green issue was not that hard to fix it with "curves" of a photo editor, but I could not fix the "blue". I have used curves, hues, saturation etc, but I could not make the look right. I don't think I am very picky, but this just was not good enough.
Here is my question: Is this kind of color issue common with these combo scanners with CIS optical devices (compared to CCD scanners like my Canon 4200F?) Or Kodak just could not manage to design a good one? Is there anybody who used an HP C5180 or LIDE 25/50/75 to scan photos? Would they be better? I am trying to see whether I should stick with CCD scanners.
Thanks...
PS: In case, anybody is interested in its printer capabilities: The photo quality is not that bad. It loses some shadow detail and it is a bit under saturated, but still I'd say fairly good. I also noticed a slight green hue in one picture that does not exist on screen (taken at night with flash), but you'd have to pay attention to notice.
