Hewlett-Packard seemed to have a fairly good reputation for the quality of their products, so I didn't think twice about checking reveiws for their Scanjet 4470c when I was in the market for an affordable film scanner. I should have done my research!

The agonizing decision was made based primarily on price and maximum optical dpi. This is one of the more affordable scanners capable of scanning photographic film. The Scanjet 4470c ranged in the neighborhood of $320 Euros as compared to $3200 + for top quaility strictly film scanners.

The Scanjet is a flatbed scanner with an adapter for scanning 35mm negatives and 35 mm transparancies, medium format negs and transparancies shot with a 6x4.5 format camera (such as the Pentax 645) can be scanned if they are cut into single frames, but not those shot on a 6x6 format camera (such as the Hasselblad). 4x5 negs and transparencies are not supported. The flatbed is a pretty average 1.5X2.5 ft unit, with a removable, hinged lid which allows for easy use of the film adapter.

With a maximum optical dpi of 2400, the Scanjet produces a nice quality image, that is, if you can ever find the right driver updates for it! The second scan I performed produced an image with a very ugly color cast which was not shown in the scanning software's preveiw, in addition, the images contained multi-colored lines running through them, or, when scanning black & white, black lines and generally poor scanning quality. When I couldn't find an answer to the problem in the FAQ on HP's website, I contacted them via e-mail, and waited nearly a week for an auto-response containing the same information I found on their website! It was only after going back and scouring the site for a ridiculous amount of time and downloading several updates that I finally found one that worked. The Scanjet works fine now, except that every now and then it produces images with problems similar to those described above and I must res
tart my computer to have it scan properly again.

The Scanjet is a good bang for your buck, but my opinion is that better quality service and support is worth spending that little bit extra!