HP SCANJET G4050 L1957A Scanjet G4050 Photo Scanner
I bought this product to digitize about 5,000 slides. I started with 900 slides of my mother-in-law. Many of her slides were Ektachrome and all but the reds were badly faded. It did an excellent job. I had some difficulty with dust just like everyone with old slides. I did the 900 slides (keeping about 600) in just a few long (8-12 hours) days. Since then I've done another 400 in just a couple of short days. It takes me three major steps 1) the scanning process, 2) the editing process, and 3) the renaming process. I have to edit (Digital Image by Microsoft - now defunct) virtually every slide. I crop to 6x4 or 4x6 for most slides. Occasionally I crop to 4x4. On some slides I have to lighten them (poor lighting in the original or shaded faces) and up the contrast a little to a lot on almost all of them. On most I zoom in and delete spots, primarily in sky, white areas, or faces. I can't see spots in multi-colored areas. I then go to My Pictures and change the title on each. I change it to "date, file box and slot location of physical slide, subject. For example, 1962 06 00 D-21 Sandy's birthday party. For most slides I only know the month, so I use 00 for the day. I start with the year, month, and then day so the slides will be ordered by date. If I have a group of photos (like a party or a trip) I order them by adding a letter after the day. Then I can control the order within the group. It's important to put the physical location on the slide in case you want to rescan at a higher resolution to print a photo. Overall, I've been quite pleased. I then burn a dvd, and the family can enjoy an old-time slide show.
Just three days before one year, my scanner deck had a hardware problem. After a couple of hours with tech support, they offered an exchange. I received the new scanner deck the next day. As with my first scanner, it took abut 3 hours with tech support to get my scanner up and running (something to do with Vista and conflicts with my HP 3-in-1 scanner). I have received absolutely wonderful tech support from HP. That alone makes me loyal to their products. However, I now see that a scanner has multiple lights and moving parts. An extended warrenty is advisable. I got an additional 90 days warranty on my replacement, but I'm going to extend it.
48 of 51 people found the following review helpful
BalasHapusAfter reading all of the reviews I was a bit worried about the ease of scanning slides with this unit. I am totally happy with it! I have easily scanned 100+ slides in a very short period of time. The template that holds the slides in place sits directly on the scanner's glass. Then you just lay the slides in it- very easy! I have the default setting at a very low resolution to get many slides scanned quickly- I can't believe how true to color and clarity I'm getting!! It takes about 5 minutes to scan 16 slides, cataloging is very easy with the software.
BalasHapusSo, go get this scanner and bring back to life the great old slide photos hidden away in your boxes!
5.0 out of 5 stars
BalasHapusI'm glad I bought it before it had all the negative reviews, if I read all the problems listed in the other reviews I would have moved on to a different scanner. But this has worked great for me from day one and I really love it.
BalasHapusIt is large, so be ready for that if you buy it. The large size can be a good thing if you need large items scanned or want to scan many pics at once. I am running it on a Win XP computer and the picture scans are gorgeous. I wish I could comment on the slides as that seems to be the issue for people but I don't have any slides to scan. But in my homework the reason I wanted this was for the whole 6 color 96 bit scanning and software feature where it can erase out scratches on the pictures, and both work great.
The color reproduction on the scans is amazing, a LOT better than the scanner I had before. Coolest feature for me is because of its large size I can put 4 or 5 pictures on it spread out all over the glass and it will scan them all as individual files. No idea how it does it but it saves a lot of time as it is a semi-slow scanner.
So my breakdown is this:
PROS: Beautiful picture scans with amazing color
Abilty to scan many pictures at once to individual files
Also scans documents great
Quiet
Easy setup and zero issues for me in Win XP
CONS: Bulky, and scans slowly
Others say not good for slides (I cannot test, no slides)
I have had a great experience with it which compelled me to write this review, but looks like the great experience is for users who do not need to scan slides like myself, others may want to look further.
Totally pleased!!! I was looking for a scanner to digitalize over 4000 slides and family photos. After looking narrowing my choices to Canon, Epson, and HP from online reviews I went to a local store to look at the scanners. Most of the "professional reviews" seemed to favor the Canon or Epson. But for me, the quality of construction of the HP was evident from my hands on inspection. And best of all the HP is set up to scan sixteen 35m slides at a time. To save over fifty dollars over the store price, I ordered the HP online.
BalasHapusWhen the scanner arrived, I did the recommended set up and it was easy and smooth. I found using the HP scanning software (HP Solution Center) to be simple enough. Be sure to recognize that if you have other HP products, they will also be in the HP Solutions Center and you will have to select the scanner tab. It took me several trys to find the balance between quality and speed that fit my needs. But once I locked the settings in my scanning has moved along nicely. You will be pleased with the quality and performance.
I purchased this scanner for the purpose of digitizing our family collection of slides, photographs and other important documents that I want to save electronically. The setup was easy and the instructions were clear.
BalasHapusI encountered difficulty making the connection between the scanner and my computer. So after trying all of the suggested troubleshooting steps, I called the HP support line received excellent patient assistance which has resulted in wonderful scanning experiences.
I would make the same purchase all over again.
A Kid's Review
BalasHapus
BalasHapusGreat scanner, great support, March 21, 2007
BalasHapusI've been using my G4050 on a Vista system for about a month and it works great. Looking at some of the negatives other reviewers have listed, I have to say it works great with Vista and does remember settings (if yoy tell it to). If your scanning slides like me, be sure to preview and edit the scan area as the default scan can miss the image a little. Just don't take all of the highest resolution settings, for slides they are a waste. I have a brand new Duo Core system and it took 45 minutes to open a slide because it had so much detail. At 2400 and with the 6 color scan I have no such problem. Enjoy!
BalasHapusI purchased the G4050 to replace my HP 5400c. I read the negatives reviews here but purchased the scanner because of previous experience with HP. The scanner works great. Please do not be put off by the reviews talking about slow scan times. The people complaining are scanning slides or negatives. In one case the person mentioned that it took and long time to scan slides at anything over 1200 dpi. There is absolutely no need to scan a slide at that high of resolution. You will not get a better quality image than at either 200 to 600 dpi. The scanner scans photos at a very fast speed. It is way faster than my HP 5400c. The software is fine also. The people talking about it not saving settings do not know what they are doing. It is very easy to change the default settings for scans. The scanner has a wonderful feature to "restore faded color". I scan old family photos that have a very bad color cast from fading/old film deteration. The restore faded color feature works well. On some photos I had to do a little additional editing with photoshop elements but you could get by with just the scanner fix if you are not into editing. I would highly recommend this scanner.
BalasHapus
BalasHapus
BalasHapusThis scanner has photo, negative (of several sizes), and slide scanning capabilities. They all work very well. Also it has PDF feature as well as many options from HP to help make the scanning process work smoothly. I will purchase HP products again!
BalasHapusArrived Non-operational, HP tech support sent replacement unit next day. Scans photos as good as originals, 16 slides at a time and negatives. All in separate jpeg files. Photo fixes as it scans to correct many defects and faded pictures. Converts 16 slides with excellent resolution in under 8 minutes.
BalasHapus