Canon UK Press Release 21/09/04

Canon’s new CanoScan 8400F: fast track to exceptional professional film scans

Canon, leader in photographic and imaging technology, is pleased to announce the launch of the CanoScan 8400F - a premium film and document scanner. Featuring a 3200 x 6400 dpi CCD sensor, a 12-frame FAU (Film Adaptor Unit) and advanced FARE Level 3 technology, the 8400F delivers exceptionally detailed and accurate professional film scans.

Replacing the CanoScan 8000F, the 8400F is designed for maximum productivity with its new super fast scan engine. The moving light source within the FAU and a USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection add to the scanner’s blistering speeds. A fast warm up time enables scanning within 20 seconds of powering up, while previews can be viewed in just 2.1 seconds.

The CanoScan 8400F will be available from November 2004 for £179 RRP inc. VAT / EUROS 259 RRP inc. VAT

Brilliant resolution, accurate colour
At 3200 x 6400 dpi, the 8400F delivers greater resolution than many dedicated film scanners, at a fraction of the cost. Canon?s advanced CCD sensor extracts incredible detail to produce superb, crisp images suitable for enlargement and high-resolution printing.

The 8400F?s 48 bit colour depth ensures exceptionally accurate colour reproduction. For professional workflows with no loss of colour information across devices/platforms, the 8400F supports the broad Adobe RGB colour space.

Enlarged and improved FAU
A large FAU and a variety of redesigned guides to accommodate different film formats add to the scanner?s speed and versatility. The 8400F can scan 35mm film (up to 12 frames), mounted transparencies (up to 4 slides), or 120 roll film (wide range - up to 6 x 22cm) in a single operation. An improved clip-in/clip-out FAU protective sheet allows simple, single-handed preparation for film scanning, for extremely fast switching between reflective and transparent originals.

The light source inside the FAU moves in sync with the optical carriage below, ensuring maximum light reaches the CCD sensor. This in turn both improves image quality and permits faster carriage movement for super-fast scan speeds.

Introducing FARE Level 3
The 8400F features Canon?s highly advanced FARE Level 3 film retouching and correction technology. During the film scanning process, a second infra-red scan detects and pinpoints imperfections such as dust and scratches in and on the film surface, which are then automatically repaired with intelligent software. Reconstruction of colour corrects the effects of aging by resaturating faded colours in old photographs and a grain correction function reduces graininess resulting from the use of fast (high ASA) film. To improve images with heavy backlighting, FARE Level 3 uses a backlight correction function to detect precisely which areas of the image need correction. It adjusts only the gamma of those areas, resulting in superior quality, more balanced images.

QARE Level 3 provides similar functionality to FARE Level 3, to correct reflective scans of photo prints.

Innovations for incredible speeds
Along with the moving light source of the FAU, the 8400F introduces a host of innovations and improvements to achieve its blistering speeds. A new hybrid stepping motor moves the scanner?s optical carriage fast enough to deliver a preview in just 2.1 seconds. The optical carriage now features twin fluorescent lamps to provide twice the illumination. This allows for faster scan passes whilst maintaining scan quality. The USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection ensures rapid data transfer of large hi-resolution files, further contributing to the scanner?s exceptional productivity.

Fast Multi-photo mode generates up to 10 separate files from a single scan pass. It also automatically identifies, crops and de-skews individual images, so users no longer have to spend time carefully aligning and arranging their originals on the glass. Four EZ buttons can be individually configured to save time by performing the user?s choice of commonly used functions, such as ?Copy?, ?File?, ?Scan to PDF? and ?E-Mail?.

Exif compliant
When the 8400F is used to create a JPEG file, Exif data can be embedded in the image file. Exif data includes information about the scan date and name of the scanner, and is useful for managing JPEG images with Exif-compliant software such as ArcSoft PhotoStudio and Adobe PhotoShop Elements.

Powerful professional software
The 8400F comes bundled with a suite of powerful and fully featured PC/Mac software:

CanoScan Toolbox 4.8 ? sits on the desktop with a simple button for all common scan functions such as Scan to PDF or OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Each button launches a specialised menu, showing only those settings relevant to the function being performed. The software includes a clever Image Stitching function for scanning up to A3 size: two half size scans are ?stitched? together to create a single, seamless file. Easy Colour Matching Print uses ICC colour profiles to ensure optimal colour accuracy when copying colour images direct from scanner to printer.
ScanGear CS 10.2 ? manages workflows in either ?Simple? or ?Advanced? modes. In Simple Mode, users select the source type (such as ?colour photo? or ?colour film?), whether or not a preview is required, destination (whether image is to be printed, edited, filed, etc.), and output size, before commencing with the scan. Advanced Mode features floating palettes (shown either individually or simultaneously) which allow fine adjustment of ?Histogram?, ?Brightness & Contrast?, ?Tone Curve? and ?Gamma?. A fifth ?Final Review? palette is available to display the cumulative effects of various adjustments.
Adobe PhotoShop Elements 2.0 ? award winning software based on Adobe?s professional series PhotoShop. Powerful yet easy-to-use image editing software for print, e-mail, and the Web.
Omnipage SE OCR ? powerful Optical Character Recognition application allows scanned text to be converted into recognisable text characters/data.
ArcSoft PhotoStudioTM 5.5 (4.3 for Mac) ? image-editing program featuring automatic colour and tone enhancement, automatic red eye removal, cloning, animated 3D text and over 40 special effects.
NewSoft Pagemanager ? scans documents to PDF format and automates creation and management of resulting document database.

Compatibility
For Windows machines, the 8400F is compatible with Windows XP Professional, XP Home Edition, XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows Me and Windows 98. For Macs the scanner is compatible with Mac OS X v 10.1.3 or later.