Scanhancer benefits for Canon FS4000US
 

I've been testing out 'Scanhancer' on my Canon film scanner. When I got the
scanner I was a little disappointed at the apparent 'graininess' of the
scans when enlarged. I think actually the grain is in the film anyway though
its not actually apparent in paper prints or using a slide projector but
more so when looking at scans close up on a computer screen. I have proved
its not CCD noise by doing multiple scans up to 16 times (!) but the grain
is still there and consistent. Actually then I put this down to the high
resolution of the scanner (4000 dpi) and its very good ultra sharp optics
and focussing.

When I saw the Scanhancer site I enquired about one of these for my scanner
but was told there was not a 'specific' model for my scanner, however they
sent me a piece to evaluate. After many tests I can report I am fairly
impressed with the results as follows:

Colour slides - A very slight softening of grain.

Colour negatives - as above but a bit more effective, especially on 126
'instamatic' type negatives (28mm x 28mm) where the film is not that good
and grainier than usual.

B&W negatives - as for colour above.

The most impressive result was on dust and scratches where these were
significantly reduced on all media by use of Scanhancer. This was
particularly impressive on B&W negatives that cannot be processed by FARE.

My initial experiments and comparisons were made with the scanner on its
side so the Scanhancer could be simply placed over the light source window
and didn't have to be fixed in, but I have now trimmed the plastic to size
and am going to fix permanently with double sided tape.

For grain reduction don't expect results to jump out of the screen at you -
the effects are subtle. Dust and scratch reduction much more evident. Any
processing that improves scan quality with no loss of sharpness or detail
must be good.