Canon Lide 200 review / evaluation

Scanning 3D objects with the Canon Lide 200 flatbed scanner


Sometimes it can be both useful and fun being able to scan object that are not
perfectly flat, there is actually several websites about this subject and it is often
called for Scanner photography.

The most common object to scan is flowers (I will use a flower to :0) and with a scanner
with a sufficient depth of field this can produce nice and even great images.

Scanning books where the pages still remains in the book will also benefit from
a large depth of field.

Lets find out if the Canon Lide 200 is suitable for this task!


Scanning a wrist watch

3D scan performed with Canon Lide 200
I made a black cardboard box to replace the scanner lid to get a solid black
background around the scanned object.
The image above was scanned 300ppi and then resampled down to a web friendly
size of 500px wide.

I was disappointed of this initial test, the scanner can perform very sharp scans
as can be seen on the parts of the watch that was directly on the glass bed, but
look at the depth of field it is way to shallow to get anything of the actual watch
in focus, not even the arm for minutes are sharp and that one is less than 3mm from the scanner glass bed :0(


I just had to try the same thing with my good old Canon 9950F

OK! This scanner was about 4x the price of the Canon Lide 200 when it was still
available on the market (Discontinued since 2007 and replaced by the Canon CanoScan 8800F)
but still, the OLD Canon 9950F crushes the NEW Canon Lide 200 in this discipline.

Wy?
Well it is a matter of difference in used technique in the two scanners
The Canon 9950F is using a ccd and some fine optics while the Lide 200 is using a
CIS (contact image sensor), with very shallow depth of field a known issue with CIS scanners.


Scanning a live flower

Scanning an Orchidee with the Canon lide 200
This Orchid was scanned with the Lide 200 @300 ppi downsampled from the original scan size 780pixel wide to 600 I had to press the flower as close as possible
to the scanner glassbed to get an image with almost acceptable sharpness across
the flower.

Look at the center of the flower, there is some strange pattern there
almost looking like newspaper raster but it isn't.


And again the same flower on the Canon 9950F

Orchidee scanned for comparing reasons on the Canon 9950F
Scanned on the Canon 9950F I didn't even have to press it against the glass
it still beats the Lide 200 in this task with a large margin.


Scanning a book

Book scanning Canon Lide 200
(Hold your mouse pointer over the book page to show image with gutter shadow reduction on)

Canon Lide 200 scanner settings for scan #2 of the book This book ( 2.5cm/ 1inch thick hardcopy) was scanned @200ppi
I then down sampled it to become 600px wide to fit for
web display.

There is absolutely no question that the scan sharpness
and resolution quality would be sufficient for books.

I was using a hand to press the book against the scanner
glass during the scan (Absolutely necessary due to the shallow dept of field) but you can still se a darkening in the area between the two pages (In this first scan I had Gutter shadow correction off)

Selecting "Gutter shadow correction" to High making the book scan looking much better.
(Hold your mouse pointer over the book page to show image with gutter shadow reduction on)

My conclusions in this part of the Lide 200 review.
A great scanner at a nice price abel to perform the scanning tasks most people are going to perform at a very high quality standard.

Look for a different scanner if you are planning to do Scanner photography.