Microtek ScanMaker i900 Flatbed Scanner

With that being said I received the scanner yesterday and immediately torn into it. I am impressed with the physical construction of the unit. The scanner has metal railings inside and is quite solid. Nothing appears cheap or thrown together and I appreciate knowing that its not just plastic that was formed together last week. The scanner is both firewire and USB 2.0 so I chose to hook it up via firewire as most of my USB ports were tied up with PDA, Printer, Mouse/Keyboard, Smart Card Reader, etc. Installed the ScanWizard Pro software, restarted the computer and turned on the scanner. Windows XP picked it up and I was able to do a Scanner Test to verify it was working within a few seconds.

Once the scanner was up and running I launched Photoshop CS and then ScanWizard Pro through the File menu. Once it was up I imported my ICM profiles for my monitor and printer. This allows for accurate color reproduction but is not necessary depending on what you are doing with the output. I was very impressed with the time it takes to actually scan. About 10 seconds or less for a preview.

As for the actual scans I was pleasantly surprised. I have a dedicated slide scanner but it doesn't do large format items. I bought a piece of anti-newton ring glass and used it to flatten my items between the 8x10 glass plate that is included. This insures that the image is completely flat while maintaining the benefits of the i900's glassless positive and negative scanning. Scanning at a modest 1200 PPI I was surprised at the quality that I got. Reflective scans of course came out even better. I for one am very impressed with the optics of this unit.

As for the main feature, Digital ICE I can honestly say that this too is superb. I've read online how Digital ICE used to take almost half an hour to accomplish, this scanner does it in roughly a fourth of that time. The images that Microtek has online appear close to what I am getting with the i900. It saves me a considerable amount of time inside Photoshop and on the three photos I've tried they required little to no cleanup work beyond Digital ICE.

All in all I'm very pleased with my purchase. This will compliment my Artixscan 4000 quite nicely. I couldn't have asked for more and it delivers on everything it promises!


I'm in Scanner Heaven   November 2, 2004
A. Larson (Hapeville, GA United States)
46 out of 46 found this review helpful

I wanted a scanner that would scan any size film negative and paper too, but did not want to to pay a million bucks for it-This is the one! I know an antique dealer who gets these glass negatives from sales and estates and I have been able to place 4 of them on the pull-out drawer and scan them with great results. I have also scanned some old negatives from film cameras from the 1920s and 30s. The scanner has a large platten (legal size) for doing paper and a drawer like platten that pulls out from the bottom for doing slides and negatives. There are several inserts that will accept the different types of media. I have found that the 8x10 glass drawer is the most versitile and easiest to use.

The i900 comes with 2 different software packages for both Mac and Windows; Scan Wizard Pro, and Silverfast, professional scan software. I installed both of them but so far have found it easy enough to stick with just the first one. It has a very intuitive interface and I have had no problems at all. The "Digital Ice" technology is interesting and effective but it is slow- I have found it just as easy to do a regular scan and repair the photo myself in photoshop.

The only thing that might count against this thing is it's size- It's big. And it's heavy. It's dimensions are 15"x22"x6" and it weighs 30 lbs. So if a small footprint is something you have to have, forget this baby.

Installation was a snap- my Mac just loves my new scanner- and so do I. I'm real glad I bought it.


Great scanner, but not the greatest...   December 9, 2005
J. Lockard (Ann Arbor, MI)
24 out of 24 found this review helpful

I loved this scanner, to a point. I shoot a mixture of 35mm and medium format film. This scanner looked like the ideal solution, it didn't cost nearly as much as a dedicated medium format film scanner, it allowed me to do glassless scanning of negatives and still allowed me to scan 35mm, other transparancy sizes *and* documents.

All was well and good till I checked out the medium format film scanning tray. It has 4 places to load my medium format negatives, unfortunately, these are only big enough for a maximum of 1 6x6cm negative each. For negatives I don't know any photographers that cut their negs into individuals, they usually keep them in strips of several negatives.

Well, if you're using the i900 you are going to have to cut your negatives out of their strips. Also note, this tray isn't really a "medium format" tray as a generic term, it's really a 6x6cm only tray for 120/220/620 film. If you shoot 6x4.5cm you might be able to make due, but you simply won't be able to scan your 6x7, 6x9 or 6x17 film with this scanner. Microtek support tells me that have no intention of make a good medium format tray for this scanner, so... I sold mine on one of those huge auction sites.

I'm thinking of using the money from my auction to buy a Mictotek i800 scanner which will do 6x17cm negatives, which means it will allow scanning of strips of medium format film. I need to make sure that will be enough.

If you will only be scanning documents, 35mm negatives, 35mm slides or 4x5in. film, this scanner was a beautiful system and I would have kept mine if only it dealt with medium format film.


Customer Service Sadly Lacking   May 5, 2005
Arthur K. Yellin (Olney, MD United States)
21 out of 28 found this review helpful

I considered this scanner in comparison with the Epson 4990. I bought the Epson 4990 instead because of my previous experience with Microtek's now anonymous customer service. My previous Microtek scanner caused aggravation from the very beginning, giving an error #204, allegedly related to lamp or sensor failure. After shipping it at MY expense, Microtek replaced it with a second one that suffered the same problem. Microtek's web site indicated that they were well aware of this design defect since they offered a variety of possible software related "fixes," none of which worked.

I used the scanner no more than 40 times before it died. That is NOT a very good "MTBF" (mean time between failures).

I wrote that customer service is now "anonymous" because they will not identify themselves to you. Not only that, but they REFUSED on the basis of "company policy" to give me the name of the chief corporate official so I could write to him or her. I had to retrieve the name from a State of California web site!

The Epson 4990 has roughly the same capabilities and sells for less! It will handle 35mm, 120, 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 negatives and transparencies. The basic model comes with SilverFast SE. If you want the full version of this software, you need to buy the Epson 4990 Professional. It is priced about the same as the i900!


Microtek is Mediocre   March 17, 2005
Justin C. Kestler (Boulder, CO)
17 out of 21 found this review helpful

My Microtek i900 arrived on Feb 1. Six WEEKS later is was completely broken and I had to send it in to be replaced. Along the way, Microtek customer "service" was anything but helpful. In fact, they have ONE technical support person on staff--I know because I spoke to him several times.

The scanner itself produced fine results. Even if it produced the best scans ever seen, I would avoid Microtek at all costs due to their awful product support and performance.