Can the Fujitsu FI-7160 scan photos?: Pro Digital Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review (2023)

How well would the Fujitsu FI-7160 work for scanning photos?

http://solutions.ca.fujitsu.com/products/imaging/fi7160/

No body has experience?

I have been using the FI-7160 for over a year. So far, I have scanned thousands of photos. I only have another 20,000+ to go.

While I have a premium Epson flatbed photo scanner, I have never tried the Epson FastFoto scanner. So I am no in a position to compare the output quality of the Fujitsu compared to the Epson, but I would be hard pressed to imagine the Epson could be any better. Images from my Fujitsu are as good or better than my Epson flatbed. I did a lot of research on the Fujitsu and Epson and I chose the Fujitsu based on its use of a CCD image sensor vs an LED sensor on the Epson and what I considered to be its superior document handling.

Note: have a Nikon 5000 ED Coolscan slide/Neg scanner. I've scanned a negative on the Nikon and then the same photo on the Fujitsu. The Nikon scan is always better, but the difference is not discernible to the casual eye. Since prints are always a compromise and exceed 300 dpi, its hard to fault the scanner for its failure to match the output of a negative scanned at 4000 dpi.

The Fujitsu is full of sensors to detect misfeeds, jams, crumpling, etc. It works extremely well. I have scanned over 6000 prints so far, many dating back to the late 1800's. I have not ruined a single photo and have not even crumpled a corner. If the Fujitsu detects somethings amiss, it stops. That said, it doesn't stop often. It's feeding mechanism is as close to bullet proof as anything I have ever seen on any document feeding device

I have a high resolution color-calibrated 27" BENQ monitor that I use for all of my photo processing. Image quality from the Fujitsu is as good as the photo. Sharp and well-balanced photos look incredible after a scan. It's hard to believe one is not viewing an original print. So-so photos look only so-so on the monitor. Sometimes, I will notice an imperfection on the scanned image that I did not detect on the original photo. I'll go back and look at the original and see the defect. The image sensor is much like an old film camera. It sees stuff our eye has ignored.

The colors are well saturated and vibrant. I am very pleased. Is it perfect? No. The scanner software (Papermate) provides a lot of options to tweak colors. The tweaks can be previewed and adjustments made in real-time, but the tweaks cannot be made post scan. Once in awhile in scanning 100 year B&W photos, a small white and checked line will appear at the edge of the photo. If I rotate the photo 90 degrees in the scanner tray and re-scan, the line disappears. I don't know what causes that and since I found an easy solution, I haven't pursued a fix. The scanner is very good at adjusting color balance, but some photos taken in artificial incandescent light sometimes show a slight red shift that is only noticeable in flesh tones on some faces as other faces in the same picture appear to be perfect. It is possible to eliminate the red emphasis, by using different settings, but I think the photos lose some of their vibrance when I've made those adjustments. If I go back and look at the original photos, I could conclude that some faces might lean towards a redness, but my eyes tends to ignore the shift. So it's like I said earlier, the scanner detects things our eyes tend to overlook.

The scanner does provide the option to load a custom color profile. I have never tried to see what happens in the output if I do that.

The one thing missing from the Fujitsu that is present on the Epson is red-eye reduction. It would be a nice add, but if I'm going to do any post-processing, I'd rather doing that in a photo processing application and let the scanner do what it does best.

The Fujitsu is not cheap. I was able to get a good price on an open-box unit, but it was still considerably more than the Epson. Did I get better image quality for the additional hundred's of dollars? I can't say. But, I can say that the scanner exceed my expectations and I have a scanner that has more versatility than the Epson unit.

I have a hard time believing a 24 but document scanner would outshine a 48 but flatbed.

Though would you post some explained Epson flatbed vs your Fujitsu. Thanks for the reply.