Archive the past with the Canon CanoScan
I am very impressed with Canon’s small and powerful scanner, the CanoScan Lide 300. If you are looking for clever ways to standout and make cool contributions to archiving the past or posting content to social media; This article will be super useful in demonstrating the capabilities of this scanner that I chose to use for my own social media and personal preservation.
There's Two Models to choose from
The biggest difference between the 300 and 400 models is it’s scan quality.
The 300 scans at a resolution DPI (Detail of image) of 2400 x 2400 while the 400 scans at a resolution of 4800 x 4800. There’s obviously more differences to the two models. However I do strongly think that many of you interested in a scanner will use it for your own personal photos or content. For perspective the Canoscan 300 scans better than 1080p resolution.
Is more resolution important for scans?
Not really. You have to think that most printers could only print to a certain quality. Most phyiscal forms of media from say the 2000s and below are rarely so intricate and detailed that it’d be necessary to use the extra resolution. An exception I would think the Canoscan 400 would be useful, would be with Artwork such as drawings and paintings.
Finding images is Great for Content Creation
Having a scanner allows you to share old photos of yourself, or post content unique to a subject you love. The 2020s will be dominated by a generation starved of “nostalgia”. Having a scanner will allow you to better connect with your audience, but will also provide a useful tool for uploading lost content to websites like Internet Archive or Pinterest.
What I use it for:
I was originally interested in finding a way to scan all my childhood photos. I was set on buying this Plustek Photoscanner from Amazon. For the person who has tons of photos in the thousands this is a bargain. It scans, crops, and creates digital photos instantly. But once you’re done scanning all your photos, this becomes a big paperweight.
With this in mind, I looked into getting a scanner that could crop photos. What I found was Canon’s Canoscan. I also wanted to scan my childhood drawings, and other odd things like magazines or print media from the 2000s. A flatbed scanner was the only way for the remainder of my scanning challenges. The Canon Scanner is also at a bargain, almost 4 times cheaper and the Plustek, and it can do much more for you. It’s slim design allowed me to store it much easier than other options.
Raw scan Examples
Here’s a test selection of various forms of physical content that I used with the Cano Scan 300.
You will want to install the software provided for the scanner which you can find on Canon’s website here.
The software is called “Canon IJ Scan Utility”
These examples aim to show the flexibility of what a scanner is capable of. Think of it as another phone camera. It is not limited to paper and can take anything that’s thin.
Using it to Archive content
Here’s an example of content scanned with the Canon CanoScan Lide 300 Scanner: DVD inserts. These bonus offer books are always filled with cool artwork and graphic designs, and are super easy to scan.
A lot of this content becomes “lost” media due to the cumbersome process of having to scan and individually upload the images to the Internet. This is an underrated method to preserve new content that’s never before seen online. Pinterest is the perfect place to upload and organize your archived finds. I created a Pinterest board Example which houses all the print media I have found and recovered.
Great But Not perfect
The examples above show how the cropping can sometimes get confused and leave images combined. Not a super big deal as you can just re-scan photos, or manually edit them yourself. Photos take a bit to scan, but It likely depends on the DPI (detail of image) you have your scanner set to scan content at. Sometimes a photo can scan blurry, which means that it isn’t sitting flush with the scan bed. Overall very satisfied with how well the scanner works. Super lightweight and slim. It doesn’t require external power!