Pros & Cons
-
- Six-color scanning yields excellent color quality.
- Scans photographic prints and film.
- Can scan up to 16 slides at once.
-
- Scan software is cumbersome in some ways and sometimes slow to react to a command.
HP Scanjet G4050 Photo Scanner Specs
| Automatic Document Feeder | |
| Ethernet Interface | |
| Flatbed | |
| Maximum Optical Resolution | 4800 pixels |
| Maximum Scan Area | 8.5" x 12" |
| Mechanical Resolution | 9600 |
The G4050, which is aimed at home users who are primarily interested in scanning photos, is one of two HP six-color scanners. The other is the HP Scanjet G4010 Photo Scanner ($150 street). The two are essentially identical when it comes to scanning prints, according to HP: They both have an optical resolution of 4,800 pixels per inch (ppi), but the G4050 adds hardware-based dust and scratch removal for film. And although both contain transparency adaptors in their scanner lids, the G4050's is larger, with room to scan 16 slides at once, for example, compared with only five for the G4010. Both offer six-color scanning for prints, but only the G4050 offers six-color scans for film.
The key to six-color scanning is a second light source. Most scanner bulbs shine with three distinct, strong peaks in frequency—the three colors for scanning—each in a different part of the visible spectrum. Colors under those conditions look different than they would if the light source had a continuous smooth spectrum like the sun's. So, at the risk of oversimplifying a bit, the scanners are calibrated to convert the colors that the sensors see into the red, green, and blue values they would see if the light source had a smooth spectrum.
There's an important shortcoming to this approach. Say you have two photos that look identical in sunlight, but one was printed on an ink jet printer using dye-based inks, and the other is a traditional silver halide print. Colors that look the same to the human eye in both photos will typically reflect different combinations of frequencies from the scanner's light source, so they won't match under the scanner light—just as two pieces of clothing can match under a store's fluorescent lights but show as different colors in sunlight, a phenomenon called metamerism.
These differences in the reflected light for different kinds of originals mean that the calibration has to be tuned for a specific type of scan target. As HP rightly points out, this is becoming more of an issue now that you can print high-quality photos on computer printers, and people sometimes want to scan them (especially if they no longer have the digital file available).
HP's solution is to provide a second light source designed so that its peaks occur at different frequencies from those of the first light source, effectively filling in some of the gaps. By scanning once with each light source and then integrating the results, the scanner can theoretically do a better job of matching the color that the human visual system sees and hit the right color over a wide range of scan targets.
So much for the theory. More important, the six-color scanning really does make a difference where the rubber hits the road—or the photons hit the sensor. On my tests, the G4050 did an excellent job of scanning photographic prints in general, and the color fidelity in six-color mode was indeed better than that of most scanners. With most scanners (as well as with the G4050's three-color mode), when I scan a 4-by-6 photo of my gray cat (known in my house as Gray Cat), its fur color tends to come out as a bluish gray. In the G4050's six-color mode, however, the final gray was much closer to the original.
Scan quality for film was also excellent, only a touch below the best I've seen. On our standard 2,400-ppi slide scan, for example, the G4050 didn't retain quite as much detail as the far more expensive
On one film scan of a bride walking down the aisle, the G4050 did a dramatically better job of capturing the sheen from the satin dress than did a commercial photo lab working from the same negative. The scanner also did well on dynamic range (the ability to retain all the steps in shading from white to black), such as with a dark tree line against a light sky with white clouds.
The G4050's speed is best described as acceptable, but the software occasionally takes so long to respond that you might think something's gone wrong. I timed it at 9 to 28 seconds to prescan a photo (scan time depends on how warmed up the scanner bulb is at the instant you give the scan command and whether the software or firmware decides that there is a need to recalibrate) plus 12 seconds to 29 seconds to scan a 4-by-6. For slides at 2,400 ppi, a prescan took 35 seconds, and a scan took almost a full minute.
Scanning using HP's Solution Center is a little cumbersome, with too many of the settings annoyingly hidden behind too many separate on-screen buttons, but whether you're scanning from the Solution Center or another program, changing settings in the Twain driver is easy. The driver also makes it easy to scan multiple photos or frames of film at once, with templates for holding up to 16 35mm slides, 30 frames on 35mm strips of film, two medium-format frames, or one 4- by 5-inch image. All of this makes the G4050 a remarkably capable scanner for the price for anyone who's primarily interested in scanning photos and film.
Don't miss our side-by-side
More scanner reviews: