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Like our earliest human ancestors, who gave up life on all fours for a bipedal stance, Canon's new CanoScan LiDE 500F makes an evolutionary leap to an upright approach to scanning. Taking design cues from HP's Scanjet 4670 ($200, www.hp.com), the see-through vertical scanner introduced last year, the 500F comes equipped with a nifty little stand that enables it to operate in a similar upright fashion. A plastic easel-like base folds out, snaps into place and forms a perfect little perch for the scanner. This vertical scanning thing is partly a novelty, but for the gadgetcongested workspace, it's a surefire clutter cutter. It also makes scanning pages from books and magazines that are still attached to their bindings a little easier.
The 500F earns additional marks for its double-hinged expansion lid. As with Canon's slim LiDE flatbed predecessors, the 500F's lid opens wide enough to accommodate thicker items, and with an additional hinge, allows the lid to remain flat, to ensure the document or photo remains flat, delivering a higher-quality scan. The 500F also opens up to a full 180 degrees, which we found great for scanning larger items, such as road atlases, coffee table books and LP covers that don't easily fit on traditional flatbeds.
Armed with a contact image sensor that can capture scans up to 2,400x4,800 dpi and interpolate images up to 19,200x19,200 dpi, the 500F effortlessly conquers most of your scanning jobs. It connects to your Mac via a single USB 2.0 connection that doubles as the power source, and requires absolutely no warm-up time once powered on. Plug the 500F into a Mac and it's ready to rock.
Another cool addition is an adapter for scanning 35mm film. To scan a negative, or a whole strip, you simply slip the film into the film guide, place it on the scan bed and carefully position the film adapter unit on top of the frame you wish to digitize. Then, through the 500F's driver software, initiate the scan. Like most flatbed scanner film adapters, this one emits an extra bit of white light to illuminate the frame's image, bringing out details and colors that the scanner itself is incapable of capturing. In addition, the film adapter also beams infrared light through the film, which Canon's Fare Level 3 technology utilizes to remove dust and scratches from your film, so they don't appear in your final scan. The 500F also has the ability to reduce film grain and correct fading or poorly exposed images.
Our only gripe with this feature, was its tendency to produce ever so slightly blurry images. Yet it's nothing a little tweaking with Photoshop's Unsharp Mask can't take care of, and you'll be hard pressed to find another scanner in this price range that can handle film any better. The 500F scanned printed photos like a champ, producing near mirror copies of the originals. In a few isolated instances, the images needed a little fixing up in the color saturation department.
As with most scanners in this price range, four buttons adorn the 500F that automatically carry out most of your everyday scanning needs. With a single touch of a button, you can easily create copies of documents and photos (with your existing printer), scan to a specific application or location on your hard disk, create a PDF file and instantly have your image optimized for email.
Canon's CanoScan Toolbox software presents a no-nonsense interface that presents both Simple and Advanced modes. The 500F also offers a Multi-Scan mode that scans and automatically crops multiple images placed on the scan bed, and saves them as individual files.
–COLLIN KEEFE
CanoScan LiDE 500F: 
Canon | www.usa.canon.com | 800-385-2155 | $130
Pros: Slim design that incorporates a built-in stand for vertical scanning, 2,400x4,800 dpi resolution, single USB connection provides connectivity and power, straightforward driver interface, includes film adapter and image correction features.
Cons: Produces slightly blurry images from scanned film.
Requires: G3 300MHz or faster, 128MB RAM, USB, OS 10.2.7 or higher
macHOME recommends: USB 2.0
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