The Canon LiDe700F is a Contact Image Sensor (CIS) scanner that's a lot flatter than average, a whole centimetre thinner than the Epson Perfection V30.

Its major strong point: it can scan both printed photos and your original negatives for a low price.

An entry-level option, the 700F is powered by the USB connection with your computer.  Photos can be scanned at up to 4800 dpi, while negatives reach 9600 dpi.  A series of buttons allow you to scan directly to an e-mail or a PDF ...

The scanner uses very little power while it's working: just 3 W.  In standby mode, it requires almost no power--nothing power than a few mW.

One practical feature is that the 700F can be operated in a lot of different positions.  It can lie flat on your desk, of course, but also vertically to save space.


Speed

A preview scan of a document only takes 10 seconds, which is fast.  Scanning a 4 x 6'' colour photo at 300 dpi is also fast at just over 5 seconds.  However, when you increase the resolution, the hardware begins to slow down.  For instance, scanning a stamp at 2400 dpi takes almost a minute and a half, an operation that Epson's scanners can do it just 42 seconds.

The scanner's other main feature is that it can digitise negatives.  This is easy to do and very clearly explained in the manual.  Scanning a film at 1200 dpi takes just under 31 seconds, which is fast.  However, when it comes to scanning at 9600 dpi, the scanner's maximum resolution, you can expect to wait almost 12 minutes 45 seconds, which is far too long.

Quality

Original	Scanner
What to look out for: Orange tones that are hard to reproduce, details in the hair, skin tones.	96 dpi Overall, the results are pleasing.  But the colours aren't quite right: it's too red/orange.  Some dark areas are too light also.
What to look out for: Details in the hair, skin tones.	300 dpi Some details are missing.  The face is bright, but doesn't have much contrast.
What to look out for: You should be able to see eyelashes and eyebrows.	600 dpi There is a lot of detail missing and the whole thing is quite blurry.

The scanner includes a sharpness mode, which is activated by default, but it's a little too powerful.  It makes the image too sharp by accentuating individual strokes too much.  The effect might be attractive to some people who find the result cleaner and sharper.

Without sharpness mode	With sharpness mode

After our 'real photo' tests, we moved on to try our test cards.  They confirmed once and for all the discrepancies we had already found, which were most troubling for reds and caused greys to be too light.

On the top row is the image produced by the 700F; below are the ideal colours from the test card.

Looking at the different errors, it's clear that the colour problems are mainly found with yellows, reds, greys and blacks.  The average discrepancy is around 6.2%.  These results confirm what we had already been able to see: the problems with yellows and reds explain the reddy-orange tint to the test scans we made.  Similarly, the grey is visibly wrong on our colour test card, where the black is noticeably washed-out.