Kaiser Baas is a company that develops products to solve common digital lifestyle problems for non-specialist consumers. Among its offerings are devices as diverse as digital photo frames, image and sound converters (including scanners), digital TV tuners, portable digital radios, memory card readers and road recorders. The PhotoScanner is the latest in a line of image conversion products that includes two film scanners and a video-to-DVD converter.
The Kaiser Baas PhotoScanner. (Source: Kaiser Baas.)
Occupying minimal desk space and simple enough for anyone to operate, the PhotoScanner is a neat-looking device that's designed for digitising photo prints and documents. It sports a 2.4-inch LCD preview screen that enables users to view pictures before committing to a scan plus some basic button controls. A built-in card clot accepts SD, SDHC and MMC cards, which are used for saving scans.
Build and Ergonomics
Most of the PhotoScanner is made from glossy black plastic, with a shiny grey plastic slot where documents are fed in. The scanner itself is roughly 30 cm long and 8.6 cm wide and stands 5.6 cm above the desktop. Documents are passed through the scanner, which means you must allow adequate space for the largest document to be scanned when setting it up.
The top panel carries a 6 cm diagonal (2.4-inch) LCD monitor that doubles as a control panel and review screen. To its right lie the controls, which consist of an arrow pad plus three buttons. The Scan button sits to the right of the arrow pad, while to its left are the zoom and power/menu buttons. The arrow pad is used for navigating the menu (which is pretty basic) and selecting the magnified section of the scanned image.
The control panel on the PhotoScanner.
Three ports are built into the back panel. A DC-IN port is on the far left side while an SD card slot and USB port are located close to the opposite end of the rear panel. The first enables users to plug the scanner into the mains via a supplied adapter and use the scanner in stand-alone mode. Scans are transferred straight to the SD card.
The USB port and SD card slot on the rear panel.
The USB port allows the scanner to be connected to - and powered by - a personal computer in a similar way to a USB thumb drive. You can scan directly to a folder in the computer by selecting Mass Storage as the USB mode in the device's menu. The scans will go directly to a folder named ‘DCIM\100NVTIM' from which they can be moved or copied to other folders on the computer.
In Use
Although it won't accept originals on film, the PhotoScanner can scan B&W and colour photo prints and documents as small as a business card and up to A4 size. The originals are fed into the scanner facing downwards and a sliding guide is provided to keep them straight as they pass through.
Smaller originals should be fed in with the longest side first. If you feed snapshot prints in with the shorter side first, only part of the original will be scanned. Fortunately, the scanner seems able to recognise when A4 originals are fed in with the short side leading and scans the entire sheet.
A ‘photo protective sleeve' consisting of a black sheet of plastic with a transparent overlay attached along two sides is provided for protecting prints from being scratched. It's a pity there wasn't an additional A4 sized option because prints of all other sizes have to be scanned without protection.
You can also scan without the protective sleeve. In fact, it's best to ignore it for any prints or documents that are larger than snapshot size as the edges of the sleeve will show up in the scans. Scans were marginally sharper when the sleeve wasn't used.
A scan of a panorama print in the supplied protective sleeve with a red arrow showing the mark made by the protective sleeve where the print protruded.
The scans are saved as JPEG files, which makes them suitable for printing or emailing. However, no OCR software is provided for converting scanned documents into editable text and, unlike many scanners, you can't scan to PDF format. In addition, you can only scan individual pages; if they are in a book, this scanner cannot be used.
No facilities are provided for selecting part of the original for scanning and you can't adjust the scanning resolution. All scans are made at a resolution of 300 pixels/inch, which is ideal for photo printing.
File sizes depend on the size of the original. An A4 document or print results in a 3264 x 2464 pixel file that is between a megabyte and 2.3MB in size (depending on its complexity). Snapshot prints (15 x 10 cm) scan to 1776 x 1184 pixel JPEGs of between 200 and 500KB.
The PhotoScanner doesn't provide any adjustments for changing the colours, brightness or contrast in scanned images. All you can do is rotate them through 90, 180 or 270 degrees or delete the displayed scan. A white calibration card is provided for recalibrating the sensors periodically to ensure consistent quality. But this is an all-or-nothing process and no information is provided on the results.
After selecting the Calibration function in the menu, this card is scanned lengthwise. It can take between three and five minutes to complete calibration. The scanner switches off automatically after calibration.
Performance
It took 18.5 seconds to scan an A4 original, regardless of whether it was in colour or monochrome or a document or print. Snapshot prints took just under 12 seconds to scan. We found the scanner cropped a bit off the top and bottom of some of the snapshots we scanned. However, without adjustments for the scanning area, it was difficult to predict when this would happen and prevent it.
Scans from colour originals tended to be slightly darker and more saturated that we would have liked. However, this provided more scope for correcting densities with an image editor than there would have been had the scans been too light.
A scan of a 10 x 15 cm colour snapshot print, showing the increase in saturation and darker tone resulting from the scanning process.
Scans of B&W originals were generally good - provided the original contained a full dynamic range and wasn't too contrasty. The scanning process tended to increase contrast, which proved an advantage with some older prints that showed slight fading. Because there's no special mode for greyscale scanning, any colour casts in the original were reproduced in the scan.
A scan of a black and white print, showing a slight increase in contrast that improves on a faded original. Note: the yellowish cast due to age is reproduced in the scan.
More than 50% of the scans we produced were affected by feeding problems. Most of these were probably due to the scanner having insufficient feeding rollers to cope with heavier papers and irregularities on the surfaces of prints.
Feeding problems with a scan of an A4 colour print. Note the black areas near the corners.
Some A4 originals slipped laterally during feeding, leading to skewed scans with black patches at the borders of the print. One print that had a little Blu-Tack residue on one rear corner was skewed and slowed down - with bizarre results.
A scan of a printed page. (The colour is due to aging.)
Documents were less susceptible to slippage than prints on heavier papers. But several were scanned slightly askew if not fed into the scanner absolutely straight.
Conclusion
The Kaiser Baas PhotoScanner is available from Michaels Camera & Video, Teds Camera Stores and a number of nation-wide electrical retail chains. It could be a worthwhile purchase for families with lots of prints to scan. However, it's very much an entry-level product with few capabilities and little to offer to serious photographers.
Even for family users, the CanoScan CS5600F that we reviewed recently could provide better value for money. It costs only $70 more yet provides higher resolution, more user-adjustable controls and the ability to scan negatives and slides.
Buy this scanner if:
- You need a scanner with a small footprint for copying documents and prints.
- You want an easy-to-operate scanner the kids can use.
Don't buy this scanner if:
- You want to scan negatives or slides.
- You require high resolution and output quality.
- You want a good range of pre- and post-scanning adjustments.