Nikon CoolScan V (LS 50 ED)

[Nappe1]

OVER 4 MONTHS OLD THREAD: check out the latest developments from latest post..
I am looking for good entry level Slide / Negative scanner for transferring older stuff to digital format. This CoolScan looks pretty tempting, but I haven't been able to find out if it's software has batch scanning features for slides... anyone having experience from Nikon Film Scanners?

(I do know that SF-200 casette batcher does not fit in this model, (or does it? still it's rather expensive accessory...) but I am looking for scanning mode, where I could easily scan several slides with just switching manually each slide for the scanner. there's aproximately 7000 slides waiting in my relatives archives, which around 50 to 60% should be transferred to digital time... so, batch mode is rather important option.)

[degrub]

You need the CS4000 or CS 5000 to get batch scanning. The 4 and the V will NOT do batch scanning. THere is only a speed increase in the 5000 over the 4000 and some slight improvement in the Kodachrome profile. Otherwise they are very much the same scanner.

BTW, batch is not set it and leave it generally. You do have to pay attention to the device as it can jam and cause damage to slides or equipment. Also, if you are really trying to get all the image details, most of the time the auto options work reasonably well, but for really decent scans you need to do it manually and tweak in Photoshop or use something like Silverfast.

I use the CS4000 with the SF200 routinely, what are you trying to accomplish and how "good" does it need to be ?

ANother important question - are you dealing with any significant number of Kodachrome slides ? Any B&W slides/film ?

check out

comp.periphs.scanners archives and search for NIKON, kodachrome, etc. Pay attention to replies by Kennedy

You may be better off with a Epson 700 or 750 ( or any higher end Epson since the 2450 - all basically the same resolving capability - ~something around 1600-1800 ppi equivalent IIRC. The nikons will resolve about 2700 ppi equivalent. (not the same as optical sampling PPI that the vendors quote BTW). So you really do get more capability with the film scanner, but unless you are enlarging beyond 8x10 inch or have really dark areas with detail that you want to pull out, you may not see the difference over one of the Epsons.

check out -

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/

for some real case evaluations between the two (Nikon, Epson 700/750 and others)

Here is another good web site to start from if you have never done serious film scanning:

https://www.scantips.com

and

https://www.luminous-landscape.com

and

https://www.computer-darkroom.com

for the professional end of the business and a lot of really good technical articles and reviews.

[Nappe1]

thanks for links and findings degrub... I'll look into those.
and I do have scanned stuff before (owned HP Scanjet 5100C and later on my father bought one of those multi-printers from HP...) but my previous scanners didn't have any transparency possibilities. quite few ppl are now saying that flatbed scanners have become quite good in slides / film, but reason why I am not that interested buying one of those, is that I already have ok flatbed. It just does not support slides, so I thought that it might be good idea to buy specialized scanner for this purpose.

I did know that SF200 does not work with V (though some Nikon pdf's seem to claim so.) but I hoped for mode where the program would auto number the files so that you could switch slides to single slide loader one by one, without touching tens or hundreds options for each picture. (still even without batch mode, I think CoolScan V is much better option than my uncles way of taking pictures from the wall while projecting slides to it.

Getting old LS-4000 isn't too bad option but as new it's rather expensive. Or in fact you can't get 4000, but 5000 which again costs 1300 Euros and batch (casette, SF-200) loader costs 550 Euros on top of that. (and putting 1300 - 1800 Euros to slide scanner is a bit too much for my budget...) and I could get the CoolScan V as new with 620 Euros.

EDIT: just to clearing about target, I am trying to get around initially 5-6 Mio Pixels ( higher does not hurt, but for basic archiving I think 5 or 6 Mpixels should be ok.) and around 50-100 (even more is better) slides per hour scanning speed with cleary better quality than my uncles method. and all this with under 800 Euros.

[degrub]

For a 5 MP image you are probably scanning at 2000 ppi (2000 x2500 pixels for 35 mm). That is just above the resolving capabilities of the top Epsons. But not a bad fit. Both the 700 and 750 seem to be in you budget range. The epson will do 35mm slides (12 frames), 35mm film strips (24 frames) at a time. THe only issue may be the extraction of detail in the darker areas of the slide. The I-photo site has some good side by side comparisons.

NikonScan loves to remember it's settings. In fact, it can be a royal pain changing them and having the changes stick. The UI can be difficult, but not impossible to get used to. i use Silverfast Ai Studio almost exclusively now.

You will be lucky to scan a slide per minute by hand, even with unchanging settings.

Do you plan to use ICE for dust removal ? If so you will need to add about a minute per slide. i would recommend it , as it will save you far more time in the end. Also, if you use the color recovery or enhancement parts of ICE that will add around a minute, depending on the speed of your PC/MAC.

The other very important issue about the Nikons, is that they have a very small depth of field. If you have curved film or slides, you will not get critical focus across the slide. The film holders help, but are not perfect. Slides will be problematic, unless you are willing to unmount them and put them in special holders. The flatbeds generally have less of a problem with this as their depth of field is wider. Other slide scanners vary in this issue. All will require sharpening of the image for output.

If you are working with slides only, i would suggest using an IT8 calibration slide and software to get the scanner profiled so that more of your scans will be close to the original colors. Doesn't work with negs.

[Nappe1]

Degrub: thanks for you advices and hints. I have been now looking more reviews from the scanners and I think I still will give a go for CoolScan LS 50 ED. even though the 2000 dpi scan time is going to be more likely around 2 minutes with ICE, I think it willl fit my needs a bit better than flatbed scanners.

(if I would need a new flatbed to other purposes as well, then the choosing flatbed with good transparency options would be more likely.)

[chaoliang]

I have used the coolscan ls5000 since about two years and scanned over 3000 slides and nagatives during this time. I used the nikonscan software instead of the silverfast one. I'm very satisfied both with the hard- and the software, though I did have some problems with the slide holder at the beginning. Nikon solved the problem with an firmware update. I scanned all of the slides with 4000dpi and the infrared supported digital scratch/dust remover. It was a quite time consuming job but one gets used to it after some time. I used the stripe feeder and scanned 3 to 6 images in every process. If one manages to keep the scanner busy, about 3 film rolls can be finished per day.
One can argue that 4000 dpi is way too much for normal presentation. I used it for archiving. And to edit the images in PS, higher resolutions for the beginning are always better, if I understood it correctly.

[Nappe1]

chaoliang: thanks for your comments and notes.

I placed an order for CoolScan V LS 50 ED. It seems that there's a lot more buyers than scanners in the market right now, because I am 7th in order list and shop gets about 1 or 2 devices per month, so delivery can take a moment I guess.

still, I have few good shots in my film archives, which you will be seeing when the scanner arrives.

I also will take my 35mm rangefinder (Ricoh 500G from 1971) to service to get it's film compartment re-sealed.

[chaoliang]

Wish you to be happy with your new scanner!

[Nappe1]

I got my Scanner on saturday (yes, delivery time was 4 months!) and I must say that I am impressed so far. Of course it has some things you could make better (like scanning software settings work very weird way...) but still the quality of the scans is really good.

I already "rescued" pictures that were never developed to the paper. It's my very first film on my dad's old Ricoh 500G in 1989 and the film was in the camera when I got it. Acording to previous user, it had been there at least five years. Back then when the negatives came back from development, my dad took a look of them and decided that it would not have been worth of money making them all way to paper.

well, I now took those negative strips and run them thru as just of curiosity to see how CoolScan could handle material like that. Suprisingly, only 2-3 older frames were completely lost (proapbly already had been when I got the camera.) but the pictures that I had taken were excelent quality (as technical point of view... as in photography, well 10 year old kid with 2 snap, shoot and develop cameras experience isn't yet very good in steady shoting, cropping and setting everything in manual as the range finder would need... ) Anyways, it was funny to see those pictures first time after 16 years.

Also, I did make a notice that already back then I was experimenting how to improve limited short range focus of Ricoh with small tricks... 500G could not focus closer than .90 meters, but there is still one weird picture, which has 1:16 scale plastic toy trucks almost perfectly focused from much closer distance. The background scenery is badly distorted from the edges, so only thing I can come up is using big magnifying class, that has been so big that rangefinder "fake image finder" is also covered by the glass area. I only weakly recal owning a flexible plastic, credit card sized, magnifier, which must been used able to do the effect.

I eventually didn't get the result how the focusing successed in that test because only negatives were developed, so It took all way up to my Digital Camera age to try that again.

There's some jewels in my negative archive (taken between years 1988 and 1999) for nature scenery picture lovers of murc, so when I get them scanned, I'll post them here.

[degrub]

Welcome to the world of scanning ! another form of torture