Nikon CoolScan V LS-50 ED Film Scanner by Nikon
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Digital camera reviews of Nikon CoolScan V LS-50 ED Film Scanner
Digital camera Review: Excellent Scanner to Convert Your Collection
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this scanner to digitize my color negatives with the intention of selling it when finished. Set up was easy. Results are good to excellent depending on negative condition. I leave ICE and scan image enhancer on all the time and the result is pretty good. Scan time is about 10 minutes per 4 pic negative with setting at medium. Average file size for jpeg is about 3.5MB. It wont work miracles, but it does a pretty good job on negatives that are were in storage for years. If I can resell it while retaining 75% of what I paid for it, then it will be well worth the effort. It's a slow slow process.. If you have thousands of slides or negatives I would suggest a faster unit. If you have a few thousand or less, then this is ideal... I give it a 5 star because it does exactly what it was designed to do with good to excellent results.. On occasion with ICE on you will get a miracle out of it.. turning a very damaged negative into a pretty nice image.Digital camera Review: Excellent Scans, Horrible Software.
Summary: 4 Stars
BOTTOM LINE: If you are not familiar with Photoshop tools and aren't ready for a user experience that frustrates a professional and burns out amateurs, I'd steer clear for now. If you know your way around and have patience, you will get very satisfying results from this machine.
I am told the Macintosh version of Nikon's scan software is pretty good. The Windows version of the utility however, is ALMOST the worst interface I have ever used. Why does this matter? I found VueScan and SilverFast to be lacking in their implementations of "Digital ICE" so I stuck to the awful Nikon interface for that reason alone. If you don't need ICE, these are both great alternatives to Nikon Scan. If you use Nikon Scan, you will be frustrated and thwarted by it.
I won't go into too many details because there are so many complaints already circulating the net, but this is a crash-happy unintuitive user-defeating piece of software. What's more, and you should love this-- it says right there in the manuals NIKON SCAN IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH PHOTOSHOP. Go figure.
Settings aren't sticky, controls aren't sensibly located, and the interface obscures the tools. Too many simple changes cause the scanner to restart the prescan process, and that can be as time consuming as an actual scan. Closing the wrong window at the wrong time crashes any open documents and kills scans still floating in RAM without warning dialogs.
I find myself taking up to 30 minutes per scan at times with this scanner when the frustration slider is set to max. Best times are around 4 minutes for slides in good condition.
Remember this scanner only scans standard 35mm slides and negatives, and only one at a time. Batch process at most can handle six-frame cut strip negatives, and you can purchase an external slide feeder designed for another model, but I have never tried. Scanning uncut strip negatives is not recommended, but if you must you can disassemble the scanner to allow feed-thru.
The scanner can be rigged to use an adapter made for a different Nikon model if unusual 35mm strip film is encountered (IE Kodak Safety Film), but the results are unpredictable and dangerous to the film because of the way you have to fool around with it. I have found the film shifts around in the holder or the frames are often cropped at top and bottom.
As of May 2006, an Epson V700 has finally bested my Nikon Coolscan V. Never thought I'd see a flatbed scanner with dead-on focus and resolution capable of rendering 35mm transparencies and negatives properly, or beating out a dedicated slide scanner, but this thing actually came through. Not only that but it has higher resolution, IF you have sharp enough film. Anyway that's another review. The Nikon still wins in scanning severely underexposed film, and handles Kodachrome a bit better, but both by a small margin. It definitely loses now for its strict limitation to standard 35mm. Consider the V700 as an option if you're not sure about this purchase.
Digital camera Review: Excellent Slide Scanner
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent slide scanner and does exactly what it is supposed to do very well. Yes, it is somewhat slow, but only in comparison to regular flatbed scanners. I have the slides scan at maximum resolution, but have the final image resized to about 20%. This keeps the file size manageable (about 5 MB per scan) and still provides an image that fills the screen. With the digital corrections on (which does make a huge difference on old family slides), and some minor post-processing, it has been taking about a minute per slide.
As for the software, while it can be very complicated, most of the settings are fine in the default mode, and I would say the learning curve to get started is minimal. Yes, you can spend hours and hours learning all the histograms and curves and other manipulation features, but unless you're a professional, there's really no need to mess with all that.
So all in all, I think this is a great scanner and it is providing me with digital captures of my family's 30 year old slides that otherwise would have remained unviewed in their vintage carousels.
Digital camera Review: Excellent scanner at an affordable price
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had this scanner for 6 months, and am very impressed with the results. Before this, dealing with dust, scratches and the like was a real pain, but with ICE I hardly need to bother looking for blemishes in scans. And DEE is able to pull detail from seemingly hopelessly underexposed parts of a slide. GEM is slow, but good when every last detail counts (for large enlargements). The resolution is wonderful, still better than any digital camera I know of. With this scanner and a bit of digital artistry I've been able to resurrect photos from the dead. I am fully satisfied; the only thing more I could ask for is speed, but not at this price. A great way to retrieve those prized photos for digital archival and I'm still sticking with this scanner and a film camera for pictures I take now.Digital camera Review: Excellent scanner for APS films
Summary: 5 Stars
After researching the best way to scan APS film, I purchased a Coolscan V scanner from Amazon and IA-20(S) APS adapter from Adorama thru the Amazon site. I never really found any reviews concerning scanning APS film, so I stuck with the scanner that had the best reviews and bought the APS adapter to go with it.
I found that these units were bid up on auction sites to within fifty dollars of the price of a new unit. My plan is to scan all of my film, then sell the scanner and adapter.
The film scans are beautiful! Much better than scans of the prints and much quicker and simpler. The software has many nice tools, especially Digital Ice, which eliminates all dust and spots with no apparent effect on the scan quality.
This is an excellent way to scan APS films, which are much easier to scan than 35mm strips. You just put the roll in the adapter. You click one button in the Nikon Scan software and it displays all 25 or 40 thumbnails in a minute or two. Since I had around 100 APS rolls to scan, I set up the defaults so that it would automatically have the normal parameters set when I scanned APS films. Then I just had to rotate the images to the correct orientation, select all of the thumbnails and hit the scan button in the software. It asks about the file name structure and the folder they will go into, and presents a few other options, then it spends about an hour to scan a roll of 25. I go do something else during that time. I haven't had any computer crashes during scanning, even while browsing or running other software on my computer (a low-end 2004 Sony VAIO desktop) simultaneously.
You can preview all of the frames and adjust all of the scan parameters for each individual shot before the final scan. I found this to only be useful on films with mostly dark shots. It takes about 15-20 minutes to preview a roll of 25. It is time-consuming to correct each shot. If there are only a few dark shots on a roll, then I preview and fix the ones I am sure will need additional software cleanup. Then I scan the whole roll. After scanning, I reopen the files, perform auto contrast on most shots, make any other adjustments, then resave them. Very efficient.
The APS adapter worked flawlessly for me for about 3 weeks, scanning about 55 APS films, mostly with 25 exposures but a few were 40-exposure rolls. Then it failed. I have returned the adapter to Nikon for warranty service. See my review of the adapter under "Nikon Coolscan IV APS Film Adapter"
There are a couple things they should add for simpler APS scanning:
1. A reader for the APS film's embedded magnetic strip. Inclusion of the date as data was one of the advantages of APS film. This data could be used to adjust the file date or included as part of the filename. This would make sorting easier.
2. A "Select All" button for easier selection of a whole roll.
Nikon Coolscan V is an excellent scanning system for APS film as well as 35mm.