Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED Film Scanner by Nikon
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Digital camera reviews of Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED Film Scanner
Digital camera Review: Best slide scanner I've used
Summary: 5 Stars
I haven't used many, but this works well for me. ICE is great for getting rid of little specks I can't see. I guess you could do without it, but you'd have to have clean room type slides, mine certainly weren't that clean.
Many of my slides were dark, but the ROC/GEM fixed most of them. I've scanned about 2000 so far. Some I felt were poor, so I rescanned them with ROC/GEM turned off, but couldn't really do any better by hand (but I'm not a super-photoshop expert.)
The scanner did a good job of reproducing the slides and correcting for their age. Sometimes the color correction was worse (< 1% of the time) because of odd lighting conditions, but I just rescanned those few with ROC/GEM turned off.
For some slides that had spots I tried Microsoft Digital Image Suite (it was installed on the machine I was using) and was pleasently surprised to find that it could remove unwanted things fairly easier.
On one machine I got garbled photos, it seems like the USB connection failed quite often, but my machine is suspect. I've had similar issues on the other machine, but very rarely and the software has noticed so I can rescan a slide. (when this happens it seems to lose a scan line or mess up the color for a scan line).
The slide feeder is a must for me, and it has worked pretty well although there are a few types of slides it jams on. (square or extra large frames). 99% of my slides work fine.
Occasionally the software fails, and usually I restart the program &/or power cycle the scanner. Usually it just seems to forget about the scanner after jamming. Rarely (< 0.1% of the time) it has scanned only the red channel or something, which seems pretty wierd. This instability is annoying but reasonably rare. What's most annoying is that simply resetting the software/hardware fixes it, so you'd think it'd be programmed to reset when it started getting confused.
Nikon says that their stuff doesn't run on Vista, however I ran setup with compatibility mode turned on for XP SP2 (right click on setup and click properties). After that it worked fine, and from the other comments it doesn't seem any less stable that what other users have reported.
Digital camera Review: Beware for computers freezing up
Summary: 1 Stars
I have used the 5000 ED for the past week and my computer (running XP home edition) keeps freezing up after scanning 2 - 25 slides, forcing me to perform a cold reboot. I have sent a request to Nikon, but haven't heard a word. If only I could return this unreliable piece of hardware.
Digital camera Review: Beware of Nikon Scan software on Mac OS X
Summary: 2 Stars
The scanner is very good but the software on OS X is a joke, crashes every 5 slides, only 31 character file names, can't handle sleep. Total junk.Digital camera Review: Beware of Nikon Super CoolScan Slide Feeder
Summary: 1 Stars
We purchased a Super Coolscan 5000 ED with SF-210 slide feeders, hoping to scan my parents' thousands of Kodak slides. The Super Coolscan worked flawlessly on single slides, but the SF-210 slide feeder simply could not scan more than 2 slides without jamming.
The instruction manual does say that the feeder basically works only with Fuji compatible slide mounts, and warns of problems with Kodak and other mounts - but it's buried in the middle of the manual and you don't find out until you've purchased the producdt. I have been unable to find those restrictions mentioned anywhere inthe literature. At nearly $400 per feeder, I would expect it to work - or at least have the sales literature mention its limitations.
I complained to Nikon, but never even received an email response. I will never buy a Nikon product again.
Digital camera Review: Completely satisfied
Summary: 4 Stars
I originally purchased the Coolscan V. Once I realized how long each scan was going to take, it was clear that the bulk loader (SF-210) was mandatory. I returned the V and ordered this version. I really have no complaints. My collection of almost 3,500 slides is now scanned. Some of the images created (especially if you give individual attention to the slide) are simply breath taking. I did a great deal of research and I believe this is the best option for digitalizing your old slide collection. Like others, I was dissappointed in the included software; otherwise this would have been a five star review. Once I got used to it (on Vista), I really didn't have that many problems though.