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: Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED Film Scanner
Summary: 4 Stars
The scanner produces excellent quality images. The process is fast and easy. I have successfully scanned color and black and White negatives as well as slides. All with good results. The software is adequate but somewhat prone to crashing (Windows XP Machine). The auto slide feeder, if used, is problematic unless modified to reduce jamming.Digital camera Review: Not bad, but not great, either
Summary: 3 Stars
I've owned this scanner for about 18 months now, and also have the slide and roll feeders. I've scanned about 12,000 images during that time, both slides and negatives.
The good news is, that for well-exposed negatives or slides, this scanner is fast and does a very high quality job. The bad news is that the software is buggy, and Nikon's tech support is non-existent. There are still no 64-bit drivers.
I'm running XP-Pro on an AMD x2 4600+ ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe with 2 GB memory and around a TB of SATA disk. While scanning, one of the two CPUs is totally consumed, but this is probably because of the polled USB driver. There are 3 software errors that keep occurring. First is the well-known Nikon Scan has encountered an error and must close - sorry for trashing your data. This malfunction occurs about every 10-40 frames. It simply requires a restart of the application. It usually happens just after or during a preview setup, so the work loss is minimal, but annoying. Nikon support ignores all reports to their support site of this particular problem.
The second problem is that the scanner software simply freezes. This usually happens in multiscan mode. To recover from this requires that the scanner be power cycled and the software needs to be killed with the task manager. Nikon support has also ignored this bug report.
The third problem is that when a slide jams in the feeder, the application loses communication with the scanner and must be restarted. Not too bad, since I had to manually clear the jam, but really an indication of the poor quality of the software error handling.
The software is incomplete with the slide scanner, in that it doesn't allow a preview scan for each slide like it does for the roll/strip feeder. That is basically a software issue, although the sloppy handling and positioning of the $500 slide feeder is also in play, in that it is probably impossible to get a complete alignment of the second feed with the first. (It actually misses a bit with the strip feeder as well, although not enough to matter.
The slide feeder is a bit of a kludge. It will require some modification to get it to work reliably enough to walk away from, but after a bit of tinkering, cutting and installing a modified pressure plate, it now can feed slides that are in good condition well enough that it seldom jams.
Another problem I have is with the hardware specification - it claims a Dmax of 4.8, which is just the specification of the 16-bit A/D converter attached to the sensor. But the sensor has nowhere near that much dynamic range, so the specification is downright misleading. Because of that, this scanner continues the history of scanners having great difficulty with dense slides. While Dee helps some, the problem of the limited dynamic range of the sensor becomes readily apparent. The amount of smear across high contrast boundaries is intolerable when scanning some very nice Velvia or even Provia images. If you shoot slides for scanning, consider over-exposing by 1/2 stop or so if the subject can tolerate that.
As mentioned earlier, the multi-scan setting does not seem to work very well, due to the software crashing.
Scan image Enhancement is a totally useless piece of software. The ICE works well for dust removal, but may give some image deterioration on some Kodachromes, although most work out okay. ROC works quite well for faded images, such as pre-85 Ektachromes and older negatives. Occasional Kodachromes are also restored. But there doesn't seem to be any difference between the setting from 1-4 that I have been able to detect. And you'll get bizarre results if ROC is one and the n\image hasn't faded.
GEM is okay for grain reduction, but like most such programs it loses detail fast, so us it sparingly. Faster negatives need it, and some of the older or faster slides films also, but if you can get away without it, then don't turn it on.
Negative scanning is very good, with the colors either well-balanced or easy to correct (Reala, for example, needs some manual setting to get right). But the negatives are grainy compared to slides. So you either get dynamic range problems or grain problems. Pick your favorite imperfection. I find negatives a breeze to scan, but the ultimate quality is not quite as good as a good slide scan, provided the slide is not too dense.
So Nikon gets only three stars for this. The idea is good, but the lack of dynamic range and software problems, coupled with Nikon tech support's utter incompetence or non responsiveness turn this into a mediocre product. Unfortunately, there is nothing much better at a reasonable price. Drum or pseudo-drum scanners may be better (I wouldn't count on it, though), but I don't have 10k to invest.
You'll get as good an image quality from a comparably priced 10MP digital SLR, so unless you have a lot of old stuff to scan, this is not the way to enter the digital age at this point in time. D80, D200 and comparable Canon or Fuji DSLRs give images subjectively as good or better than the scanned images from this scanner and slide film.
Digital camera Review: Poor scanner crippled by even worse software
Summary: 2 Stars
This scanner is extremely slow, taking up to several minutes per negative.
The Nikon Scan software that accompanies it is ugly and tries too hard to be user friendly, often making uninvited guesses as to what it thinks you want (remember MS Office and 'Clippy'?). Changing default settings proved to be challenging and it doesn't properly handle BW negatives; the BW scans are often colorized and adjusted, even when the scan is set for "mono" and no adjustments.
A real disappointment.
Digital camera Review: Slow and tedious
Summary: 2 Stars
Nikon makes great cameras but awful software and this unit relies heavily on software. The scanner is slow as can be and making pre-scan adjustments with the software tedious and time consuming. Much faster with Photoshop! Bulk scanning in not a viable option due to the time it takes per image. I had the APS attachment and it failed continuously to take the film in. I sent it back to Nikon for repairs with detailed description of what was wrong and it came back with the same problems unfixed. Tried it with different brand films and still wouldn't accept rolls. For such an expensive machine it is barely worth it. Certainly not if you don't have much time to fiddle. This is all sad as the quality of scan is clearly there, just the ergonomics of using this unit and the ridiculously produced software are a typical Japanese pain in the neck. If this cost 400$ which it should, my attitude would be different but for 1000$ this is a barely 2 star machine and a hassle at that.Digital camera Review: Super Scanner
Summary: 5 Stars
Got the 5000ED new from old stock together with the stack loader in November 2010.
Wonderful. Works very well.
Previously I have been using the Coolscan V ED.
Minor adjustment to the stack loader to adjust pressure and it is trouble free.
No jamming in the stack loader.
The 5000 is about twice as fast as the old V, and does a good job of digitizing.
Now I am well on the way to digitizing the photo collection.
Too bad Nikon doesn't make this one any more, it is a winner.