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: Very Good Scanner
Summary: 5 Stars
I guess I should prefix this review with the caveat that I haven't had a lot of experience with photo or film scanners. However, I have to say I've been really happy with the quality of the scans I've gotten out of the CoolScan 5000. I've been using it to digitize family slides dating from the late 50's through to the mid 70's. I'm a bit of a neophyte, so I don't have much insight into how I should use the more advanced settings, but in general I've found that the scans seem to look better with digital ICE on. Digital ICE removes specks and spots with very little degradation that I can notice (that doesn't mean there isn't any, I'm sure there is, but I just haven't noticed it). You can't do ICE with post processing because it requires an infrared scan (there's a separate bulb for this in the scanner). I've also had a chance to scan a few relatively recent color negatives (from the 90's) and those look a bit better than the prints I have. So over all I've been very happy with this scanner, though I have to admit I haven't had experience with similar (and certainly cheaper) devices.Digital camera Review: Wonderful tool
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm a fairly accomplished amateur photographer. I've got film from Africa, National Parks and other places, and have now put around 500 slides and negatives through this scanner.
It's *great*.
The dynamic range is fantastic. 'Dark' images come through wonderfully. If it was unintentionally underexposed, the 16-bit color depth gives lots of room for adjustment. I was able to rescue many previously useless images and get decent digital files.
Speaking of rescues, many old family photos have rolled through my scanner, and the pleasure of saving and restoring old memories has been of great worth.
The negative strip feeder struggles with strips less than two frames long; some of my old negatives were strangely cut, and I ended up enclosing them in plastic slide frames.
At full resolution and color depth, you can generate 120MB TIFF image files from a scan. You will want lots of storage.
The only weak point of this scanner is the software. It works, but it is unintuitive and quirky. Occasionally it crashes. Nikon creates great hardware, but the team that made the software should be bludgeoned for besmirching an otherwise great product. Plus- upgrades and bug fixes, Nikon? Where are those?
For those willing to pay a little more, Silverfast can step in with something more reliable and with a few useful bells and whistles, like automatic HDR.
If you need an excellent tool for pulling 35mm film into the 21st century, this is it. It's relatively fast, is accurate on the color, the scratch/dust reduction is awesome, and it's *only* a thousand bucks. Once you're dialed in on the software, you can do wonders with those old photos.
Digital camera Review: Works beautifully, although slower than you might expect
Summary: 5 Stars
I am using this product almost exclusively for slide scanning, so my comments only apply to that aspect of this product.If you are like me and wondering whether you should suffer through using a consumer level slide scanner or fork out the dough for this one, then the quality this produces when scanning dark slides should be enough to convince you alone. And that's just the beginning. I've used consumer level scanners before and no amount of tweaking or photoshop'ing can match the quality the Coolscan 5000 produces. For professionals, this is of course a no brainer, but for semi-professional folks like me, this is a major investment, and I needed some convincing that it would be worth it. I am now convinced.
Don't put too much stock into the scan times (and feed times for the sf-210 auto feeder). These times are without any Digital ICE, auto exposure, auto focus, etc. However, I have found if you do not use these features, you are wasting your time. After much tweaking to get all the settings such that the final result looked just like the original slide, I am looking at about 1 minute and 30 seconds per slide using the sf-210 (AMD 2.2 Ghz 1GB Ram, scanning at 2000 dpi)
I have found that without tweaking, you get a bluish hue (although a little less so for Kodachrome slides). I have turned red up +20 and blue down +20 (green at 0) and to me, this seems to give the best results (ymmv).
Use the digital ice features!!! They are simply amazing. The dust and scratch removal is phenomenal. The grain removal is also wonderful - and it keeps the picture sharp much more so than using a software filter like those found in Photoshop. Personally, I set the Digital ROC (color restoration and correction) to 0 because it is too unpredictable.
Lastly, use a bright, high quality LCD monitor! You would be amazed at the difference this can make when doing color matching, especially on dark pictures. I was astonished to see the difference.
When you take the above into consideration, this scanner is superb. Plan on spending a few hours getting your settings just right, but after that, sit back and enjoy. I've done 8x10 prints of my slides (scanned at 2000 dpi) that are just beautiful. It is near impossible to match the luminance and beauty of a projected slide, but the Coolscan 5000 does a darn good job.
Digital camera Review: Worth the money
Summary: 5 Stars
For years I shot slides - now need to digitize so I can let Photoshop do it's job. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it's worth it. If I scan a 35mm slide at it's highest resolution I get a file around 90 MB. That's a lot of data!
Other reviewers have gone over the various features, so I feel no need to repeat all that, but I would like to add my voice to those who are quite happy with this scanner.
Digital camera Review: i'm happy
Summary: 5 Stars
received on time. scanning like a marmot. I wish apple designed their software, but it does the job. matter of getting the right combination of setup for each type of film.