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02-01-07
Duration of ownership: 1 Months
Strengths: Good analysis. Scratch removal.Speed.
Weaknesses:Expensive. Not good reproduction of colors.
Overall Evaluation: I have this scaner for 1 month now. Up to now I was using an Epson Perfection flatbed scanner.I bought the Nikon 5000 ED because I wanted to scan my personal collection of about 6.000 slides.With the first scans, the first problems showed up. Color negatives were scanned quite good, but the real problem was scanning the slides. All this 'live' photos that I had in the slides, COULD NOT be reproduced in my computer screen. The scanner has a lot of alternatives for color control, for brightness, for contrast etc. So as to get to know the machine better, I read every word of its manual, even it's PDF format which is 139 pages. But still I could not reproduce the colours that I used to see in my slide photos.Then I began experimenting with the various image controls provided with the scanner software. I found out that to get nice colours from a slide, there are no general recomendations. Each control affects each slide in a different way. So to get good colours, you just have to keep on experimenting for each slide frame with the various control buttons. Or even make combinations of various control buttons. So if you can understand, the end result of each slide scan, IS A MATTER OF LUCK AND PATIENCE.What happens if someone has a collection of 6.000 slides like me? The answer is he will never finish his job !!!Then I went to the Nikon authorised dealer here in my city. We saw some scanned images together, we tried to correct the colours but it was impossible. Even if after many attempts one colour (for example the Red) was right, using a certain setting, the other ones (green, or blue) would be spoiled. The Nikon techician told me that a slide film can reproduce 4 billion colours. A computer screen is designed to reproduce 16,7 million colours, at 8 bit colour. Even if I would scan my images at 16 bit colour (an option that is provided by this scanner), even then I would not be able to see the difference, since a computer monitor always works at 8 bit colour. Even printers work the same way, that is 8 bit color (for each of the 3 colors).So the end conclusion is, that I SIMPLY HAVE TO FORGET THE WONDERFUL COLORS THAT I see in my slides, because no scanner is able to reproduce them. I wish I knew about this before I buy the scanner. Nevertheless, it is a quite good mashine, much better from my old Epson Photo Perfection. But it is not perfect as Nikon commercials make you believe.Attached are 3 diferent scannings of the same frame. This particular photo, I scanned again and again more than 20 times, so as to have good color reproduction of my friend's T-shirt. I even showed her the scans and called her up to ask her what real color was the T-shirt that she was wearing that day. As you see the colour that I got using the factory defaults, was clearly very different from the real one. Using RGB Curves color correction, (picture no.2), the red was a bit better. Finally after 20 scans, I realized that using Color Reconstrucion (ROC) was the best option as you see it in picture no.3Using Color Reconstruction (ROC) in another picture that was taken 10 minutes later, but with no reds in the frame, would spoil the whole picture....(And just think that I had to go through all this trouble for a photo that was taken on a color negative film, which is supposed to be easier to scan than slides).AS A CONCLUSION: IT IS QUITE A GOOD MACHINE, BUT IF YOU ARE DREAMING OF HAVING IN YOUR COMPUTER THE COLORS THAT YOU SEE IN YOUR SLIDES, JUST FORGET IT...
01-23-07
Duration of ownership: 1 Weeks
Strengths: Compact unit; works out of the box; performs as advertised.
Weaknesses:A little light on the Nikon Scan software documentation.
Overall Evaluation: I bought this scanner to digitize my collection of color negatives dating back some 30 years. I tried the scanner first with some negatives from a trip to France and Germany back in 1993. The negatives had spots, scratches, etc. from handling and long-term storage. The scanner did a great job of cleaning up the defects. I must say that the colors in the final scan were much improved over the colors that showed up in the prints from 13 years ago. The process is slow on the 16X overscan mode, but the results are worth it. I have just resigned myself to spending a considerable amount of time scanning my collection. I just hope that my friends do not find out about this and start asking me to scan their negatives too!
08-19-06
Duration of ownership:
Strengths: Easy setup, easy for amateur to use but tools for photo enhancement easily available
Weaknesses:When the Coolscan encounters a problem, you have to quit out of Nikon Scan and reopen to get back communication with the machine.
Overall Evaluation: I bought the SF-210 batch scanner also. Simple to set up for either slides or negative strips or batch feeds. I've had a few jams, but overall the Coolscan cranks happily away and gives excellent results.
05-30-06
Duration of ownership: 2 Months
Strengths: High Quality scans, good scratch/dust removal and color correction
Weaknesses:Slow scans and software processing. Image restoration blurs image slightly.
Overall Evaluation: I purchased this scanner to scan in all of my parents slides and negatives. I found that on a 1.8Ghz box scanning took over 5 minutes per slide if both color correction and scratch removal (digital ICE) were enabled. On a brother's Pentium-D it took only 2.5 minutes. So yes, scanning and processing is slow, but the result is quite worth the wait. I also purchased the automatic slide feeder to go with this unit (SF-210). I had problems with jamming of old paper slides, following some recommended mods on the internet, I reduced the problem but still found that I could not leave the unit alone without worry of jamming. Apart from this, I've really like the unit. Definitely good when trying to scan in 50 year old slides that need color correction.
09-22-04
Duration of ownership: 2 Weeks
Strengths: Digital Ice 4, 4000 Optical DPI, Great Scans
Weaknesses:Software Interface, Crashes when Too Much Queued, Expensive, Expensive Optional Equipment, Effort & Time Required for Great Pictures
Overall Evaluation: This film scanner is definitely a high quality scanner, and I'm happy I bought it. However, it takes a long time to scan with Digital Ice, and the results need to be tweaked on pretty much each image to get the best results. Many of my images come out a bit blurry, but that could possibly be that the original picture was a bit blurry. Digital ICE and GEM tend to add additional blur to images. But without them you can see the grain and imperfections come through. After I have more experience with the many enhancement features, I think I will be able to scan images faster and get better results. The software will crash if you try to perform edits to multiple images of the film strip at the same time. Patience is required. Also, the scanner doesn't automatically crop the images, and thus more work for you to do. Digital Ice is very impressive, but requires some testing to see what it does to your pictures. I bought this to scan more than 1000 pictures for personal archival purposes, with the intent of scanning at extremely high quality to (hopefully) stand up to the test of time. Scanning this many pictures will definitely take a long time. If you only scan a few images at a time, this scanner will not annoy you. But if you scan many images a day, I think the this scanner's speed will wear on you. However, you will get very detailed scans. I say "detailed" because if your original image is not great, the scanner will definitely show a detailed version of a lousy picture. Optional adapters cost more than most flatbed scanners (ouch!). FYI - you can't get use 16 bit if you are saving to JPEG format. Only TIFF and Nikon's proprietary format will support the 16 bit setting.
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