[Ben_Edict]

You are in fact correct. All my other scanning needs (what little they are), are covered.

I am torn between wanting to get on with scanning all my old slides (or the ones worth scanning, anyways) or waiting some more to see if prices come down into my budget range - or my budget range picks up another $400 or so.

The difference in Dmax values alone suggest I'm out of luck right now, as I think I'm looking at something like 4.2 for the Nikon and about 3.5 at best for anything in my purchasing range. Given how many of my slides are high contrast shots, I suspect I might be disappointed to give up that much.

Anyways, reading some interesting comments here, thanks.

Rick, the Epson V700/V750 reach a dmax = 4.0 if you use them with Silverfast. That is pretty impressive and very near the Nikon 5000. The difference is resolution. The Epson has an official spec. of 6400 dpi, which is bullshit. In reality it resolves about 2300 dpi. That's very good for medium format, more than enough for large format, and acceptable for 35mm, if you don't print too large (something like a 8 Megapixel scan). Depending on the film you used, you can already easily resolve its grain.

The colour rendition of the Epson is very impressive. I used to have an Umax pre-press scanner, but the Epson (though much more flimsy in build) easily tops that in every respect. The same for my old Nikon Coolscan LS-30, which I dumped after I tried the Epson.

The real advantage of these Epson scanners is, that you can scan up to 12 slides (if you use the official frame holder, otherwise you can cram some more slides onto the flatbed) in one rush - automatically and comfortably.

Apart from the limitations for 35mm the Epsons are easily the best flatbeds for scanning negs and trannies.

Ben

[jimH]

Some years ago I acquired a Spiratone Vario-Dupliscope (20 years or so). So I dug it out and a bunch of my old 35mm b/w negatives. I copied several rolls of negs and PP'd them in Paintshop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate. All went fairly well except the most I could do is set the dupliscope to a 1 to 1 copy of the 35mm negatives. With the sensor in my K10 being smaller than a 35mm negative I couldn't copy the entire negative, so I ended up cropping my shots. Quality was acceptable, but I couldn't copy the entire negative. However, I thought that I'd post a picture of the Dupliscope in case anyone might be interested in using something like this to copy slides and b/w negatives. I've tried to copy color negatives, but so far I haven't figured out how to process out the orange mask the color negatives have, that normal processing can remove. Anyone with knowledge on how to do this, I'd appreciate any help here. At any rate, here is a photo of my setup.

[Gooshin]

What is the typical file size for other scanners? An 8 bit TIFF scan of a 35mm slide is 57mb with the Coolscan 9000 at 4000dpi.

a 7200 dpi @ 64 bits from is like 320 megabytes.. haha

[Wombat]

Rick, is there anywhere in your district where you could hire a scanner for an occasional weekend blitz?

[Lowell Goudge]

i used a moinolta Dimage II scanner. Sadly minolta is out of the imaging business but there are probably some scanners still out there used.

the scanner is 2880 DPI and makes a 10MP image.

Color depth of the scanner is 40 bits and converts nicely to 8bit JPEG with high resolution.

the scanner has a 4 slide ot 6 negative carrier, so you can scan multiples and walk away from it.

I scanned 100% of my film shots over a 4 year period. (20,000 frames)

the scanner is slow, let me repeat this, ssslllloooooowwwww and my version runs on usb 1.1. Newer versions run USB2.

Although it proports to be capable of 16 bit scans, I never got this feature to work, but 8 bit was enough for all my slides any way and 10MP is more resolution than the film I shot

[GeneV]

The 16 bit feature on the Coolscan 9000 is also a bit limited in that I can only seem to use this option when I scan each slide individually. Batch scans of all 5 slides in the carrier seem to default to 8 bits after the first slide.

Is there a scanning tips thread somewhere?
I'm finding that after the first 200 slides, there are things I would do differently, and I am sure that will be true after the next 200. For example, I've found that the Nikon iteration of unsharp mask which was preset to "on" actually reduces sharpness.

It would be nice to learn on a few hundred slides someone else has scanned.

[Ben_Edict]

The 16 bit feature on the Coolscan 9000 is also a bit limited in that I can only seem to use this option when I scan each slide individually. Batch scans of all 5 slides in the carrier seem to default to 8 bits after the first slide.

Is there a scanning tips thread somewhere?
I'm finding that after the first 200 slides, there are things I would do differently, and I am sure that will be true after the next 200. For example, I've found that the Nikon iteration of unsharp mask which was preset to "on" actually reduces sharpness.

It would be nice to learn on a few hundred slides someone else has scanned.

What I learned through my different generations of scanners: use Silverfast, the results are always better than the supplied software produces. Or at least Vuescan, which has some very nice features, which the supplied software lacks - and it is faster...

Ben

[stevebrot]

The 16 bit feature on the Coolscan 9000 is also a bit limited in that I can only seem to use this option when I scan each slide individually. Batch scans of all 5 slides in the carrier seem to default to 8 bits after the first slide.

Is there a scanning tips thread somewhere?
I'm finding that after the first 200 slides, there are things I would do differently, and I am sure that will be true after the next 200. For example, I've found that the Nikon iteration of unsharp mask which was preset to "on" actually reduces sharpness.

It would be nice to learn on a few hundred slides someone else has scanned.

Making your settings "sticky" for batch scanning with the Nikon Scan software is a little tricky. So tricky, that I am not sure how I did it. I think that I created and saved a profile that I then load before doing the batch scan. (Or something like that...)

Steve

[Rick]

Rick, is there anywhere in your district where you could hire a scanner for an occasional weekend blitz?

No... but I did rent one in Calgary one weekend while I was stuck in a hotel while my wife had shoulder surgery... $50/day.

With the learning curve, number of slides to process, etc, that would be a rather expensive way to go about it.

I'm increasingly leaning to just biting the bullet, buying a 5000, gittin' 'er done, and then selling it ASAP to recover as much I can of the cost. I think the cost of the scanner is reasonable - I'm just in the middle of a lot of expenses this year.

A lot of my old film is Kodachrome, and right now I'm wondering if I shouldn't be looking even further up the ladder at the 9000. Gaaacckkkk!!!!!

More reading and research required...

[Rick]

I've just started this massive task of scanning a closet full of slides with a Nikon Coolscan 9000.

I paid the extra cash for this one because of its prowess with Kodachrome. So far, it has done a superb job on this film, especially K25. K64 is so contrasty, that the slides require a good deal of PS time, even with the excellent recovery features built into the 9000. As I get to know the scanner better, the tweaks in settings get better results with less fiddling around.

Did you actually compare the output of the 9000 to, say, the 5000 while scanning Kodachrome?

I'm trying to get a handle on what I need and wonder what the quality diff might be when I'm using Silverfast and IT8 targets regardless of the model?

[stevebrot]

...I'm trying to get a handle on what I need and wonder what the quality diff might be when I'm using Silverfast and IT8 targets regardless of the model?

You might want to check out the price for Silverfast Ai Studio (IT8) for the Nikon scanners. There is a reason why I am using Nikon Scan

Steve

[GeneV]

Did you actually compare the output of the 9000 to, say, the 5000 while scanning Kodachrome?

Not personally, since I can't afford to buy both. I did read a number of reviews that stated that the Digital ICE feature with Kodachrome worked much better on the 9000. The photo examples in the reviews showed a loss of detail when using the ICE version which works with the 5000 on some Kodachrome slides. The 9000 has a dedicated Kodachrome setting.

However, others report that ICE does work on Kodachrome with the 5000 most of the time.

[GeneV]

You might want to check out the price for Silverfast Ai Studio (IT8) for the Nikon scanners. There is a reason why I am using Nikon Scan

Steve

Yikes. It's more expensive than Photoshop.

Is there any value to Vuescan?

[GeneV]

What I learned through my different generations of scanners: use Silverfast, the results are always better than the supplied software produces. Or at least Vuescan, which has some very nice features, which the supplied software lacks - and it is faster...

Ben

What does Vuescan add? The manual on their web site doesn't tell me much.

[Ben_Edict]

What does Vuescan add? The manual on their web site doesn't tell me much.

Gene, best way to go is just to try it, as you can use it in evaluation mode for free. Vuescan has a very sleak workflow and supports almost all scanners out of the box. So you can use one piece of software for all the scanners in your system (I always have two scanners for different purposes). I skipped Nikon Scan (though that was an older version, may be newer ones are better) immediately after trying and don't use the Epson software, too (not to mention the horrible HP software...) I also tried Umax/Mikrotek supplied software and in each and any case I found Vuescan to be easier and faster to use with better results from the start. Silverfast was a step up: more complicated if you really want to extract the last detail from an image, and very expensive, as you need a new version for each scanner and only the most expensive versions offer all those niceties, that Vuescan has out of the box (see below).

Vuescan supports colour management with IT-8 targets and does so fairly easy. It also supports multisampling, which is a good (and cheap, aka free) option to increase dynamic range and reduce noise, when scanning high contrast images. All these things you have to pay extra with Silverfast - so Vuescan is a real bargain in comparisson.

I know some photographers who actually prefer it over Silverfast, because it is much easier to use. I personally prefer Silverfast for slides and negs, as it allows just the last bit more control. It is, I think, a matter of personal prefernce, whether Vuescan or Silverfast is a better match for your own workstyle, both are very capapble.

Ben