Nikon CoolScan V ED Film Scanner
by Nikon
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Nikon CoolScan V ED Film Scanner
Customer Review: Great Product...Really Sloowww...But Worth It
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this scanner really quite simply to scan all 600 of our wedding negatives as we have no digital version of our wedding pics. After you play with the settings a little, and get a bit of a system and momentum we have been able to scan a 5 pic negative in about 30-35 mins. This includes the initial scan to preview, changing the settings on each individual picture to where we want them, re-drawing, then scanning to file. We are scanning our stuff at 14 bits (higher resolution), Digital Ice Enabled (on Fine), Post Processing (Digital ROC, Digital GEM and Digital DEE) enabled and Post Processing enabled. With these settings, at this rate...it will take us 70 hours to do all 600 pics. The software really does an amazing job on the original pictures. Our wedding was shot in black and white, and the initial/preview scans look really grainy. After we get done modifying them, the grainy-ness is gone and the pictures are sooo clear. Much more detail is revealed than we had previously thought.
Since most of our pics over the last 7 years have been digital, we shouldn't have a need for the scanner after we're done with the wedding pics, and maybe a handful of other misc. rolls of film...so we think the time invested will provide us with a digital record of all our pictures and be well worth it.
If you have the time, this less expensive option is well worth it.
Customer Review: I wish I bought this sooner
Summary: 5 Stars
Great photo scanner. My 35mm photos are now full of details and look alive. I decided to purchase the Nikon scanner because of the awful quality of the prints I got from several different photo shops. I've uploaded an example of a before/after of a photo of a raccoon here at Amazon. The photo itself is nothing spectacular. A raccoon came on my back porch one night and I quickly took two photos of it before it ran away. When the photos were processed they were really horrible. See the side by side comparison. The difference is unreal.
I work with a Mac and I haven't experienced any problems with the scanner. The only thing I could say is do not make any changes to the scans with the Nikon software once the photos were scanned with the settings you initially chose to scan with. If you make any "post" changes, it'll take forever to save. Just save the scan as is and tweak the photos (if they need tweaking) in Photoshop.
Even though I have two digital cameras, I'll keep taking photos with my many 35mm cameras thanks to this fantastic scanner.
Customer Review: Excellent Scanner to Convert Your Collection
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this scanner to digitize my color negatives with the intention of selling it when finished. Set up was easy. Results are good to excellent depending on negative condition. I leave ICE and scan image enhancer on all the time and the result is pretty good. Scan time is about 10 minutes per 4 pic negative with setting at medium. Average file size for jpeg is about 3.5MB. It wont work miracles, but it does a pretty good job on negatives that are were in storage for years. If I can resell it while retaining 75% of what I paid for it, then it will be well worth the effort. It's a slow slow process.. If you have thousands of slides or negatives I would suggest a faster unit. If you have a few thousand or less, then this is ideal... I give it a 5 star because it does exactly what it was designed to do with good to excellent results.. On occasion with ICE on you will get a miracle out of it.. turning a very damaged negative into a pretty nice image. Customer Review: Excellant
Summary: 5 Stars
This scanner is what I was looking for. I tried using cheaper film scanners and adapters on bed scanners. Always disappointed with noise and resolution. I will be archiving my Dads slide collection (almost 5000 slides) and then my print film (edited down to maybe 3000). This scanner picked out amazing detail without tweaking any settings. It made me feel like I was laying on the floor watching those slides with a projector again. Yes it makes some noise, but tolerable. Scan speed is slowed when ICE , ROC and GEM are enabled at 4100 dpi, but I didn't think it was much longer than my old Prime Film 1800U.Customer Review: Attention Mac Users
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great product. Robust, well built & fast enough for the occasional slide & negative film scanner like I am. From time to time I still prefer my Nikon F100 film camera over the newer digital D300. Scanning high quality professional slide & film material easily renders about 22mpix images without noise or grain. Excellent!
Just be aware that the latest Nikon Scan software is still PowerPC and not Universal. You'll notice minor speed issues when working with extremely large images, even with 4GB of ram. I use a 24" iMac.
The software sometime looses it's USB connection to the scanner (I am guessing: about once per 50 slides)
I think these glitches will be fixed with any future software releases, although Nikon is a bit slow in this field.
After all, I am happy with the scanner and I think it was money well spent. Now I have some of the slides I took 10 years ago in Aperture and am post-processing them just as any other RAW/NEF file.
One more thing: The NikonScan RAW (.NEF) format is not compatible with MacOS X 10.5.2 at this point. You'll have to use 14 bit tiff as a second option. Beware: HUGE FILES... about 140 MB each! What I do is scan TIFFS, post-process and save 8 bit tiffs so I save about 1/2 HD space.
Cheers!