24 out of 24 people found this review helpful.
Nikon Coolscan V Scanner -- after 600 slides review
Date of Review: Feb 2, 2005
The Bottom Line: An excellent scanner for someone looking to save their memories from fading into darkness. Very easy to use.
My dad purchased a Nikon Coolscan V scanner recently, and I took over the job of scanning over 30 years of memories, long forgotten in shoeboxes and shelves high up and out of sight. The scanner works very well in obtaining high-resolution digital images of slides and film negatives, especially if you use the ICE feature that eliminates most dust artifacts. However, the task is very time consuming and requires much patience.
-: Here are the positives of the equipment :-
- High resolution ensures a sharp image (as long as the original had good focus)
- Slides with vibrant colors come out great in 14-bit
- ICE works great to remove dust
- Scanner works with all types of film, including Kodachrome
- Included software is excellent and easy to use, with lots of adjustment options
- Scanner works great (no problems starting up and being recognized by PC via USB cable), very reliable.
-: Things to keep in mind :-
- You'll need a very fast computer with at least 1 GB of memory to work with the large files; I have an Athlon 64 3500, and the load is manageable. Any slower and I'd throw the scanner through the window...
- Each slide takes 1-2 minutes to scan and save
- Virtually every slide (especially the older ones) require some editing in Photoshop or similar software to crop and adjust light levels, colors, etc. [Don't try to edit the image as you scan, it's more time consuming and prevents adjustment later in Photoshop!]
- Files saved in TIF (best resolution w/o compression) take 100-120 MB EACH! You'll need a very large hard drive to save and edit the images before burning them onto a DVD
- Recall that CDs only fit about 700 Megs (that's six images), so you'll need a DVD burner to save your work (4.7 GB).
-: Things I found less useful :-
- GEM, ROC and DEE take considerable more time to scan images, and rarely work as advertised. I found it best to edit the images later.
- The scanner is very noisy. I have to play music to drown out the vrrr, vrrr, vrrr noises
- You can only scan one slide at a time; which takes considerable time.
-: My recommendations :-
I haven't used other scanners, but I can say without a doubt that you'll want one of these if you want high quality digital images of your work or family memories. The images are much better than a regular flat desk scanner, and the ICE feature cleans up the image from most artifacts long ingrained on the slide, that otherwise would make you throw them away. It also saves a lot of time in Photoshop stamping out dust pecks.
Here's one slide from the California coast in 2004 (resized and saved as JPEG) for you to take a look at:
http://photos.imageevent.com/slo007/misc/large/plant%20copy.jpg
Here's one slide from the a small zoo in the Amazon Forest in 1977 (also resized and saved as JPEG):
http://photos.imageevent.com/slo007/misc/Image33%20copy.jpg
As you can see, the images are sharp and the colors very vibrant.
Feel free to leave comments. I'll respond to all.
Obs.: So far. I've scanned about 600 Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides, as well as film negatives.
