Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED

I bought this scanner, as many have, to scan a collection of slides. I had about 100 or so slides that my dad took, circa 1950-67, and maybe 50 rolls of slides that I have taken over the years. I bought the scanner with the SF-210 slide feeder despite many dire warnings of jams. I didn't have that many slides to scan, so even if it did jam on occasion I could live with it; as long as it wasn't something that seriously detracted from the workflow.

I did have jams. But for what I did in the time that I did it, this was a minor, minor problem. I scanned roughly 1500 slides in a little over a two weeks, letting the scanner run basically non-stop, one roll at a time. I have a lot of recent slides, taken within the last 5 years, and none of those jammed. Not a single one. Even most of my dad's old cardboard Kodachromes went through fine. The trick was to take the most warped ones and put them in the stack to be scanned last.

Setting up the scanner to do its best work takes a bit of trial and error, but once you have your settings down, everything works well. The ICE meant that I didn't have to blow the dust off every roll - some I did, some I didn't, but they all turned out fine. Be careful with the scan software's "shadow enhancement" feature. It can make dramatic improvements in dark slides, but as I discovered, it can also turn a brunette into a blonde!

Now that I'm done, I have a warm, cozy feeling, knowing that I can shoot a roll of slide film any time I want and completely scan it the day I get the slides developed. Load, press the mouse button a couple times, and head to bed. I wake up and there are all my images, ready to leap onto the web, be sent as email, or end up as desktop wallpaper.

And best of all, I still have the slides, safely stored away, as backups.

Few jams - happened maybe 5 times in 1500 slides
Excellent reliability - set it to go, and it goes.
Scan output - excellent.

Cost - I marvel at how well the scanner did the job I bought it for, but I wish it wasn't a $1500 investment.
Speed - it didn't bother me, but some might not like taking 6-8 hours to scan a roll of film. It can be much quicker if you turn off a lot of the features.

Minola Dimage Scan Elite 5400
Minolta Scan Dual IV

Nikon Coolscan slide feeder SF-210 and Pakon hinged slide mounts equals jam

works well with geppe mounts

Pakon mounts come in two variants: plastic mounts and hinged mounts. Beware you cannot scan a load of hinged mounts with SF-210. The first one is very safe to scan, no jams occured. The second one is jam proned. They have eight external locking lugs that will hook on each other every time when the slide feeder is ejecting the scanned slide. The workaround is before loading put a band of scotch tape on the slide mount so these small bumps are covered. For speeding up the work align 4 or 5 mounts on a table and tape them together with scotch tape then cut it with a cutter. I used Scotch Magic Tape as it breaks up easily. After I tape them no jam occurred. The sad news is the lab I use has hinged mounts and I have already to scan over one hundred rolls.

I've scanned thousands of properly exposed frames of just about every type of popularly available film - b&w, slide, negative & kodachrome and have not encountered a single frame that could not be scanned as best as it can automatically with no post processing required due to the scanner. ICE4 works very well, Just like all current scanners, it cannot be used on b&w film. On everything else it works without degrading the image. There are some blemishes that it will not remove but cleaning those are measured in seconds. My workflow consist of identifying the type of film, setting ICE (except b&w), autoexpose-focus, GEM (grain equalization) as appropriate for the film, all other color controls neutral, preview the thumbnails from the strip of film and away it goes. Unlike the others I've used - using the film holder, selecting/creating a film profile for each type, adjusting for proper exposure, color, scanning only to find out something needed to be adjusted then rescanning - sometimes a few times each. Adjusting exposure from one frame to the other. And worst, sometimes regardless of adjustments in the scan driver or post processing, an unuseable image. For those underexposed frames, DEE and Analog gain features have given me the ability to salvage those frames that I really needed to use. Nikon Scan has everything I've needed to make an optimal, ready to print image. In my web album, you will find examples of the results I have been getting from this scanner S

I bought this for the scan accuracy and quality but after seeing the scan times from the other current offerings, I can now appreciate the speed of the scan as it is a fraction of the others. Full res preview nothing on - my time = 25sec vs listed Nikon time of 17sec 1X nothing on - my time = 32sec vs Nikon time of 20sec 1X, ICE - my time = 49sec vs Nikon time of 46sec 1X, GEM2 - my time = 2:39 vs Nikon time of 1:52 16X, ICE - my time = 6:56 vs Nikon time of none listed 16X, ICE, GEM2 - my time = 9:00 vs Nikon time of none listed Everyone knows that scan times are only a fraction of the total process of getting the final image, but the accuracy and quality of the scans are great so post processing is down to seconds on well exposed film.

Initial investment was a hurdle, but had I just saved my money from my two previous scanners, I was more then halfway there. Nikon Scan is not as intuitive and feature rich as the others.

I previously had the Epson Perfection flatbed then a Canoscan FS2720 film scanner and used Vuescan and Silverfast and encountered some frames of film that just could not be scanned close enough to post process. At first I thought it was me or my technique, but after having scanned thousands of different frames with the Coolscan 5000, I found out it was the equipment as I can now scan those same frames effortlessly - automatically.

I got the Nikon Coolscan 5000 and used the SF-210 slide feeder attachment to scan about 14,000 slides over the course of 6 months. The quality of the scans is excellent. Although the product claims 20 second scan times, I never quite got that speed out of it. However, I do get a scan in about 1 minute, complete with infra-red correction and color correction processing, which is much faster than any other slide scanner I've heard of [under $30K, anyway]. I also found that life was _much_ better when I bought VueScan instead of using Nikon Scan. Scans were much faster (1 minute instead of 2-3) using VueScan, recovery from jamming was much simpler, and the quality was perhaps a bit better. I had less luck scanning negatives. The quality was fine, but both VueScan and Nikon Scan had trouble identifying where the frames were, so I often had to scan the same strip of negatives multiple times before it got it right. Odd.

Fastest film scanner in its class, high resolution, good quality scans, handy (though spendy) slide feeder attachment.

Slide feeder jams frequently. Nikon Scan software is slow and doesn't handle jams well. Negatives often are not framed properly.