What a revelation after I switched from Minolta's Scandual III to this baby! Beautiful colours from negs are so easy to acquire! Just a little tweek on the curves and enabling the Digital ICE (normal setting) is generally all I need to do before hitting the scan button.
Scanning has become a pleasure instead of a chore. The Minolta Scandual III is by no means a poor scanner because it can give out real good scans, but with the Coolscan IV, beautiful colours comes with minimal tweeking. Excellent.
Oh and the autoloading mechanism is great. But the film strip holder isn't that hot. Filmsy and fragile, so please be careful there.
Digital ICE is wonderful! Hours spent removing dust spots and scratches are over. Digital ROC is probably best used on faded negs and slides as on my negs, the effect is not good. I haven't really tried Digital GEM as I'm not too picky about grain. However, I will do it soon just to see if silky smooth images can be achieved with it.
The lack of multiscanning and lower Dmax than the Minolta is not a problem for me. I don't see much of a difference, but I'm sure more experienced photographers do.
Operation is a noisy, but so was the Scandual III. The autofocus is fast and accurate. Software is good but not as well laid out as Scandual III's.
Overall speed is good, perhaps due to my using a P4 laptop. The USB1 interface isn't as slow as it seems. I find little difference with Scandual III's USB2.
As a used unit, it was a great buy. I'm not ready to buy a DSLR and purchase DX lenses yet, so this baby is the perfect complement to my film camera.
However, if you are getting a new unit, its the Nikon Coolscan V that you should be getting. Its got better Dmax value, higher resolution (4000dpi! But do you need it?), but no multiscanning.
If its the multiscanning that you want, perhaps a used Coolscan 4000 can be a better buy?
Strengths:
1)2900dpi - good enough for 8x12
2)Great colours
3)Digital ICE!
4)Fast operation
5)Autofilm feeder
6)Great buy for a used unit
Weaknesses:
1)Fragile film strip holder
2)No multiscanning - try Coolscan 4000 if you really want it.
3)Low Dmax - again, get the Coolscan 4000
4)Noisy operation
I am using this to scan slides. The results are very impressive. I have a Nikon CoolPix 995 digital camera (3Meg) and the results from the scanner match those from the digital camera. The ICE works very well to remove imperfection from the film. I am a Mac user (OS X) and so far I never have any software issues during scanning. The scanner works in batch mode so it saves a lot of time.
Strengths:
Output quality, ICE todigitally remove dust and scratches on the film, price.
Have been using this scanner for nealy 6 months now and think maybe it's time to post some comments here. For scanning slides, this scanner need a bit time to get used to(maybe one day max). But after you got familiar with the curves in the software, everthing afterward is reletively easy. For Fuji sensia film, I can get consistant results without doing any curve adjustments in Nikonscan. Provia also love this scanner. But I found the hardest thing to scan is the Velvia, very hard to get the looks on the original slide, that's for me though, any one can offer some tips? For Black and white film, this scanner also scans beatifully.
Ice works only for color but you can get some interesting effect with B&W with ice enabled.
About the crashing software, I'm using xp pro and the program indeed crashes, but it's rare. Maybe it's just my computer and you should make sure to get the lastest version.(Mine is the lastest came with the package) I've tried vuescan but I like Nikonscan better because the curves are more comprehensive to adjust.
Scanning speed is ok, won't kill you if you have something else to do at the same time.
To get good results, make sure using 12bits mode no matter it's color or B&W.
Well, maybe there is more but I'll stop here
Strengths:
Ice, I love it.
Nice color and sharpness
Weaknesses:
a bit noisy
Ice don't work with B&W film
a film eject botton may come in handy
After trying the Minolta Dimage III, I switched to this scanner. The Minolta was a very capable scanner, and it's software is much better than Nikon's. However, I decided I couldn't live without ICE.
The build quality of the scanner is excellent While the software is cumbersome and not well thought out, it is still easy to use. Results are excellent. My scans of color negative film are very true to the film, much moreso than with the Minolta. The ICE feature is truly a fantastic. I'm very happy with this scanner.
Strengths:
The overall quality of the hardware and finished scans are great. ICE is fantastic. Scans are consistant with the tonal qualities of the film.
Weaknesses:
Nikon just doesn't have a knack for software design. The program uses a ton of memory, and the design is really convoluted. It's easily manageable, but Nikon should have done a better job of this.
Similar Products Used:
Minolta Dimage III.
Flat bed scanners.
Customer Service:
I needed to use them for the installation. I've only called Nikon customer service twice, and both times they were very rude. They did walk me through my installation problem though.
More Products from Nikon
Link to this page
3 of 5
4 of 5
5 of 5
