Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED Film Scanner

First of all, let me say I am a neophyte when it comes to scanning. My mother passed away recently and I wanted to go through my father's 20,000 slides and scan the best ones before they, as many before them, disappeared into the hands of one of my 7 other siblings never to be found again.After culling my father's slides I ended up with about 1000 I wanted to scan. After culling my own slides I ended up with another 250 slides. Additionally, I had about 250 slides from my grandfather slides And after that I decided to go through my color negative collection and scan the best of those as well. A daunting project! But honestly well worth the effort.Most of my father's slides are Kodachrome. Much has been written about the inability of this scanner to scan Kodachrome slides and said about ICE4 not working with Kodachrome. Well, I have some good news The ICE4 does work extremely well for the most part. However, with Kodachrome slides it does produce minor artifacts in about 5 percent of the slides. I scanned with ICE (not ICE4) always on and then rescanned if I encountered unacceptable artifacts. I did notice that the scanner ICE feature was more likely to be stumped by old Kodachrome slides where subjects were wearing shirts with stripes.The GEM ROC and DEE (the other stalwarts of the ICE4 other than ICE itself) work on Kodachrome slides as well, but I found that the results were unpredictable and that I could achieve better results myself in Photoshop far more quickly. The GEM ROC and DEE features simply took too long and slowed down the scanning unacceptably. The results, for me, were not worth the additional scanning time. So I never used these features. But the "enhance" feature on the scanner I used nearly 100% of the time with great results - much better than the GEM ROC and DEE features.The scanner is fast and does produce wonderful wonderful detailed scans, easily demonstrating the grain in the transparancies at 3000 and 4000 dpi. The Kodachrome slides were a challenge to the Dynamic Range of the scanner, but I believe that most of the detail in the shadows that is there was extracted. With dark slides I used the VERY useful gain feature turning it all the way up to 2 in the really dark slides. Unfortunately, Kodachrome, with all of its many attributes, does have substantial downsides including a very narrow exposure latitude and shadow detail is simply lacking. I think the scanner accurately reproduced the information including the colors on the Kodachrome slides, with perhaps a slight bluish cast noticed in some cases.It wasn't until I was finished scanning all of the culled slides that I undertook to scan my select color negatives. And this scanner really came into its own scanning color negatives. Don't even TRY to scan color negatives without ICE because the results are unbelievably bad. Even pristine negatives have scratches and dust that magically are erased by the ICE feature. What a godsend. The scanned color negatives were just beautiful with very accurate color rendition. But immediately I noticed much more grain in the color negatives (Royal Gold and Fuji Superia Gold) than in the scanned slides.One note unrelated to the scanner itself. Until you've used a digital scanner to scan your color negatives you can't begin to realize how far superior Kodachrome, Provia, and Ektachrome slides are to color negatives insofar as capturing detail. Even the best color negatives have much more grain that Kodachrome. And the difference in color negatives is substantial too.The included Nikon software worked fantastic for me. I downloaded a copy of VueScan which according to many reviews is superior to the Nikon software and found that for me the Nikon software was easier to work with and produced superior results.The software did cause my computer to crash occasionally which was an aggravation, but a minor one when considered against its many attributes.Setup Summary: I scanned at a 8 bit color depth (to reduce file size to 55MB and because I could not see a difference between 8 and 16 bit depth in the old slides) and 4000 pixels per inch with the scan enhancer turned on and the Digital ICE turned on. I did not use GEM ROC and DEE because of inconsistent results. I turned up the gain as necessary for dark slides and turned it down for light slides. Gain adjustments were only necessary on about 15 - 20% of the slides. The only two variables that I used once I was set up and running were gain adjustment and type of film or slide. All other adjustments were made in PS IF necessary. The scan at these settings took 90 seconds.Setting up the Nikon Scan window was a little tricky too. I placed the tool palette in the far upper right corner of the window with the scan window placed under it to the right. The image window occupied the largest portion space to the left.I can recommend this scanner without reservation. It is a phenomenal piece of equipment.

Was a damaged unit

Nikon makes great cameras but awful software and this unit relies heavily on software. The scanner is slow as can be and making pre-scan adjustments with the software tedious and time consuming. Much faster with Photoshop! Bulk scanning in not a viable option due to the time it takes per image. I had the APS attachment and it failed continuously to take the film in. I sent it back to Nikon for repairs with detailed description of what was wrong and it came back with the same problems unfixed. Tried it with different brand films and still wouldn't accept rolls. For such an expensive machine it is barely worth it. Certainly not if you don't have much time to fiddle. This is all sad as the quality of scan is clearly there, just the ergonomics of using this unit and the ridiculously produced software are a typical Japanese pain in the neck. If this cost 400$ which it should, my attitude would be different but for 1000$ this is a barely 2 star machine and a hassle at that.

As everyone says, the scanner is fairly small, nice. It makes the typical noises that scanners make and produces nice results--the problem is the software. It's horribly unorganized, crashes and lacks support for systems made after 2003.Windows XP x64 bit's Beta release was September 2003, and if my research is correct this Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED was put on the market nine months later (June 2004) yet as old as that is-- I'm forced to run it on a 32bit XP box as there is no support for ANY x64 bit Microsoft Operating system! In October 2008, Microsoft reported of all the hits to Microsoft Update, 20% of those were x64 bit platform.The only PC I'm running with 32bit software is my Dell E1705 w/2Gig Ram. It has a clean install only a few months old with updates in place.Nikon Scan uses Nikon Super Coolscan in a separate 'always on top' window to do the actual scanning. To select what negative to scan, you must click a unmarked vertical bar to open a small box showing numbers (from 1 to 6 by default). If any "Post Processing" options were previously used, the "Tool Palette 1" window must be open in order to avoid time consuming calculations (faster if ran on a x64 machine breaking the 2G barrier). All "Post Processing" options must be unchecked for each negative (group selection only grays out the selection boxes). There is the ability to disable "Digital ICE" from the preview in the Preferences window but not for the other Post Processing tools. Now you can initiate the Preview by clicking the said marked button. You may notice you are up to four windows open after the "Progress Window" pops up. Next close the small unmarked negative selector box as it is blocking the preview area. Adjust your crop area. Now restart this paragraph for each and every subsequent negative you wish to scan from this strip. Now re-check any "Post Processing" options you desire and re-select "Enable Digital ICE" as it seems to disable itself if you dis select Post Processing items. Now scan your first image <grin>. Repeat as necessary for subsequent images prepared.Periodically after a strip of 4 negatives is inserted, the software doesn't acknowledge it's existence. The only way to get the film out is to cycle the scanners power switch-- but don't do that if you have unsaved images or they will be lost. After cycling the power on the scanner the PC responds with an error saying it cannot find the scanner with the only option being "OK", when you click it, all Nikon software closes dumping your work into lost bit land. This is in addition to the multiple crashes daily, at random-- sometimes after a set of scans, causing me to have to do the work over again.Saving can be tricky too: Saving images is conditional on one of two things: 1. Your scanner finishes all scans; or, 2. You left an image open from a previous scan you just did (after opening the program of course). Why does the save option gray out if you close all your previous scans?The Preferences window is accessed by pressing the "Perfs" bullet but you save them by clicking "Settings" drop down menu. Why are they split?The Digital ROC ability works but at the lowest setting is way too strong.Some people complain of bubblegum software that is too pretty to be efficient, while others complain of an overly complicated control screen. This software is both. When you spend over eleven hundred dollars on a piece of equipment that is so specialized, one would expect more professional, structured software.This is not to say it's all bad, after the unorthodox controls are mastered the scans are quite nice. This is a piece of hardware aimed at computer savvy people, the software should reflect this. Four windows per scan is absurd. Even with dual monitors there is way to many clicks to get an image saved. Give me the ability to disable all image processing to see a preview. Don't block my preview. How about a maximum of two windows. Look at Sound Forge for an example: Integrate the Progress window-- anywhere. Consolidate the ability to set preferences and save them in the same applet. "Tool Palette 1" seems like an after thought. Let's put it with the other pre-scan options-- as part of the Super Coolscan window itself. As these changes will not drastically change the appearance as much as make it more fluid. Oh and don't forget the x64 bit thing.