Railfan Technology > Slide scanners

I was fortunate that some years ago I purchased a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED for $999, with which I am needless to say very pleased. But Nikon discontinued production of scanners, and today when I am asked for a 35mm slide scanner recommendation I am at a total loss. When I look at the currently available scanners none jumps out at me as being comparable to the Coolscan 5000. The only real evidence I have is the price of the few available new and used Coolscan 5000's ranges from $3800 for new to $2000 for used....compared to an original Nikon list price of $999. Which suggests a lot of people seem to think the alternatives these days are not very good.

But that said, technology presumably is advancing. Just out of curiosity (and who knows how long my Coolscan will last) how does the current crop of scanners stack up against the Coolscan 5000. What should I buy today if the Coolscan craps out. Or perhaps more importantly what kind of recommendation should I make to those who ask.

JBWX

We've had discussions about Plustek scanners in the past year or so, comparisons were made and some examples were posted. I had one on my list, but my list grew in the wrong direction.

I have heard good things about Plustek scanners, but the problem is how good is good. I guessing that a lot of scanning is done just to post on the internet at 72 dpi which is very forgiving...a more interesting comparison would be large prints at 300 dpi or so. Using Plustek as an example, I wonder how their top of the line model at around $900 compares with the Coolscan 5000. Apparently some folks are willing to pay twice that for a used Coolscan 5000. But perhaps that is the Nikon brand name and does not reflect anything substantive. I'm just curious, and appreciate any and all responses.

JBWX



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/14 11:56 by jbwest.

From what I've seen, the scans you can achieve from a Plustek scanner are outstanding, every bit as good as those from the best Nikon and Minolta transparency scanners. The deal-breaker for me has always been that they were manual-feed only, meaning once you loaded a few slides in the feeder, you had to position each one individually to scan it, one at a time. I do too much scanning to have the patience for that.

I see Plustek recently released the OpticFilm 120, which has an automatic tray feeder set-up. This may be the holy grail of contemporary desktop slide scanners if it works well. It also scans medium format films in addition to 35mm.

http://plustek.com/usa/products/opticfilm-series/opticfilm-120/

The only other thing about Plustek I've yet to determine is the infrared channel performance, especially with Kodachrome. I'm spoiled with the Digital Ice Professional results I get from my Minolta DiMage 5400 II, which is similar to the performance of the Nikon Super Coolscan 9000. I don't know if the infrared performance on the Plustek scanners is at this level. I'd like to get my hands on a OpticFilm 120 to do a head-to-head with my Minolta some day. At two grand for this Plustek, it had better be an upgrade from earlier scanner models.

Right, Plustek is pretty high quality. It might be worthwhile checking out the previous comparisons.

I am very happy with my Plustek OpticFilm 7600i The infrared work quite well. I have recently been posting scans of 50-year-old Kodachromes Great Northern RR scenes on Nostalgia and History. The Kodachromes have all taken on a bluish tint with age. Here is one of many threads as an example:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3511493

But, of course, after you scan a slide, you are only half done. It's the post-scanning work that makes the photograph. For me to do a scan takes about the same time as post-processing it. So I see no need for a slide feeder on the scanner.


Marty Bernard

Here in the UK, I have a Minolta dedicated 35mm scanner. However, it is slow and I'm finding the job of scanning extremely tedious. I have started using a commercial outfit to do my scanning. They are all done with ICE, and come back on DVD. Then the processing starts! Have you considered this method. Chris uk.

55002 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here in the UK, I have a Minolta dedicated 35mm
> scanner. However, it is slow and I'm finding the
> job of scanning extremely tedious. I have started
> using a commercial outfit to do my scanning. They
> are all done with ICE, and come back on DVD. Then
> the processing starts! Have you considered this
> method. Chris uk.

Getting a good digital image from a slide is indeed a very tedious process. I have to chuckle when I hear about folks with thousands of slides who want to batch scan and get it over with. Technically it is undoubtedly possible but I wonder what you have when you have finished just scanning. In my experience, and I have been scanning my slides for over ten years, the scanning is the easy part. Once you scan there is usually a lot of post processing in Photoshop before you have anything you would want to share. I am doing good if I process six slides in an evening, and usually I do one or two, just so my wife still has somebody to talk to occasionally. But I also find it an enjoyable process because in a lot of cases slides that had all kinds of issues....color shifted, over exposed, dark shadows, poorly cropped, etc....can be significantly improved in Photoshop. But tedious definitely describes the process.

JBWX



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/14 09:07 by jbwest.

For me, batch scanning is either for low res summaries or for tedious high resolution archiving. I doubt anyone can sit through all 10,000 slides in these collections. An overview makes sense, then go back and see what you really have and make a decent photo and story of it. Just my $0.02.

Curious to hear any updates on Plustek scanners, there is probably one in my future as well.

That is all true. It is tedious. But if the goal is to archive/preserve your slide collection, getting the scanning part done is the most important part. I've scanned huge collections, making uncorrected raw files, archived on some sort of optical media. Once that is done, the images are now preserved and can easily be duplicated losslessly and stored securely in multiple locations if necessary (i.e. Backed up).

You can always go back and correct the images that you want to share or use later. Getting them digitized is the critical step. The best type of scanner to accomplish this task depends on your workflow. If you want to scan one image, correct it, then save it, scanning speed will be of little consequence. But if you want to scan a collection just to get it digitized, saving the manipulation steps for a later time, scanner speed is everything.

I bought a 5000 new a few years ago. It's quite good indeed. Also now have an Epson V750 which I bought primarily for negatives and have never done slides with it myself, but have seen the work of others doing slides on it and it does a great job too.

Depending on your needs, I would submit that a 5000 is overkill. It's just not necessary for web production. However, if you are looking at something where you really need super-high resolution it is magnificent. Paid about CDN$1500 before tax for mine. V750 was iirc around CDN$800 and far more flexible.

Bill Miller
Galt, ON

I bought an Epson V600 for my negatives (mainly because it was only $169 refurbed from Epson) and somewhat to my surprise it has done a very good job on my 120 negs. Just for the heck of it I ran a Kodachrome slide though the V600 to see how it would do, and it the results were not bad, clearly not as good as what my Nikon 5000 can do, but probably just fine for posting on the internet or doing a digital slide show. In particular I was impressed with the color and shadow detail the V600 produced, not all that different than the Nikon 5000. In both cases I used Vuescan software. When i ran the V600 scan through Photoshop the main difference I noted was the V600 scan did require a bit more sharpening, but not so much as to degrade the image noticeably. At internet levels of color and definition I really could not tell the difference between the image from the V600 and the image from the Nikon 5000. Now if I were making an 11x14 print I think it would be a very different story. But for somebody who is primarily interested in posting on the internet I think the V600 is a heck of a bargain.

JBWX



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/14 10:56 by jbwest.

Just a note, the OptiScan 120 is priced at an insane $2087.99 on Amazon...

That's still $500 to $1000 cheaper than the going price on a used Nikon Coolscan 9000ED. If the Plustek is even close to the performance of the Nikon, it's still a deal.

Very true Marty


MartyBernard Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am very happy with my Plustek OpticFilm 7600i
> The infrared work quite well. I have recently
> been posting scans of 50-year-old Kodachromes
> Great Northern RR scenes on Nostalgia and History.
> The Kodachromes have all taken on a bluish tint
> with age. Here is one of many threads as an
> example:
>
> http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,
> 3511493
>
> But, of course, after you scan a slide, you are
> only half done. It's the post-scanning work that
> makes the photograph. For me to do a scan takes
> about the same time as post-processing it. So I
> see no need for a slide feeder on the scanner.
>
>
> Marty Bernard