Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED - Film scanner (35 mm) - 25.1 x 38 mm - 4000 dpi - Hi-Speed USB

I have been using my scanner now for over a year and so far about 6000 slides and negatives have been scanned. I found the SF-210 automatic slide loader a great help as 30/40 slides can be left to batch scan. I decided after a lot of experimentation to scan at the best possible quality and crop and edit them later. I therefore used 16-bit colour depth and the 16x interpolation to squeeze every last bit of information out of the dark areas. The only other setting I used was ICE which removes dirt and scratches. With these settings it takes 6 minutes to scan each frame - the high speeds mentioned by Nikon must be with everything set to off! I really like this scanner, but don't expect it to be quick. You need patience learning how to use it and no doubt you will find settings that suit you that are different from mine.

Having done some research into these scanners before deciding where to commit, I have found out information that may be of use to other prospective buyers, particularly MAC users. Nikon has discontinued this model, and so its software has not been updated. If you are a Mac user and are looking to buy this one, be aware that the Nikon software is not compatible with Mac operating systems beyond Mac OS X 10.3. and I have had this confirmed by Nikon UK. But...compatible interface software is available from a German company called Silverfast. If you have a look at its website there is a lot of useful info, but it isn't cheap...The alternative, for Mac users who are using operating systems more recent than 10.3, is to buy a cheap pc laptop installed with Windows XP or Vista, and use it as a workstation.

I bought my Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED two weeks ago and I'm still finding it a joy to use and a very useful tool indeed when I scan my 35mm films from some 30 years ago into my PC.

I try not to be the typical "British Bloke" who knows everything about everything and only consults the instruction manual when the machine doesn't work right straight out of it's box. My advise is to read the manual first.

I was surprised by just how small a footprint it has compared to my Epson Perfection 2450 Photo flat bed scanner and I easily found a place on my work station for it. It can be used upright or on it's left side but note, it requires between 5 to 10 cm spacing around it's vents for cooling.

Included with the scanner is the Slide Mount Adapter MA-21, Strip Film Adapter SA-21, the usual power and USB cables and four CD's. These include the Twain driver and Nikon Scan software which will set this scanner up for both PC and MAC.

The scanner is easy to set up with certain parameters to be set such as JPEG, TIFF, or Nikon's own NEF file formats. There's also Colour Management, Single and Batch scanning in conjunction with the Automatic Actions (the latter makes for easier scanning as it will scan in whole negative strips - in my case 6 frames at a time) parameters to set up.

The scanner is fairly noisy during use but you get use to this pretty quick and to date I've scanned in about 30 colour and monochrome negatives films and it does a really good job of them. You can select which frames you want by viewing them in Thumbnail form and then scanning them in. There are the typical tools you can use to improve your scans before you scan them to your hard drive, my favourite being Curves which really does improves your scans.

There's also Digital ICE4 Advanced, Analog Grain, Image Enhancer and Scanner Extras but as I have not used these tools yet I will not comment on them.

There are also a number of optional extras you can buy for this scanner ranging from the cheapish single frame Film Holder FH-3 and Medical Slide Holder FH-G1 to the very expensive Roll Film Adapter SA-30 and Slide Feeder SF-210.

In these days of dedicated digital compact and SLR cameras I've noticed that Nikon have not updated the software and drivers for some time and this may be an indication that they may not be replacing their present scanner range any time soon if at all.

My final thought on this scanner is that although it makes for really great scans of my 35mm films and as I have lots of films to scan then I find it to be great value for money. However, if you only have a few rolls of film and you already own a good flatbed scanner that allows you to scan in your films with the use of adapter plates like the above Epson scanner does then carry on using that instead.

You could always buy a new Digital SLR camera and lens with the money you have just saved.