Nikon Coolscan 5000 New User

[philip bradbury]

I have a Nikon Coolscan 5000 and i am finding it difficult to use. I am

concerned there is a fault with the scanner, but it could be just my

inexperience. I am using "Nikon Scan 4" (version 4.0.2), as a stand-alone

application, on a Windows XP Pro PC. The hardware/software installed with no

problems and has no difficulty scanning, manipulating and storing files.

I am trying to scan my slide collection which is a mixture of emulsions

including Agfa, Kodachrome, Ektachrome and Jessops. All emulsions exhibit

similar "problems"; the images I get are dark, black crushed and lack "life".

Could anyone please tell, or post an example, of what I should expect to see in

the "Normal" window with the Super Coolscan 5000ED set to factory defaults. I

would expect a reasonable quality picture, from a slide that looks good when

optically projected, and be able to use this as a starting point for all the

sophisiticated manipulation that ICE, ROC, DEE, etc. afford me. When I try to

improve the poor pictures produced in the Normal window I get embroiled in all

the problems described elsewhere on this site; false colours, deep shadows,

haloes, poor colour balance, excessive contrast etc. A few samples of

uncorrected pictures straight off the Normal window with factory defaults would

be a great help - then I will be asking what settings to use!

[Ed_Ingold]

As a default, the LS-5000 will attempt to capture the entire gamut of the film. This will result in a flat, often dark image. If you scan in 16-bit mode (which should be the rule), you have plenty of latitude to clean up the image in Photoshop, starting with Levels and Curves.

 

Curves in NikonScan act a lot like Curves in Photoshop, but a lot more parameteric. Open up the scan in the preview window and try different settings. The black/white button maximizes the contrast in the composite (RGB) or individual channels, depending on your selection.

 

NikonScan is good up to a point, but is not really color-managed, and cannot be calibrated (profiled). If you are consistent in your film (I see not) and exposure, you can get by. However NikonScan automation leaves a lot to be desired. You usually have to tweak each preview to get the best results. Go easy on the processing. Digital ICE is the only thing you need consistently. GEM and ROC are time-consuming, image-robbing bandaids. For maximum sharpness, turn ICE off too and use Photoshop to de-dust.

 

SilverFast AI is a much better product, and gives a high percentage of keepers on the first pass. It is fully CMS (Color Management System) compliant, and comes with IT8 calibration targets and software.

 

A lot of pnetters like Vuescan. It's not Silverfast, but it is a lot cheaper, and the recent verstions are CMS compliant.

[inspiration point studio]

Try to use the auto-exposure feature in your preference setting. That will brighten up the

result, but it won't help with color correction. The next step is to create a color profile for

your scanner, once you have that, you can apply it to your scanned photo in Photoshop and

the end result is quite close. Unfortunately, the process of creating a scaanner profile

requires some learning. May be someone already has a scanner profile for the 5000ED and

offers you one. I have one for the 9000ED based on Velvia 50 film. If you want to try it, I can

send it to you for a small handling fee.

[Stock-Photos]

<p>I have been scanning lots of slides over the years. I use 2 Nikon 5000's. </p>

<p>First, I don't think it's reasonable to expect scans to look as good as projected slides. It's two different animals. Projection has better dynamic range. There's no problem with your scanner. It's the nature of the beast.</p>

<p>It will take a while to learn the scanner, and then how to improve those scans afterwords. You bought what is often considered one of the best film scanners for the price. Don't worry. Below are some tips.</p>

<p>ROC should not be used, except for badly faded or badly color cast slides, and ONLY when you don't feel like making those fixes in PS.</p>

<p>I don't recommend using the DEE at all. Shadows can be better improved in PS. DEE also amplifies flare. (bright areas casting into dark areas)</p>

<p>If your scanning Kodachrome, make SURE film type is set to Kodachrome.</p>

<p>When you make changes to your settings it's wise to click "settings" and then "set user settings" to retain the setting changes.</p>

<p>Digital Ice "dust and scratch removal" works great, with minimal sharpness loss. With Kodachrome "Ice obliterates more detail than other film types. The check box is called simply Digital Ice on the NikonScan software.</p>

<p>The emulsion characteristics of Kodachrome film are different than other film types. It's vital to set the film type to Kodachrome, if your using dust and scratch removal. Otherwise you'll see a dissapointing loss of detail and halo effects.</p>

<p>Even with the proper settings "Ice dust and scratch" does remove detail. The cleanliness of the slide should be a factor in choosing "dust and scratch", especially for Kodachrome.<br />

The following links to a 100% crop of a 2000 PPI scan of Kodachrome with proper setting for film type.</p>

<p>Using Ice "dust and scratch" on squinting eyes in bright sun can give the results shown, but only with Kodachrome.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/uploaded-file?bboard_upload_id=27855884">http://www.photo.net/bboard/uploaded-file?bboard_upload_id=27855884</a></p>

[scott_brim]

I second what J. Harrington says about the Nikon 5000 ED scanner. For myself, I can't afford an Imacon 848 or 949, so I have to make do with the Nikon. There are issues with this scanner, flare and noise being the most important issues as they affect Kodachrome. On the other hand, it does a very good job on E6 films and on color negatives.

 

I have roughly 500 Kodachromes that have marketable historical and/or artistic value among the thousands of slides in my collection. In my first pass-through of scanning these 500 slides --- starting in January 2004 --- I used the time to learn the scanner, to learn Photoshop, and to judge the quirks of each individual image in light of the experience I was gaining. I am now in the process of rescanning every single one of those 500 images based on two years of previous experience working with the Nikon and with Photoshop.

 

First, I remove each slide from its original cardboard mount and put it into a plastic frame I made myself that allows full scanner coverage of the entire frame. Using manual focus is the next step, doing a survey across the frame to get the best compromise focus point. I then take at least four 16-bit scans of the same slide using various settings, sometimes five or six scans.

 

For the first four basic scans, I'll scan with ICE and without, and with Scan Image Enhancer and without. I compare the four scans and make a judgement as to whether image degradation caused by ICE is sufficient to warrant manual cleaning in Photoshop, and as to whether the scan-enhanced image is more acceptable than the non-enhanced version.

 

If none of the first four scans turn out to be an acceptable base image for further work in Photoshop, then I choose the best of the four and start tweaking exposure of the next series of scans so as to bring out detail while minimizing flare. However, I keep all of the previous scans in my archive -- just in case.

 

In some cases, with difficult contrasty slides, I expose for highlight in one scan and for shadow in the other, and then merge the two together in Photoshop to create an acceptable first-generation TIF image, sometimes with judicious use of Neat Image to deal with noise.

 

ROC, GEM, and DEE provide assistance on some problem chromes, especially faded ones, but more often than not this is at the expense of enhanced noise in the dense areas. If you use ICE and DEE together combined with Analog Gain, the image will be significantly degraded, at least for enlargements greater than 8 x 12.

 

With the very worst of my problem Kodachrome slides, those being mostly Kodachrome 64's as opposed to Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome II, I will just send them out for a drum scan -- if the image is valuable enough to justify this -- and save myself the time and trouble of getting that first acceptable base image.

 

If the Minolta 5400's had been reliable pieces of equipment out of the box, those might have been a better choice for what I'm doing. In spite of my reservations about it, I still believe the Nikon to be the best choice overall for what I'm doing, knowing that I can't come close to affording an Imacon. I've made some 24" x 36" enlargements from Kodachrome II using this scanner that are eye-poppers. But you have to know the tools to do this.

[scott_brim]

A note for Les Sarile: I've taken a close look at your scanned photos and have reached the conclusion that you were fortunate enough to buy one of the few CoolScan 5000 units that didn't suffer from flaring issues.

 

The use of an optically-inferior material for the protective window that covers the CCD is the most plausible source of the flaring problem. If we took your Coolscan 5000 apart and compared the CCD in your unit with the one in mine, I wonder what differences we might find? My unit was purchased in late January, 2004.

 

If it weren't for the flaring problem, I do believe that using DEE in combination with Analog Gain would be a more useful means of retrieving shadow detail from contrasty Kodachrome slides. Noise might still be present in the shadows, but selective use of a noise-reduction Photoshop plug-in could deal with that problem.

[scott_brim]

Les, I bought my CS 5000 from B&H as well, soon after they started receiving the initial shipments. My unit had to have been one of the first out of the factory sent to the US market.

 

One of the reasons I chose it over the Minolta 5400 was that its focusing lense had greater depth of field, an advantage which has proven extremely important once I started removing my slides from their original cardboard mounts.

 

In other posts on photo.net over the last three or four months, various evidence has been presented which strongly points to the CCD's protective window as the culprit in the flaring problem; and apparently --- based on what we read in these forums -- most of the units suffer from it to one degree or another. So it's not the Nikon software that's the direct source of the problem, at least in regard to flaring.

 

The CCD isn't manufactured by Nikon, but one would think that flaring had to be a recognized problem when the CS 5000 was in beta testing, and that the Nikon engineers were smart enough to pin the blame where it belonged.

 

It is rather a contradiction that Nikon will use the best of their optical glass for the focusing lense, but employ a CCD which degrades the quality of the image, nulifying the advantages of Nikon's own ED optics.

 

We haven't seen a new release of Nikon Scan in several years, even though 4.0.2 has several known bugs. This indicates to me that Nikon has put film scanning on the back burner as a corporate marketing priority.

 

Too bad... If they had a fix for the flaring problem at a reasonable price for units now out of warranty, I'd gladly pay it.

[scott_brim]

Les: I downloaded the demo version Silver Fast and then scanned a slide using the Coolscan 5000, one which had flaring problems using Nikon Scan. The native slide itself has no visible flaring or bleeding on it, and past optical enlargements show no evidence of a problem.

 

The results are shown below. Comparable sections are extracted from each scan, with the Nikon Scan first and the Silver Fast scan second.

 

The scans done with both software products exhibit the flaring problem in ways that are exactly identical. The color balance from each scan is slightly different, but that is to be expected.

 

Note that in each extracted section, the area above and behind the horse's head is fogged and that there is a distinct halo at the contrast boundary. Each halo is the same size and shape on both the Nikon Scan and on the Slver Fast scan.

 

There is also bleed-over at the top of the frame boundary on both scans which has exactly the same shape on each scan.

 

The flaring problem is most likely inside the scanner, and based on the analysis given in the other thread, it is most likely the CCD's protective window.<div></div>

[scott_brim]

Before commenting on Les' latest observations, I should talk about what I think of Silver Fast after using the demo version for looking at the CoolScan 5000 flare problem.

 

It's been two years since I last played with SilverFast, but I think this afternoon's experience indicates that it is decidedly easier to get an acceptable scan on the first trial run than it is with Nikon Scan. Is Silver Fast worth the extra money? Try out the demo version, compare it to Nikon Scan, and see which one you like better.

 

Regarding the comparison sections I posted, I did not use ICE for either scan. The choppiness is due solely to jpeg compression of the final combined image to get it below 100k size.

 

Even with the jpeg compression artifacts, the halo is quite clearly visible on both of the close-up sections -- even if there is less contrast on the SilverFast version and even if the color balance is somewhat different. Had I wanted to, I suppose I could have tweaked the SilverFast contrast and color settings to produce a nearly identical result.

 

At any rate, the high resolution versions show the strong similarity in the two flaring patterns much more clearly. What I see on the high res versions is enough to satisfy my own curiosity as to whether the particular software being used might be the source of, or a significant contributor to, the basic problem. I still think the CCD's window is the problem.

[philip bradbury]

This thread seems to have veered off my original question to discuss flare problems with this scanner. Problems I have yet to encounter, but now know a lot about. The advice in the earlier posts has been helpful - thanks.

 

 

It appears I need to be prepared to spend a lot more time tweaking images than I expected. I also bought the Nikon SF-210 auto-loader so I could leave the scanner trundling through the night and wake up to a folder of pictures needing minimum adjustment before archiving!

 

 

It would still be helpful if someone could post an example of an optically well exposed slide that has been scanned using the factory defaults on the Super Coolscan 5000ED along with another image of the picture after adjusting to get the "best" out of it. Details of what was done on the Nikon Scan software and subsequent Photoshop treatment would enable me to replicate the results and finally decide if my machine is working correctly.

 

I have tried many of the settings on the scanner individually using a set of 37 slides (hence my delay in adding to this post). The film stock I used was branded "Jessops", which I believe is Agfa, so I had the Kodachrome setting off.

 

Using only "Scan Image Enhancement" (SIE) I found that about 25% of the images were extremely dark; as originals these tended to be pictures with little contrast range to start with so you would expect them to benefit most from "auto" enhancement - it made them much worse!

 

With ROC alone turned on the images looked OK to the casual viewer "better" than the originals in many cases! But on closer inspection they were not the pictures I had taken. The sky area was often an interesting array of colours that would be acceptable as "sky" if I did not know the original showed softly detailed boring grey clouds. In other shots people's shirts and baseball caps in crowds of tourists shone out far more vibrantly that fidelity would allow. One picture was destroyed by intense noise in the sky and water surface of a lake. I only had the setting of ROC on "1" to get the above effects. It would be useful if it had another ten degrees of lesser effect.

 

DEE also did unpredictable things which made it useless in my desired batch scan operation.

 

The only settings that provided consistent results throughout my 37 slides (all of which were taken on the same roll during different days on holiday in China) was Analogue Gain, or everything set to default. The results although consistent were unacceptably dark with colour casts. I would hope to be able to automatically adjust contrast and colour balance at the time of scanning and to make global settings for complete rolls that are over/under exposed or shot in the wrong colour temperature etc.

 

I have attached a jpeg copy of a slide that was scanned using Nikon Scan's factory defaults. The original slide has detail under the roof, which is supported on dark red pillars, between which other details can just be made out. The sky is a very light grey and the people are wearing brightly coloured and brilliant white shirts.

 

 

I am expecting replies that tactfully tell me to "dream on", but I live in hope. Examples, as above, would be greatly appreciated - thanks again.<div></div>

[scott_brim]

Philip, in scanning E6 films and color negative films with the Nikon, I have been able to get properly exposed and mostly consistent results frame-to-frame without much (if any) intervention, and without using ROC, GEM, DEE or Analog Gain.

 

But Kodachrome is different. It does not behave predictably from slide to slide. I have slides that seem to be similar to one another in contrast and color content but require widely different settings to get an acceptable scan. I also find that Kodachrome X and Kodachrome 64 with a contrasty image is the most difficult material to work with in getting a good scan. Kodochrome 25 and Kodachrome II seem to be easier to work with.

 

Dealing with flare is important because if you are trying to retrieve details in the shadows by increasing analog gain and using DEE, this aggravates the flaring problem, sometimes to the point where the output is unusable. If the image is valuable enough, and if it is just too difficult for the Nikon to capture properly even with multiple scans merged in Photoshop, I now send it off for a drum scan.

 

Of course, the reason I'm doing scanning with a Nikon is to affordably restore and preserve a relatively limited number of mostly Kodachrome images, the ones I think are the cream-of-crop of my photography. I'm not trying to efficiently create an electronic archive of a relatively large Kodachrome slide collection.

 

If the slide you have posted is a representative example, I would say that you should live with a somewhat underexposed image for your base archive and then correct it as needed in Photoshop as you are retrieving individual images for whatever purpose is intended.

[philip bradbury]

Thanks for your replies. When I said "dream on..." I was referring to the unrealistic hope that I could leave the scanner to automatically create my archive without much involvement from me - it was not a comment on the quality of replies.

 

 

Having looked at Les's "Film 2 Album" he seems to have many more slides than I do which produce good results, but some (e.g. 88,115, 122 and 176) exhibit the same black crushing.

 

 

I find that scanning with factory defaults, except for ICE and cropping (and Kodachrome where appropriate), as suggested by Scott, is probably the best solution.

 

 

I always find that to produce an acceptable final image, after scanning as above, I need to apply black stretch using about "2" on the midtone correction in Nikonscan's "Curves". This leads me to think that the scanner/software combination, in default, is applying the wrong gamma, or no gamma at all. Do other users find that they need to use midtone correction in this way on a regular basis?