Anyone know when a Nikon 10000 scanner will be out?

[van_camper]

I'm curious if anyone has read anywhere if a new replacement to the

Nikon 9000 is around the corner. It is that time of year when new

products will be introduced soon, and the Nikon 9000 has been around

for a while now.

 

Also, has anyone heard about a replacement for the HP130 printer

coming out soon?

[peter_lawrence]

If you're lucky, Nikon MIGHT announce new scanners during the PMA show in February

2006, but don't hold your breath.<br>

<br>

There is less and less demand for film scanners nowadays because of the every increasing

popularity of digital cameras and the dramatic drop in sales of film cameras. So it could

be years before Nikon upgrades their film scanners again -- if they ever decide to do

so.<br>

<br>

Note that the manufacturing and sale of the best scanner that was ever made, the

<b>Heidelberg Tango</b> drum scanner was discontinued several years ago. The high-

end scanner market is drying up. Don't expect many more new high-end film scanners to

be produced in the future.<br>

<br>

[chiswick_john]

I doubt Nikon will bother - scanning film is such a small market sector and existing machines are already very good.

[jtk]

Maybe there's potential in specialized third party negative carriers and accessories for various scanners...anti-newton glass, wet mount, negaflat, special formats, Scanhancer...all scanner designs need these things badly.

 

...some of these bits are available expensively and with difficulty, but it seems that only Doug's flatbed carriers are well executed, readily obtained, and reasonably priced. Works great on my Epson, wish something like it was available for my Nikon:

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~dougfisher/holder/mainintro.html

 

As for HP 130, the replacement is Epson 4800.

[ilkka_nissila]

Why was the Tango discontinued? From the sample scans I have seen, it's heads and shoulders above other scanners in image quality even at moderate scan resolutions. Or maybe the operators are just that good.

 

I guess it wasn't discontinued because of digital capture since that was inadequate a few years ago, but because of inexpensive CCD-based scanners. Which don't produce the same image quality, sadly.

 

Kodak also discontinued their excellent HR 500 scanner recently. Hmm.

[jtk]

There's an astronomically large "installed base" of film in archives and files, not to mention film cameras: desktop scanners will be useful far into the future.

 

Lithographers all over the globe are well equipped with scanners, and that work was done beautifully with process cameras long before scanners were dreamed of: film will be well taken-care-of forever.

 

But film's dying or dead in advertising and timely-publications. No problem...photojournalists and commercial photographers have mostly gone digital already.

 

Nikon's several current desktop film scanners readily exceed every capability of photographic enlargers (with the exception of large format)...there's little reason for improvement, other than in refinements like negative carriers or software.

 

Wandering in galleries I see ever-increasing examples of platinum/palladium prints (contacted from inkjet negs), the original shots by common digicams or scanned by funky old flatbeds from large format negatives, enlarged Polaroid prints, even Holga film. There are lots of ways to skin our various digital cats.

[van_camper]

...there's little reason for improvement, other than in refinements like negative carriers or software...John Kelly

 

This is exactly what I was thinking. There is no reason why NIkon would not make minor improvements to satisfy customer complaints. The market has not dissapeared yet for film, and I doubt it will since landscape photographers prefer it to digital (for archival reasons). As far as I am concerned there will be a long term split in the market, those wanting film, and those preferring digital (commercial, where speed is more important)...so film scanning will likely be around long enough, at least till we have better proof of archivability of CD/DVD. If anyone should feel a pinch it would be Imacon and and other mfrs selling far more expensive equipment. As they dry up in sales, I can see Nikon surviving from their losses. If film scanners were a dead end, then I doubt Hassy would have got involved with Imacon. There is still an awful lot of 120 cameras out there, and even if they are going cheap on Ebay the fact is someone else is buying them and will be needing a film scanner. I expect a 10,000 model, a 11k model I won't hold my breath for.

 

Regarding the following comment ..."the replacement for the HP130 is the Epson 4800"....well, for you maybe, for others no!

[ilkka_nissila]

Well, the scanners may not function forever, and CCD-based scanners have cross-talk so the image is not really correctly represented. Just a couple of weeks ago I scanned a picture of leaves against a dark river. The area outside of the slide (with the holes for film transport) had an image of a leave too, because the scanner is unable to reproduce black when there are high-contrast objects in the image. I don't know what the mechanism of the artifact was but it was sufficiently obvious in the scan that I am concerned about the possibly dwinding availability/support of drum scanners.

[van_camper]

I also want to add that until medium format digital backs come down in price, film is going to be popular for a while longer. I don't see digital backs coming down significantly in price either in the next 2-3 years (why should they when the commercial market is willing to pay the high prices with the savings from film/processing over just 1 year), making a film scanner a welcomed choice for many of us. The introduction recently of a 2nd generation Minolta 5400 scanner also tells me it isn't nearly over yet, not even with the 35mm market it seems. Apparently some of us would rather spend roughly $1000 on a high end film scanner then $3-10k for a pro class digital camera by Nikon or Canon. A Nikon D70 for $1500 (Cdn) just doesn't cut it for many of us, and a film scanner with 35mm film and your existing investment in lenses is far more economical it appears to many of us.

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

I'd love to see Nikon produce a film scanner for 4x5 and smaller formats. But I'm afraid that the market is just too small for them to bother.

 

Robert

[ilkka_nissila]

Yeah, a 4x5 inch model would be nice, but then there would be people complaining that it doesn't scan 5x7 ... and many of the the current users of the LS-9000 would complain that the new 4x5 model doesn't produce a sharp 35 mm scan. So there we are ....