Nikon Coolscan 50000, Where to find detailed user's guide?

[shanshui_feng]

I have a film scanner Nikon Coolscan 5000. I have gone several times through

the user's guide, but I find is not detailed enough. Does anybody know of a

website or link on the Internet about this scanner, in order to get the best

out of it? Thank you. Feng.

[ellis_vener_photography]

Yo uare right: the manual is lousy. To get the best out of it:

 

Switch to SilverFast Ai6.5 software and use the MultiScan feature to reduce "noise". Profile

using a Hutcheson HCT target (if scanning slides --don't bother profiling for color or black

& white negatives, manually focus on the pictorially critical area in the slide, use digital

ICE

at it's lightest setting. Scan at 16 bit per channel. Use the Ekta Space color work space to

scan into, not sRGB, and not Adobe RGB(1998) -- sRGB definitely clips E-6 color, and

Adobe RGB

(18998) can also clip saturated color gamuts

 

If working with slides, leave the black point at 0 and drag the white point end of the

histogram scale (the right end of the histogram) in to just about 5 or 6 points beyond the

end of

the"mountain range" for any specific image.

 

Once opened in Photoshop run Noise Ninja or Noiseware software to remove any

remaining noise andthe use Photokit Sharpener set to Capture Sharpen: 35mm narrow

edge to sharpen the digtal file (sharpening is not the samething as accutance but needs to

be done for various data reasons). Flatten and save as a 16BPC TIFF or PSD.

 

Oh and make suure you are working on a good monitor that is accurately calibrated and

profiled.

 

See http://www.josephholmes.com/profiles.html for more details on color space and bit

depth

[jtk]

..or use Vuescan and CS2/3 and common workflow without any extra applications.

 

Reports on multipass scanning indicate there's almost never an advantage, but Vuescan does that too. Multipass may be of interest if you commonly underexpose slides (Kodachrome or Velvia) or overexpose negatives.

[scott_brim]

"John Kelly: Reports on multipass scanning indicate there's almost never an advantage ...."

 

With my CS 5000, I've found that Silverfast's multipass feature does an effective job of reducing noise on my scans, especially in the dense areas of contrasty Kodachromes. On the other hand, Nikon's own multipass feature has no visible effect on scans of Kodachrome, even at the 16x setting.

[shanshui_feng]

Thank you for your anwsers. Feng

[scott_brim]

<p>Per Les Sarile's request for a comparison test, I did four scans of the same dense, somewhat dirty Kodachrome II slide using: NikonScan at 1x; NikonScan at 16x; SilverFast at 1x; and SilverFast at 16x.</p>

<p>The same small section of the image is extracted from each scan for comparison purposes. Exposure control was used with both NikonScan and with SilverFast to make the scans roughly equivalent in brightness and contrast. All other scanning enhancement features of NikonScan and SilverFast were turned off -- ICE,DEE, ROC/GEM, DEE, AACO and so on.</p>

<p>Here are the results:</p>

<p> </p>

<a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/cg001/DiDarkroom/SBrim--NikonScan-01x.jpg">......... NikonScan at 1x (single pass)</a>

<p> </p>

<a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/cg001/DiDarkroom/SBrim--NikonScan-16x.jpg">......... NikonScan at 16x multi-sample</a>

<p> </p>

<a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/cg001/DiDarkroom/SBrim--SF-Ai-01x.jpg">......... SilverFast at 1x (single pass)</a>

<p> </p>

<a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/cg001/DiDarkroom/SBrim--SF-Ai-16x.jpg">......... SilverFast at 16x multi-sample</a>

<p> </p>

<p>Herewith is a little history about this slide. Last year, I fully restored the entire image taking about twenty hours to get it all just right. I first started by making two scans at different exposures using NikonScan. The two scans were merged in PS, and then a lot of manual work was done in Photoshop both to reduce noise and clean off the dirt. Here is the same section of the image after the manual corrections in Photoshop:</p>

<p> </p>

<a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/cg001/DiDarkroom/SBrim--FinalRestored.jpg">......... Restored section using PS and noise reduction plugins:</a>

<p>OK, does this test show 16x multi-sample in SilverFast is effective, all by itself, for noise reduction on a dense Kodachrome?</p>

<p>Well... On this particular slide, the results aren't conclusive.</p>

[scott_brim]

Les, the two scans using NikonScan were done first, and then the two SilverFast scans were done next using an exposure level that made them roughly equivalent in brightness level to the two NikonScans.

 

The cropped sections come from the same center portion of each scan and represent about 5% of the total area of the complete image.

 

Start at the upper left of each frame and move across the top of the frame on through the colored areas of the carousel. There is slightly less noise in the SilverFast frames.

 

But is the difference enough to make any real difference? Subjectively "No"