Anyone have experience with Canon FS4000 or Nikon Coolscan 4000?

[rich_green1]

Greetings,

 

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I am looking at one of these scanners to use for my digital

archiving / printing. Anyone have experience with either model?

Right now I am leaning toward the Canon FS4000 for the

following reasons:

 

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- It is less expensive

 

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- I have not seen a number of posts reporting "focusing

problems". This seems to be a common complaint with the

Nikon.

 

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- D-Max, software, and accessories seem comparable to the

Nikon.

 

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- I do not generally scan large amounts of film at any one time,

so the slower speed is acceptable to me.

 

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If anyone has an opinion or experience they would like to share,

please feel free. Thanks in advance.

[pcg]

Before you leap, consider the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II --

higher dpi, better features, better software, firewire, similar

price...

[jay_.]

I have never owned or used any of the Nikon scanners but I do have

the Canoscan FS4000US and it seems to be a great buy for the money.

I used to own a Polaroid 35+ and currently own the 45. One thing I

really like with the Canon is it has a SCSI connector in addition to

the USB. SCSI is faster, and I already have the adaptor in my PC for

the Polaroid.

[ramig]

Rich,

I use the Nikon 4000 and I am very happy with the results (especially

in color). never had any problems with the focus, and I use it quite

heavily. I must say that when I first got it, after owning the

polaroid 4000, which I hated, I compared few scans to a drum scans

that I have done before, and the comparison is very flattering to the

Nikon. You get grate results on first scan, which saves lots of time

(comparing to the polaroid). however, I do not have experience with

the cannon. try to find a store that carries both, and scan 2-3 of

your own negatives, and print them. you might need no advice after

that. If your default is digital darkroom, make no comparison on that

part of the chain.

[ramig]

I meant: "...no compromises..."

[dave_yoder3]

The Nikon LS-4000 kicks ass. 60mb true-optical and very sharp scans at

8 bits... I have seen worse drum scans. I get better scans off it than

off the $10,000 Imacon I was using at my last job.

[rich_green1]

Thanks everyone for the responses.....

 

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Oh, decisions decisions.....!

[lawrence_beck1]

Patrick,

The Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II you mention is a 2820 dpi film

scanner. How do you figure this is a "higher dpi" scanner than

the Canon or Nikon... both of which are 4000 dpi scanners?

 

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Lawrence

[glenn_travis]

Don't overlook the new Polaroid SprintScan 4000 Plus. Or if you can

still find it, the discontinued SprintScan 4000. The SprintScans have

always rated high, and have fixed focus. I bought a SprintScan 4000

last fall for $750, with a $200 rebate, making it $550 for a 4000 dpi

scanner. The SprintScan also comes with SilverFast software which is

a $500 film software scanning application, and far and away, although

complex, easily the best film scanning software on the market. The

scanning software with both the Canon and Nikon is so-so at best, and

the reason everyone ends up buying Vuescan.

 

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<IMG SRC="http://www.photo.net/photodb/image-display?

photo_id=610432&size=lg" WIDTH="750" HEIGHT="497">

 

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Leitz M6, Elmar-M 50mm 1:2.8, B+W KR1.5 MRC, Fuji Sensia II 200,

Polaroid SprintScan 4000

[ralph_barker]

One of the advantages of the Nikon LS-4000 (not sure about the Canon)

is the D-Max rating - 4.2, as I recall. This is significantly higher

than previous generations, and a key part of squeezing more Leica

detail out of your chromes and negs.

[ken_prager]

Patrick, I've also heard many good things about the Minolta Dimage

Scan Elite. I'm told it's one of the easiest scanners to use. Do you

know how it differs from the newer Elite II model?

[steve_barnett2]

The FS4000US is a fine scanner, easy to use, 4000dpi (unlike the

Minolta Scan Elite II, which doesn't come close). The software it

comes with gets you a great scan every time IMHO, but you can also

do multi pass and long exposure scans (for those tricky negs) by

using Vuescan software. It has a nice thumbnail scanning facility so

its easy to do your own contact sheets, and its 'cheap' at £460. The

only slight downside is that it doesn't have 'Firewire' (USB or

SCSI), but as I think pretty well all new scanners still scan slower

than the data transfer rate in newer PC's, it hardly matters.

[sheridan]

Hello Jay and Steve. I'm considering my first scanner,indeed an

FS4000.Have you tried and had any success with Black and White or

Kodachromes? I've heard that Nikon is optimised for E6 and may not

scan Kodachromes successfully probably 'cause most shoot E6 today.

[steve_barnett2]

Sheriden wrote

"Have you tried and had any success with Black and White or

Kodachromes? I've heard that Nikon is optimised for E6 and may not

scan Kodachromes successfully probably 'cause most shoot E6 today"

 

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I have not tried Kodachrome but C41 and black and white scan OK on

the FS4000, but only OK, not to the high level of slide film. I

think all scanners have some problems with silver content in film,

and the FS4000 is just like the Nikon. Having said that, we are not

talkng about 'bad' scans, they are still better at neg/chromes than

the previous generation was for slide.

[rudolf_klein]

The Nikon Coolscan does not really like the Kodachrom according to my

experince. It is really optimised to E6 and colour negs are also not

as good as E6. I never experience focusing problems and I have

scanned some 10.000 slides on the slowest mode (16x scanning). The

slide holder that automatically feeds up to 50 slides is a great

thing. It works during the night while one is sleeping.

 

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I would like to know if anybody has an experince with Nikon Coolscan

8ooo? Would it give the same quality of 35mm slides as the 4000. If

yes, one could space framing and with that a lot of space.

 

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Rudolf

[charles_miller]

Nikon scanner optics have a very shallow depth of field, so autofocus accuracy is very critical for them. Since some slides and negatives have large areas with no image details, Nikon scanners have to use the emulsion grain to focus on! So Nikon scanners use collimated light to make the grain pop! Then they include GEM software to make you feel like you are really sophisticated and really got your money's worth. And while GEM is running, you can't use the scanner, so that cuts down on mechanical wear and warranty repairs. Brilliant, just absolutely bloody brilliant! Of course, if GEM doesn't work well for a particualr emulsion, you are stuck with using other methods, such as the excellent PhotoShop actions from Fred Miranda.