Nikon Coolscan 5000 EDFocusing old negative B&W film

[je ne regrette rien]

I recently bought a Coolscan and am using it with its software. I have scanned

BW, colour and slide film without any problem, new or 30 years old, except one film.

 

I get a message that the scanner is not capable to focus. Does anybody have any

advice?

 

Thanks

[Ed_Ingold]

Nikon scanners focus on contrast. Perhaps the default focus area (center) is particularly dense or devoid of detail. Try moving the focus spot to an area with significant detail and/or less density.

[mendel_leisk]

Is it every frame of this one particular film? Curious. Per Edward, the few times I've found focus way off is autofocusing at a fixed point, that happens to be at a very dense area of the film.

 

I've never found a lack of detail a problem, invariably the scanner can focus on the grain structure itself. Light to medium uniform areas are actually what I look for if choosing a focus point.

 

Are you able to type in a focus value? And is the film fairly flat? If so maybe just try some values, and settle on one that works fairly consistantly.

 

The above is more-or-less my approach when scanning fairly flat strip film, using Vuescan. I'll do a few test manual focus attempts, at different points around the film, then just type in a value that's about the mean value, and use that for all frames.

 

With my (Minolta scanner) supplied software, typing in a focus value is not possible, and this is a major source of frustration for me.

[Ed_Ingold]

In NikonScan, open a preview, click on the checkered box then click in the preview where you wish the focus point to be. It will apply to that particular frame, all selected thumbnails, or you can set it as the default.

 

SilverFast has a similar function.

[je ne regrette rien]

Thank you. Finally I managed to scan them. Apparently there was also a problem with the cuts of the film stripes.