pburke

<p>I may have five rolls of Kodachrome among 15,000 E6 slides - I can clean those manually.<br>

again - image quality differences. Looks like I will just have to buy one and then run my own tests. Luckily you can"flip" a 5000 ED on ebay pretty easily.<br>

If I decide to do that, I'll post the test results online. Meanwhile, I gotta check into the wet mounting stuff to scan the "good stuff" extra nice.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I finally found someting:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.pbase.com/palmbook/4000vs5000">http://www.pbase.com/palmbook/4000vs5000</a></p>

<p>now, this is neg film and a lot may have to do with the presets for the film, but wow - are they really THAT different? I get much better scans from the 4000 than this example suggests, but then I use Vuescan and E6 slides.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I scanned the proper slide for the above comparison and replaced the clean file - now you should see the exact slide with very much the same scanner settings.<br>

And here's another scan I did earlier today, of a much more challenging slide which without the cleaning would have had a major halo around the bright/dark edge. Crop is again 1:1 scanned at 4000 dpi on the 4000 ED, vuescan, multi exposure, default settings otherwise, 4 passes.</p>

<p><a href="http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/gallery/test/frosty_leaf_4000dpi.jpg">Frosty Leaf, Black background scan</a></p>

<p>you're right - they are not the same frame, but almost identical - I shot a whole roll there that evening. I should dig out the one I used on the dirty scan and redo the clean scan, however, the result would be near identical. There were absolutely no post adjustments and the vuescane settings were pretty much default in both scans.<br>

Film was Fuji RD 100, exposed in 1990. Full frame here, but this is done with a Polaroid Sprintscan 35 Plus, which has no flare issues, but the colors are nowhere near as accurate.<br>

<a href="http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/gallery/JMT1990/Day%2006/slides/433_palisade_clouds.jpg">http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/gallery/JMT1990/Day%2006/slides/433_palisade_clouds.jpg</a></p>

<p>I had very much the same flare issues with a 4000 ED I recently got from a friend. I cleaned it myself and all of that was taken care of. I would say almost all Nikon scanners that exhibit the flare/ghosting or halo type problem are simply dirty. Don't pay them to clean it - it takes less than 30 minutes to do it yourself with care.<br>

two scans, done with vuescan, 1:1 pixel crop at 4000 dpi:<br>

<a href="http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/gallery/test/palisade_test_vuescan_dirty.jpg">before cleaning</a><br>

<a href="http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/gallery/test/palisade_test_vuescan_clean.jpg">after cleaning</a></p>

<p>like I stated, speed is not relevant unless there's a clear gain in image quality. The "sharpness" difference could easily be related to how much dust is on the mirror in the scanner. The 4000 ED was completely unacceptable when I got it, and my buddy who owns it thought it was just a bad scanner. 30 minutes later I had that mirror cleaned and what was fuzzy and diffuse before suddenly was crisp and constrasty. Same scanner, same slide, same settings. The difference was huge, because there was a lot of dust on the mirror, but even small amounts could cause flare and reduction of detail.</p>

<p>Anyone got a 5000 ED in Madison Wisconsin? I'd love to do a shootout after cleaning both. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>I've been googling and seraching for a while and can't find a direct matchup of those two scanners. I would like to know what I am missing out by not going for a 5000 ED.</p>

<p>Background - I recently got a 4000 ED from a friend, was at first very disappointed when my SprintScan 35 Plus produced better images, but then found the reason for the "flare" problem - I cleaned the 4000 ED throroughly and finally got some scans from it that clearly are better than what the SprintScan does.</p>

<p>It's not a drum scanner, but better, mostly in color accuracy and shadow detail, plus combined with Vuescan, I can get near perfect scans each time without any adjustment (Vuescan crashes with the SprintScan), which is what I really need to batch process my collection of slides. But before I scan 15,000 slides, I want to make sure I am not creating junk that one day will have me repeat the job with a 5000 ED. </p>

<p>So, I'd really love to see side-by-side comparison of the image quality difference between these two scanners. The speed difference betwen the scanners doesn't bother me much - once I plug the bulk feeder in, it really doesn't matter if a batch takes 24 or 48 hours. There's no deadline for this.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I almost gave up on the Nikons, but a friend let me use his 4000 ED - first scan was horrible, so I started searching the net. After reading this thread and many others, I opened the 4000 ED and cleaned the mirror (major grime layer!), added some black gaffer tape everywhere in the light path where it was possible, damped the chassis with some audio-related damping sheets, and set the scanner flat on a concrete slab before covering it with about 5 pounds of play sand in zip lock bags.<br>

The result was amazing - the scanner now clearly outperforms my old Polaroid Sprintscan 35 Plus (which it didn't before these steps). The mirror cleaning was by far the most effective step of this procedure, though.<br>

I was ready to go into the scanner and remove the CCD glas myself (buddy who owns it gave me green light - he hated the results he got with it), but I think I won't need to do that. Another mod I was contemplating is to upgrade the power supply with some top shelf audio capacitors and better diodes (cleans up power and reduces noise), but that would be rather radical and require an external power supply housing. Given I am not very impressed with the speed of the 4000 ED, I may just go for a 5000 ED after all and then start over with all these mods on that unit... </p>

<p>A friend let me use his 4000 ED last week, and I hoped to get better results than with my old Polaroid Sprintscan 35 plus, but at first I had those pesky flare/halo effects all over the Nikon scans.<br>

Did some searching online and figured I'd better take a look at that mirror. Well, to make a long story short, smoking and a Coolscan don't mix and my friend left a nice grime diffusion layer on that mirror.<br>

Took 30 minutes and one small philips screw driver to clean out and put back together. The scans are tack sharp now. Below are 4000dpi 1:1 test scan crops done with Vuescan, no processing.<br>

before cleaning mirror:<br>

<img src="http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/gallery/test/palisade_test_vuescan_dirty.jpg" alt="" /><br>

after cleaning the mirror:<br>

<img src="http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/gallery/test/palisade_test_vuescan_clean.jpg" alt="" /><br>

and once that was established I finally had a reason to buy Vuescan as well. Vuescan crashes with my Sprintscan, so I used the trial in these tests.<br>

Ony thing that bugs me now is the glacial speed of he 4000 ED. There are probably a few more tweaks I'll try, such as upgrading the power supply with some better filter caps, vibration damping the chassis, and if I get all adventurous, I'll see what removing the glass from the CCD does, but that's a "if it fails we need a new scanner" mod...</p>

<p> </p>