Customer Reviews

Nikon Coolscan IV ED USB Film Scanner

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I had planned to buy a Coolscan III from E-bay to catalog my extensive negative collection, because I couldn't afford the LS-2000. With the SCSI interface and the other technical difficulties of the Coolscan III, I was a little hesitant. Then came the Coolscan IV ED. This scanner and software package offered everything that the LS-2000 did, and is much easier to use and operate. I have not used Digital GEM or ROC, but the Digital ICE is amazing. My brother, a photojournalist, thought that allowing the scanner to automatically remove scratches was silly, since it could be done (so he thought) much faster and better in PhotoShop. After trying two scans of the same frame, he never scanned without the Digital Ice turned on again! The negatives I have are from the middle east, and are very scratched. Fortunately, the Nikon Coolscan IV has a forth, infrared channel that can detect what is a scratch and what is a line on the negative, and remove the scratch without any hint of what damage was on the negative. Using USB (compared to SCSI) with the ICE on makes for a longer scan time that doesn't get much shorter with lower resolution. I have something else open (I'm scanning now) while I work with it, but the results are worth the wait. There is some noise in the lighter tones (negatives, haven't used slides but the noise would be in the darker tones there) but I may try an aftermarket scanner software called Vuescan to eliminate that with multi-pass scanning. The CSIV doesn't support multi-pass scans, but with some aftermarket software it will. The Nikon Scan software is a little strange, and there's not much that's user friendly about it, but if you have a good working knowledge of PhotoShop, PhotoImpact, etc., then youshould understand the controls enough to experiment and figure everything out. If you are a professional photographer looking for something that will allow 11 by 14" enlargement from a 35mm negative, or just an ambitious amateur, driven by the peer pressure of your professional photog dad and brother, this scanner is the one!

The technology in this device delivers outstanding scans with little effort. The dynamic range is typically better than camera shot film and the color fidelity is outstanding. I attribute this to the RGB LED illumination system that is very well calibrated. Without ICE on, the scans are quick at 40 seconds or so. However, the ICE algorithms chew up a lot of CPU cycles and slow down the process considerably. The good news is that you can easily batch scan and walk away from the scanner for as long as it needs to process.

The software is clunky and nowhere near as powerful as it could be, but Nikon isn't known for software anyway. I haven't encountered any crashes or weird behavior from the unit, but I think that earlier software was pretty buggy judging from some of the reviews I saw on other boards.

I've scanned over a hundred rolls of "legacy" film to build up a digital library of family pictures. I can't say enough about the image quality. ICE is a marvel. It eliminates scratches, dust, film grain and can reconstruct color from faded film.

I've been working with digital photographic systems for over 10 years, starting with high end laser film recorders, so I know a few things about the subject. If you need a film scanner and are willing to shell out more than a few bucks, this is a top-notch product.

The Coolscan IV is definitely worth the price for scanning negatives. I looked at flatbed scanners and cheaper film scanners previously, but in the end I bit the bullet and bought the Coolscan. I have no regrets about doing this. The resolution of the scanned negatives is amazing - I can see details that were not visible the original prints. What really makes the investment worthwhile is the Digital ICE technology, which "cleans up" dusty or imperfect negatives. I am in the process of converting my entire film library into digital images.

This brings me to the downsides of the scanner. It does not utilize USB 2.0, and the process of scanning negatives at high resolutions is very very slow. I basically have to devote 45 minutes to an hour to scan in a roll of film because I have turned on Digital ICE as well as the other touch-up features available on the scanner. However, this is by choice, so for people who don't want the highest resolutions, the process may be somewhat faster. The other problem is that the included software is very powerful but has a steep learning curve. I spent a lot of initial time tweaking the settings to find what produced the best images.

Overall, though, the gripes are minor since the quality of the images is so high. This has changed how I take pictures now. Since the resolution of the digital images is higher than any reasonably priced digital camera on the market, I am now shooting most pictures with a film camera and scanning the negatives. This provides the best of both worlds - a set of cheap prints as well as high-quality digital images. Now I just need to get another hard drive to hold all the images that I am scanning in...

I can't really add much to the reviews below, except to confirm what they all say. The money I spent on this scanner was very well spent. I'm having a great time going through my archives, scanning images, sending them to friends, printing them out for my walls and for gifts. I also highly recommend the Canon photo printers. Results are fantastic. Thank you Nikon, thank you Macintosh, thank you Adobe Photoshop. Canon, too.

It comes with XP software and manual contrary to specs on Amazon Web site. It works wonderfully - installs wonderfully and produces great scans. Thanks Nikon and Amazon.

I've had this since it was first released and have found it to be a superb scanner.
As someone else has pointed out, there are occasional issues with slides, but from my experience that is a glitch in the NikonScan software and not the scanner itself. Using other scanning software (eg. Vuescan or Silverfast) has solved those issues for me.

Originally, I had very negative things to say about this product--namely problems with scanning chrome. Well, it took a couple of attempts over the past three years, but Nikon's support crew did a fantastic job once I convinced them of the problem, and they absorbed the entire cost of the repair (which was almost half the cost of the scanner).

In other words, Nikon stands behind its products. And you can't beat that. Buy it.

Have tried a wide selection of film types and film ages and this scanner does a great job in reading the information and producing a really great scan.