Nikon Super CoolScan 9000 ED Film Scanner

by Nikon

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 20 inches ; 5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 31 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0001DYUDE
• Item model number: 9237
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #8 in Electronics > Camera & Photo > Printers & Scanners > Slide & Film Scanners
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 17, 2003

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

A high-performance dedicated film scanner designed for imaging professionals, the Super Coolscan 9000 ED offers high-quality scanning of 35mm slides, 35mm film strips, medium-format film, medium-format slides (with optional 120/220 mounted film holder FH-869M), glass slides for microscopes (with optional Medical Slide Holder FH-8G1), and 16mm film (with optional 16mm film holder FH-816). The Scanner-Nikkor ED glass lens offers a 4,000 dpi optical resolution, while the 10,000-pixel, three-line monochrome linear CCD image sensor and 16-bit per color A/D input (8-/16-bit output) provide true-to-life, brilliant results.

Nikon's own LED illumination technology ensures accurate color separation with no warm-up time or risk of heat damage. Scan times are as fast as 40 seconds including image transfer to display, and as fast as 13 seconds in preview mode. Automatic color/contrast compensation helps you achieve accurate results, while the ICE4 advanced digital image correction suite of technologies, including digital ICE, digital ROC, digital GEM, and digital DEE, helps to restore old slides to their original glory. Additionally, the included Nikon Scan 4 software provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use interface for managing your scans.

The Super Coolscan 9000 ED has an IEEE 1394 (FireWire) interface, while one-touch scan and preview buttons will have you scanning film in no time. PC and Mac compatible, the Super Coolscan 9000 ED also comes backed with a one-year limited warranty.

What's in the Box
Scanner, CD-ROM, interface card for Mac OS and Windows, strip film holder FH-835S, slide holder FH-835M, 129/220 strip film holder FH-869S

Product Description

A high-performance dedicated film scanner designed for imaging professionals, the Super Coolscan 9000 ED offers high-quality scanning of 35mm slides, 35mm film strips, medium-format film, medium-format slides (with optional 120/220 mounted film holder FH-869M), glass slides for microscopes (with optional Medical Slide Holder FH-8G1), and 16mm film (with optional 16mm film holder FH-816). The Scanner-Nikkor ED glass lens offers a 4,000 dpi optical resolution, while the 10,000-pixel, three-line monochrome linear CCD image sensor and 16-bit per color A/D input (8-/16-bit output) provide true-to-life, brilliant results.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars scanning 120 film slides, October 2, 2005

By 

F. Rump "Genealogist" (Naples, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Nikon Super CoolScan 9000 ED Film Scanner (Office Product)

I purchased the Nikon 9000ED scanner mostly because I could not find anything else that would scann my 2.75 x 2.75 slides. There may be other products out there but the recommendations I got was to go with the Nikon. Basically I inherited a case of these slides which feature my family from roughly 1960 to 1979. Most of the slides are badly faded, underexposed or otherwise not usable. So I figured in order to save the memories I need to spend the money to do it right.

I am not disappointed. Initially I kept getting a mysterious error in the post-processing cycle. After many emails back in forth with 3rd level support staff at Nikon (nice to be able to get support) we figured out that I was setting something called digital GEM on when that wasn't necessary. The process works on badly grained film which I didn't have. Once I changed the default scan settings by not asking for GEM corrections, all has gone beautiful for me.

The red-brown slides magically come back to me with their original colors via the digital ROC process. I'm not too technical on all the things that happen within the hardware-software process but the results an amateur like me can get are simply awsome. I scan the slides at a full 4000 bpi and store the results as huge TIFF files. I figure that disk space is cheap but at least I have the original in a best possible digitized format. The slides will continue to deteriorate but not the digiatl data.

Fred Rump

56 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Good., May 24, 2005

By 

Buffy (Sunnydale) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nikon Super CoolScan 9000 ED Film Scanner (Office Product)

If I could update my rating it would be 4 stars (instead of 5). 1/9/06

Original review: This was incredibly easy to set up and overall the scans are sharp and the color is nice. The Digital Ice 4 included with this scanner does a tremendous job with removing scratches, dust speckles, etc. It's too bad Digital Ice isn't offered with more scanners--it's really a key selling point for this brand. One problem I am having is with a horizontal shadow at the top of each frame. This seems consistent no matter which negative I am scanning. I am currently investigating and trying to contact Nikon about this. If this very faint shadow were not there---this would have been a perfect scanner. I will update when this issue is resolved one way or another. 5/25/05

Update 1/9/06: the shadowing effect described above seems to happen primarily with high contrast images shot on negative film. Most images shot on transparency do not have the shadow problem

Update: 1/9/06: I learned through usage and contacting Nikin support that you must turn Digital ICE off when scanning black and white negatives (meaning you'll have to manually clean up those images yourself). Too bad, because the ICE does a tremendous job in removing dust speckles.

Update 1/9/06: my scanner had a problem where it wouldn't eject the 35mm tray, it had become stuck in the unit. I had to take it back to a Nikon support office about 45 min from where I live. They seem to have fixed the problem as it has been working fine since then (that was about 2 months ago). Fortunately, this happened while the unit was still within warranty. Nikon support did not give me any hassles when I took the scanner in for repair.

For the most part this works very well. I have had some problems (the shadowing, the tray becoming stuck) which I don't expect for an (approx) 2K piece of equipment. In lieu of something better from another manufacturer, this seems like the best piece of equipment if you need to scan in film negatives or transparancies to get high quality scans.

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For medium format negatives, easily better than my local pro lab, December 20, 2006

By 

Neurasthenic "neurasthenic" (New York City, New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Nikon Super CoolScan 9000 ED Film Scanner (Office Product)

I was astonished at what this scanner could do, in terms of preserving the gentle tones of my black and white negatives. My only regret is that there is no equivalent to Digital ICE for black and white. That problem is not unique to this scanner, of course.

The quality of the images I get from this scanner, with 6cm x 6cm negatives from a 1970-vintage twin lens camera, trounces the images I get with a Canon 5D SLR. I also have used it with 35MM negatives and Kodachrome slides, which work beautifully, and with both 4.5cm x 4.5cm negatives and 110 negatives, which require that I jury-rig a special mask for the glass-covered medium format carriage (FH-869GR, not included).

The 9000ED comes with a 35MM carriage, 35MM slide carriage, and basic MF carriage. For the price, I would have preferred if they had included the glass-covered, rotating 120 unit as well.

[2009 note: there is a bug in the NikonScan software that drives this scanner such that with recent versions of Mac OSX -- starting with 10.5.6 I believe -- the software won't recognize the scanner if there are other firewire devices attached at the time the software is launched. The other devices can be plugged back in after the software is running, but they have to be unplugged when it starts. Vuescan, a popular third party software package that works with this scanner, does not have the same problem. I prefer NikonScan despite this quirk, but opinions vary.]