Reviews on new Nikon Coolscan 5000?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Robert A
  • Start date Start date
Robert A said:
Has anyone seen reviews on this scanner?
Click to expand...

I have. In a German-language photo magazine.


Robert A said:
Wondering how it handles B&W.
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They said both the Coolscan V and Super Coolscan 5000 have
problems to achieve a good Dmax, in general as well as with
traditional B&W film in particular. The reason is the LED light
source which produces extremely narrow-banded and hard
light with is good for common colour material but not so good
for silver-bearing B&W film.

But even with common colour slides, the Dmax is okay but
nothing to write home about, according to that magazine. It is
possible to get better detail in dark areas by multi-pass scanning
but this seriously slows down the scanning process.

The overall test winner of that scanner test by a small margin
was the Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400, mostly due to
better Dmax (and also due to higher resolution and low price).
If scanning of traditional B&W material is important to you,
you should prefer the Elite 5400 over the Coolscans.

The biggest disadvantage of the Elite 5400, in comparison to
the Coolscans, is the slow scanning speed in single-pass mode
with Digital ICE engaged. Without Digital ICE, however, the
Elite 5400 is fairly fast, and with traditional B&W material you
cannot use Digital ICE anyway.

Olaf
 
Thank you for the note. I currently have a Canon FS4000US, and I'm
considering the upgrade (to either scanner) if I can get better DMax with
slides, and better image quality with B&W.

Robert
 
They said both the Coolscan V and Super Coolscan 5000 have
problems to achieve a good Dmax, in general as well as with
traditional B&W film in particular. The reason is [...]
The overall test winner of that scanner test by a small margin
was the Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400, mostly due to
Click to expand...

These comparisons are interesting, but they focalize on functionalities
and not limits.

Many people have problems of banding due to faulty CCDs with all Minolta
scanners. Although this problem exists with all CCD scanners, it seems
that Minolta scanners when pushed to their limits show this problem
much earlier before than the Nikon or Canon equivalents.

I would be interested to see real tests of a totally black slide with
these new scanners as I did here with my Minolta Elite:

http://christian.tsotras.free.fr/scanner_reset/index.html
(see third example, using the "aluminium sandwich")

http://christian.tsotras.free.fr/scanner/index.html
(see last example, "CCD noise scanning")
 
Christian said:
Many people have problems of banding
due to faulty CCDs with all Minolta
scanners.
Click to expand...

I don't. I bought my Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 last month,
and I can see absolutely no banding or streaking. Knowing your
results shown at <http://christian.tsotras.free.fr/scanner/index.html>,
I anxiously searched for any faults by scanning several slides and
negatives, both colour and B&W, at full resolution and enhanced
exposure, magnified the resulting TIFFs to 400 % in Photoshop
and then carefully scanned the image visually for any hints of bands
or streaks. I cannot find any.

Maybe older Minolta scanners had problems that the current crop
hasn't anymore, or maybe I am just lucky. Or maybe I didn't look
hard enough---but I am not interested in how to force the scanner
to produce streaks but simply in scanning my photos. So I did not
perform any tests as extreme as scanning a sheet of aluminum foil
because I feel that's pointless. The result of such a 'test' hardly is
related to what a film scanner actually is supposed to do.

Olaf
 
Olaf Ulrich said:
I don't. I bought my Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 last month,
and I can see absolutely no banding or streaking. Knowing your
results shown at <http://christian.tsotras.free.fr/scanner/index.html>,
I anxiously searched for any faults by scanning several slides and
negatives, both colour and B&W, at full resolution and enhanced
exposure, magnified the resulting TIFFs to 400 % in Photoshop
and then carefully scanned the image visually for any hints of bands
or streaks. I cannot find any.

Maybe older Minolta scanners had problems that the current crop
hasn't anymore, or maybe I am just lucky. Or maybe I didn't look
hard enough---but I am not interested in how to force the scanner
to produce streaks but simply in scanning my photos. So I did not
perform any tests as extreme as scanning a sheet of aluminum foil
because I feel that's pointless. The result of such a 'test' hardly is
related to what a film scanner actually is supposed to do.

Olaf
Click to expand...

Your luck must be spreading: I've had my Minolta 5400 for several months
of heavy use, and other than an initial setup problem on a RAM- and
speed-starved computer (since replaced), I've no problems to speak of.
 
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