New Coolscans when?

[Jeff McLean]

Hello Scanners!

Anyone with thoughts on when Nikon might be coming
out with new coolscans? I think it's been quite a while
since the 5000 and 9000 came out. I'm planning on
buying the 5000 with the auto feeder soon, and don't
want to do so if the next new one is coming!

Thanks for reading.

 

[David J. Littleboy]

Hello Scanners!

Anyone with thoughts on when Nikon might be coming
out with new coolscans? I think it's been quite a while
since the 5000 and 9000 came out. I'm planning on
buying the 5000 with the auto feeder soon, and don't
want to do so if the next new one is coming!

I'd not be surprised if the 5000/9000 were the last coolscans. Nikon's
largely out of the 35mm film camera business, and demand has to be falling.
Also, they're pretty good scanners. IMHO, film is good for from 7x to 9x at
best. That's 2100 to 2700 dpi. I find that the if I downsample 4000 dpi
scans from the 8000 to 2100 to 2700 dpi, I get images that are quite sharp
and print nicely at 300 dpi. So the Coolscans are at least 90% of
perfection.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

 

[rafe b]

I'd not be surprised if the 5000/9000 were the last coolscans. Nikon's
largely out of the 35mm film camera business, and demand has to be falling.
Also, they're pretty good scanners. IMHO, film is good for from 7x to 9x at
best. That's 2100 to 2700 dpi. I find that the if I downsample 4000 dpi
scans from the 8000 to 2100 to 2700 dpi, I get images that are quite sharp
and print nicely at 300 dpi. So the Coolscans are at least 90% of
perfection.

Compared to most of my other photo gear or
computing gear, they're even better than that.

I *am* rather surprised at Epson's two new
scanners, the V700 and V750. Even if we don't
know much about them yet, it's significant that
Epson is still interested in this market, and
appealing to high-end users.

Will Nikon choose to respond, or will they
cede more of their market to Epson?

I really don't know. I may be imagining
this, but I'm seeing an uptick in interest
in film scanning. And I've got a rationale
to explain it.

It goes like this. Digicams are to blame.
More and more people are learning to
capture images, view them on their monitors,
and print them on their desktop printers.
They're pleased with the process and
getting comfortable with it.

Having acquired the gear and some skills,
they're looking over their shoulder at
those shoeboxes full of slides and negatives
and thinking... hmmm???? What would it
take to get those onto my computer?

Me, I'm just surprised that so many folks
are *just now* waking up to the possibilities
of film scanning.

Waddya think? Am I dreaming?


rafe b
www.terrapinphoto.com

 

[David J. Littleboy]

Having acquired the gear and some skills,
they're looking over their shoulder at
those shoeboxes full of slides and negatives
and thinking... hmmm???? What would it
take to get those onto my computer?

Me, I'm just surprised that so many folks
are *just now* waking up to the possibilities
of film scanning.

Waddya think? Am I dreaming?

Well, I hope you aren't; I've still got a Rolleiflex and a Mamiya 7 I'd like
to get some mileage from.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

 

[Ernst Dinkla]

I really don't know. I may be imagining
this, but I'm seeing an uptick in interest
in film scanning. And I've got a rationale
to explain it.

It goes like this. Digicams are to blame.
More and more people are learning to
capture images, view them on their monitors,
and print them on their desktop printers.
They're pleased with the process and
getting comfortable with it.

Having acquired the gear and some skills,
they're looking over their shoulder at
those shoeboxes full of slides and negatives
and thinking... hmmm???? What would it
take to get those onto my computer?

Me, I'm just surprised that so many folks
are *just now* waking up to the possibilities
of film scanning.

Waddya think? Am I dreaming?

The other rationale would be that digital MF and LF cameras
will never reach a price level that will suit prosumers and
semi-pros while an Epson scanner + analogue cameras are within
reach right now. I also wonder what replaces the MT+ equipment
that is used in the field, in backpacking etc. Scanner backs
or Mamiya 645 digital with batteries, a laptop, extra
harddiscs ? I think a lot will prefer film 6x9 cm up to 8x10
inch and next to it a nice digital compact to do some proofs
and get a record of the colors. Easier to carry and less
hassle to support out there. All film sizes the Epson can deal
with.

35 mm and 645 analogue film may be replaced right now, there's
a different customer for the sizes above that.

This also suits Epson's other market, the A3 up to 44" wide
format printers. I had the ranges of film sizes quite
adequately covered with my Nikon 8000 + Epson 3200 to print on
the Epson 9000 + 10000 that I have. Native resolution of those
printers is 360 PPI, acceptable input quality can drop to 180
PPI, both to cover the full width of the printers with
different film formats. Printers have improved since and it
would be nice to have only one (Epson) scanner to do the job.
That may be possible now. It doesn't cut in Epson's digital
camera line as that one hardly exists.


Ernst

--
Ernst Dinkla


www.pigment-print.com
( unvollendet )

 

[send2ds]

"*am* rather surprised at Epson's two new
scanners, the V700 and V750."

Timely topic for me. Just received my LS5000 when I saw the press
release for the Epson. Will this be a fixed focus product having the
same problems (i.e., needing shims to get the sharpest focus) as the
3200, et. al.?

I think I'm better off with the LS5000 for my 35mm archives, and
purchasing the new Epson for MF and 45. Sound thinking?

I agree with Ernst about the MF and 45 shooting. For new work I think
it's sound practice to stay with film shooting and scanning those
formats for the forseeable future. I don't do much product work,
certainly not enough to justify an 18k USD digi back. Most of my MF/LF
work is field work currentlly.

And, I still have my Contax and their superb lenses for 35mm that I
want to continue working with, but I must admit working with digital
RAW capture with my DSLR is terrific, so my Contax gets neglected too
much because of it.

All comments encouraged and welcome.

 

[Don]

Having acquired the gear and some skills,
they're looking over their shoulder at
those shoeboxes full of slides and negatives
and thinking... hmmm???? What would it
take to get those onto my computer?

Me, I'm just surprised that so many folks
are *just now* waking up to the possibilities
of film scanning.

Waddya think? Am I dreaming?

I think that has already happened and is behind us. The digicams were
all the rage a couple of years ago and nothing significant (in the
consumer market) has happened since then. The resolution leveled off
and the prices plummeted. So all that would have happened back then.

Another piece of circumstantial evidence. A couple of years back
cruising my local electronics stores they each had literally about
25-30 flatbeds on display. Last time I went to one of them they only
had 3! So, clearly everyone who wanted a flatbed already got it.

I think the same goes for film scanners which were always a niche
market due to higher price and skills required. I don't even see them
advertised in the flyers anymore.

All that does make it somewhat surprising that Epson would come out
with new models but it's quite possible they miscalculated (whatever
their reasoning was). Or maybe they simply had it in the pipeline and
it was cheaper to release and at least recover the development cost?

And, of course, film will remain a niche market for a long time. I
mean, one can still by record players even though they are now almost
twice removed as the CDs themselves start to fade as a music medium in
favor of hard disks or (the real future) solid state devices.

Don.

 

[Philip Homburg]

Me, I'm just surprised that so many folks
are *just now* waking up to the possibilities
of film scanning.

Waddya think? Am I dreaming?

I think there are two groups of people that need/want to scan film. The first
group are the people who are still shooting film and found out that (at least
for color) scanning film and printing digitally beats making color
enlargements in a dark room.

Of the traditional film users, the people who are likely to buy the
more expensive scanners either already got one, or they moved to digital.

The second group are the people who have boxes full of frames and try figure
out what to do with them. Typically, photos increase in (emotional) value
as they get older. So it will be a relatively slow process where each year
some fraction of the second group decides that they need to get a scanner
to digitize some old frames.

I don't particularly like using flatbed scanners for scanning anything
critical. So there will be a market for dedicated film scanners even when
Epson gets closer and closer in resolution.

For other people, the fact that a flatbed can be used both for general
scanning and for film scanning, and the lower price may be attractive.

 

[Djon]

Keep an eye out for reviews on the new Epsons. Arguably (for the sake
of conversation...nobody's reviewed one yet) perhaps 3000MB
Nikon-equivalent, will serve as well for most users as 4000MB film
scanners, since the current 4990 already serves well for many purposes
from 35mm, and since Nikon does beautifully if you cut it back to
3000MB.

Epson's new optics are conceptually (nobody's confirmed yet) a lot
better than in 4990, and precision of filmplane focus, always an issue,
would have been be easy to improve.

The main drawback will probably remain the B+ dust cleaning and
probably-slow-speed of the Ice/infared which is IMO A+ and certainly
fastest with the current Nikons (due to the Nikon's separate infared
light source, absent in all non-Nikon scanners). I'd bet the new
Epsons' Ice will be very slow, much like the old model Minolta 5400.
However, film will surely be focused better than Minolta, and multiple
frame scanning will be much more efficient (because it already was,
several years ago, with the earliest Epson Perfection scanners).
Because of the multi-scanning efficiency and huge file size from higher
ppi resolution (whatever ppi it "really" is), one will want a LOT of
ram memory with the new Epsons...certainly more than 2MB.

 

[eastside]

Hello Scanners!

Anyone with thoughts on when Nikon might be coming
out with new coolscans? I think it's been quite a while
since the 5000 and 9000 came out. I'm planning on
buying the 5000 with the auto feeder soon, and don't
want to do so if the next new one is coming!

This question seems to appear every 6 months. Aside from the above caveats
that Nikon is deemphasizing their analog products (and should be taken
seriously), Nikon has had a 3 year scanner product cycle that they've been
following like clockwork since 1992. The current line became available in
early 2004.

Dane

 

[Tropical Treat]

FWIW my digital print centre is doing more slide to CD imaging now than at
any time in the past 2 years. The quality of slides we are getting are from
extremely poor, 40 year old Kodachromes to relatively well preserved Agfa
slides.

The biggest problem we have is explaining to customers why we need to charge
them on an hourly basis to recover their colour and restore the picture as
much as modern technology allows. Good as they are, the Coolscan ED 5000s we
use have a woefully inadaquate interface when you need to batch scan 1000
slides, correcting different levels of colour fade and scratch removal at
different levels.

I hope Epson do infact provide good scanning of film with their new
scanners. At least my Epson 4870 software doesn't flood memory and crash
every couple of dozen scans like the Nikons do. It is absolutely impossible
to set up a bulk loader and leave the things run overnight, expecting them
to have completed the work in the morning. If there was a reliable
alternative to coolscans, I'd buy some tomorrow.