Joe Cash said:
The Coolscan V or 5000 is not scanning full negative area, is it ? With
the strip film holder one is getting something like 3700dpi out of 4000
dpi (short side of film).
This is a partial myth. A full specification 35mm frame has sides of
36mm x 24mm. ie. The short side of a frame is *not* one inch! So at
4000ppi the most you should expect to get on the short side of a frame
are 3779 pixels.
The Nikon scanners all have a scan area of 25.1 x38mm, or 3546x5782
pixels at 4000ppi, which exceeds the size of a full specification 35mm
frame - indeed it exceeds the size of *any* frame from any standard 35mm
camera that has ever been marketed (excluding panoramic cameras). So
the scanners do *not* crop the frames to less than the 35mm
specification - PERIOD!
The SA-21 unmounted film strip feeder does have a restricted width -
which is specified as at least 23.3mm, resulting in a scan width of 3654
pixels at 4000ppi. In practice, the scan width is closer to 23.5mm,
which provides around 3700 pixels.
However, compare that 23.5mm width to high quality standard slide mounts
from, for example, GePe - both glass and glassless mounts were measured.
These have an active area of 22.9 x 34.9mm - ie. cropping in *both* axes
by more than *twice* the amount that the Nikon unmounted feeder crops in
just width! (the SA-21 will scan a slide which is 37.8mm long, much
longer than a standard 35mm frame). Lesser quality mounts crop by an
even greater extent.
In short, the SA-21 adapter *NOT* the Nikon scanners, will crop the
frame width but by less than half of the best slide mounts. In
addition, if such marginal frame cropping proves to be a concern, you
can always use the FH-3 film strip holder (standard accessory for the
LS-5000, optional extra for the LS-50) and achieve the full frame
without any problems. I have even managed to scan some 38mm square
frames with Nikon scanners at 4000ppi and achieved 3950x5960 pixel
results, corresponding to 25.1 x 37.8mm active area - far greater than a
standard 35mm frame.
In addition to this, very few 35mm SLRs actually provide a full
specification frame in the viewfinder. I can only think of a dozen or
so such examples in the past 40 years that do -and most of those were
developments of each other. So the crop that you are concerned about
probably never even appeared in your viewfinder when you framed the
image - and if you happened to use a camera which did provide more that
97% in the viewfinder, then the Nikon scanners can handle it with the
appropriate film holder.