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"Too much money for a one-pass scanner" on
Pros: Love Digital Ice Dust and lint software. it really works great.
Cons: 1. Does not do multi-pass scans. 2. Grain noise creeps into the shadow areas really easily. It needs a multi-pass function to lower grain noise in the shadows. 3. DEE Threshold slider is very tricky for the DEE software. 4. 14 bit is kind of silly consid
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"Very Pleased, works as advertised." on by oldthaiger
Pros: Very easy to use with both slide and 35mm negative B&W or color film.
Cons: Very slow, you really need an editing program like PhotoShop or Nikon capture 4 to get the desired results.
Summary: Nikon quality throughout, also Nikon software complexity.
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"I Hate This Thing but it Does a Great Job" on by soupyhotness
Pros: Excellent quality 35mm negative/slide scanning
Cons: Absolutely HORRIBLE software, capable hardware intentionally handicapped to prevent scanning film other than 35mm, Frustrating experience overall.
Summary: Nikon makes little or no effort to give the consumer a satisfying experience. I purchased an Epson V700 in addition to this scanner because both my parents gave up on it. Vuescan and Silverfast offer great alternatives to the NikonScan interface, but their infrared cleaning options are still too much weaker than the official Digital ICE supplied with the NikonScan interface. If your negatives and slides are in GOOD condition, VueScan or Silverfast will fix your NikonScan woes, and in that case you've got a great 35mm (35mm ONLY) scanner. If you need the Digital ICE, you need to use the supremely awful NikonScan software interface. For that reason alone this scanner becomes just too frustrating to use. The rest of my review/tirade is about NikonScan.
I have spent a LOT of time working with this scanner. So understand these are cumulative complaints over an extended period. Short term occasional use might not show any of these issues, who knows. Maybe the software has a memory leak.. Anyway here's my feeling on it after one year. The NikonScan scanning software supplied with this product is clunky, counterintuitive, crash-prone, and rarely upgraded. It says right out of the box "Not Compatible with Photoshop." Attempts to import with Photoshop CS2 do in fact crash the interface and lock up Photoshop.
Given the amount of time necessary to fix a damaged slide, the defects of NikonScan become overwhelming. Changing almost any of the settings causes the scanner to re-scan the slide, and it really starts to wear on you after a while. This program does way too many "vanishing crashes" where it just blips out of existance with no warning, meaning all work is lost. I have been scanning dust damaged slides from Vietnam with this thing, and it does take up to 15 minutes per slide just getting the initial scan to work right before going to Photoshop to do color corrections. When the program "blips" away in the 14th minute you want to kill something. Unfortunately settings which should be "sticky" reset themselves randomly, and are lost when the program crashes in mid preview.
It's possible to get results from NikonScan, but you better prepare yourself for the troubles ahead.
Just for the record, I've installed and used the scanner on Windows 2000 Pro, XP Pro SP1 & SP2, and XP Home. The problems translate perfectly to each machine. -
"Easy to set-up and use, lovely images" on by msmarge
Pros: Ease of use, easy to set-up, doesn't take much space
Cons: Cost, slowish scanning speed
Summary: I am very happy that I purchased my Nikon Coolscan. I am digitizing a gazillion slide my Dad had taken from the 1950's-1970's. Setting up the scanner was easy; install the software, plug in the scanner and you are good to go. The default scan file is a tiff, so I scanned a few images with huge file sizes before I figured out how to set it to jpg (easy), but no other complaints! I've scanned over 100 slides so far and a few b & w negs too!
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"Excellent scanner for slides or film and those on a budget" on by banjocat
Pros: Have scanned hundreds of slides and not one problem.
Cons: Depending on scan options set, can take a few minutes to complete. Also, noisey during scan.
Summary: I have used the Nikon Coolscan V for over a year now and scanned both slides and negative film with no problems. Most, if not all of what I scan is slides since that is what I shoot and 99% of that is Velvia. So I looked for a scanner that would handle the range that Velvia produces. I had never used a scanner so I read reviews and did my homework. Set-up and installation was easy and quick. Within an hour I was scanning my first slides. I generally scan useing only the Digital ICE feature to remove scratches then open the finished scan in Photoshop for any further adjustments. I have used the Tools within the NikonScan software to 'tweek' slides before output with excellent results.
I have thousands of slides but no intention of scanning them all. That would be WAY too time consuming. Instead, I have been going through and picking out my best to save for scanning. I have not encountered any of the problems others have written about.
Bottom line - An easy to set-up, consumer friendly scanner that produces excellent results.
Nikon Coolscan V LS-50 ED user reviews
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