About to buy a Nikon CoolScan 8000 - stop me or encourage me!

[BLKRCAT]

Everything i've posted around online here has been with the CS 8000. Its a great scanner. Once you get over the noise from it, its wonderful.

I made a video about it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNN5cS9Vlf0

 

[moodlover]

I was able to sit and scan a few frames on their SP3000, seeing how is the workflow employed.
Took street scenes on Portra 400 basically exposed at box and the scanner's interpretation out of the box was rather nice. But, not airy pastel. Forgot to take a drive to copy them and I don't have those Jpegs.

Most of the look comes through density adjustment and then tweaking in LR. Highlights can be pulled as well as other tweaks. I didn't notice well if the SP3000 is set to scan Jpeg and then the edits are over lossy format, only got to see the size presets.

For one, I am quite conservative and with my own scanning (v550) tend to just set levels and do minor corrections.

Great to hear from someone who's used a Frontier before. Sometimes I need the airy pastel look but boosting curves just doesn't do it, not sure why. I then studied the look deeper and had a gut feeling that some sort of density adjustment and boosting was going on, something different than curves. To get the airy look, is it a big edit made or a big curve applied once all the detail is captured? How do you think one can come close to the colors/feel of the Frontier from an 8000?

 

[moodlover]

I have an CS8000 which was worked over by a friend here in Northern Virginia - he has CLA'd many of this series of scanner (it's a hobby, not his profession). He said there are only a few common problems that come up which are easy to fix; dirty mirror - will cause a scanning error - it is a first surface mirror and must be cleaned very, very carefully, the other is the drive gear can get sheared by improper insertion/removal of the film holder (where the motor shaft drives the work gear, it snaps due to a poor design). This too is easy to fix. He rattled off several other problems he's seen over the years but I forget them now. I bought mine about 18 months ago from his Craigslist ad - cost me $800 and it was his last one. I can contact him and ask if he still does this work and if he minds me sharing his info.

Yes please id love to know his contact in case I need to buy parts or get mine serviced. Mine is $750 with a 120 tray but I may need to buy a 35mm tray, though Im not sure yet what the quality of the 8000 is for 35mm.

It will work on an Intel based MAC. I have a 2009 iMac running El Capitan and it worked immediately out of the box. I do use the Vuescan software and am very, very happy with the scan quality.

How? I hear Nikon Scan is dead on intel macs. Im running a mac with Mountain Lion, but I think yours worked because you're using VueScan which I think enables the scanner on all platforms/OSes. You have any place I can see your scans?

Chris Crawford is right, the glass-less carriers are junk. I wanted to do wet scanning anyway - so I bought a FH869S 120 carrier and removed the insert (it just snaps right out with no damage). Then I bought Scan Sciences wet film scanning kit;

http://scanscience.com

This is a single piece of flat plate glass which perfectly fits into the FS869S, a pack of Mylar (I think it's Mylar) cut to the same size, a rubber squeegie and a few bottles of their scanning fluid. How it works is like this: spray the fluid onto the glass, lay the negative onto the glass, spray fluid onto the negative, lay the Mylar on top of the negative and squeegie out the air bubbles. Place the glass into the carrier and insert into the scanner. When done remove the Mylar and clean with no-lint tissue, remove the negative and wipe off the excess fluid (it evaporates pretty quick and leaves no residue), clean the glass, move onto the next negative. I love the results. NOTE: I do have to fuss around with the carrier positioning settings to find the actual frame I am looking for that is a pain - I have not yet figured out do this part quickly. not a big problem, just a PITA.

Something for me to think about I guess, but glass carriers are too expensive to find. I'll need to come up with another solution like the one you're offering. I only scan one 6x7 negative at a time since I'm very selective so I think wet mounting would be a good option if I can figure it out. How much did this whole wet mount setup cost you? Seems like it runs over $100 easily? The website is tough to understand.

I used to own an CS9000 but sold it years ago, before they became as valuable as gold. I see no difference between the two re: scan quality The only noticeable difference is the CS8000 takes longer to scan. I attribute that to an older processor, maybe? If you're interested I would be happy to share scans I've made with both - the images I made with the 9000 were using the glass FS869G (also before they shot up in price) - all of my 8000 scans were wet.

Yes please do show me!!! Its so hard for me to find quality scans online from the 8000 specifically. Flickr shows a bunch of poorly scanned results which isn't very inspiring!

One more tip; I have tested making 2, 4, and more passes on the scanner. In my pixel-peeping I see no big improvement going beyond 2 passes.

I hope this helps you with your decision. I think an CS8000 is a good choice. I make prints on my Epson printer and they look great to my eyes.

Is the amount of passes an option in VueScan only? Or would it be on SilverFast as well? Thanks so much for the awesome replies!

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Something for me to think about I guess, but glass carriers are too expensive to find. I'll need to come up with another solution like the one you're offering. I only scan one 6x7 negative at a time since I'm very selective so I think wet mounting would be a good option if I can figure it out. How much did this whole wet mount setup cost you? Seems like it runs over $100 easily? The website is tough to understand.

A single sheet of ANR glass from Focal Point is less than $40USD. It will perfectly flatten film when placed in the long strip holder for 120. The FH-869S. using just one sheet this way will give you an extraordinary high resolution without any of the out of focus effects from the film bowing towards the edges. The scanner light isn't punching through 4 glass-air surfaces as well, just 2. I firmly believe scanning directly from the film emulsion this way gives superior results to a sandwich glass holder. Otherwise you're hobbling the LS8000 down to the level of an Epson 4490 as the extra glass turns the excellent negative scanner into a flatbed.

Phil Forrest

 

[moodlover]

Since there seem to be a lot of CS 9000/8000 owners in this thread I want to ask: can it scan all the way out to the rebate?

I like to print my work including the natural frame border and I'm trying to find a good scanner that will allow me to do this.

Im wondering the same thing since its easy to do with flatbeds. But I've seen the holders, it looks like the sides clamp down over the rebate edges which is unfortunate, I love to grab the entire frame border but don't think the CoolScan is capable.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Im wondering the same thing since its easy to do with flatbeds. But I've seen the holders, it looks like the sides clamp down over the rebate edges which is unfortunate, I love to grab the entire frame border but don't think the CoolScan is capable.

The light and lens will adequately cover the rebate edge but with stock film carriages, you can't get that due to the way the film mounts. It would be easy to modify a holder with a file, razor or dremel to open it up to get the whole film area though. You'd have to use a dual-sheet glass carrier in this case.

Phil Forrest

 

[moodlover]

A single sheet of ANR glass from betterscanning is less than $40USD. It will perfectly flatten film when placed in the long strip holder for 120. The FH-869S. using just one sheet this way will give you an extraordinary high resolution without any of the out of focus effects from the film bowing towards the edges. The scanner light isn't punching through 4 glass-air surfaces as well, just 2. I firmly believe scanning directly from the film emulsion this way gives superior results to a sandwich glass holder. Otherwise you're hobbling the LS8000 down to the level of an Epson 4490 as the extra glass turns the excellent negative scanner into a flatbed.

Phil Forrest

Hmm good point, id like to try just the regular ANR glass before getting into wet mounting. I think for my purposes the visual differences should be minimal as long as the negative is flat regardless of dry or wet right? Also, could you please link me to which ANR glass you're talking about? Im surprised you're saying the ANR from BS will fit right into the 869S but I cant find this. Thanks!

 

[jbrianfoto]

Hi Moodlover,

Didn't have to do anything special - just loaded the vuescan software and connected my scanner wit hte supplied Nikon cable - worked first try.



I don't remember how much the kit cost originally - I actually ordered a spare glass and a bunch more of the scanning fluid. I ended up emailing them for help - yes, the website is confusing 🙂



PM me your email address and I'll load a few images into my DropBox account so you can see full sized images. I only scan B/W, so there is no color to look at.



I can only say for the vuescan software, I do not know about SilverFast.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

My bad, it's Focal Point that makes the ANR glass kit for the Nikon holder.
http://fpointinc.com/nikon.htm#FH869S

I'll go back and correct my post to say Focal Point, not Better Scanning.

Phil Forrest

 

[Solinar]

You should absolutely buy a CS8K. It's slow, but it's high quality. Plus it's been immune the the absurd prices CS9K's go for.

And mine needed a good cleaning - but it was under $800 and came with the glass negative carrier for medium format.

For my MacBook, OS 10.12 - I use a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 cable, firewire 800 to 400 cable and Vuescan. - It's slow going if you mulit-scan.

Below is an image from my Mess-Ikonta 524/2, along with a crop of the top image. Notice the on-off switch on the chile roaster.

There's a manufacturers label by the switch

 

[moodlover]

My bad, it's Focal Point that makes the ANR glass kit for the Nikon holder.
http://fpointinc.com/nikon.htm#FH869S

I'll go back and correct my post to say Focal Point, not Better Scanning.

Phil Forrest

Found it, thanks. They have 2 thicknesses of glass for the FH-869S, 1mm and 3mm, one for the ANR on top and one clear to sandwich on bottom. But I read on the website some people don't use the bottom glass (I don't want to if I can lightly tape the neg to the ANR, I want the lens to directly scan the film if its underneath the tray). So I think ill buy just the 3mm ANR one, yeah?

 

[jbrianfoto]

A single sheet of ANR glass from Focal Point is less than $40USD. It will perfectly flatten film when placed in the long strip holder for 120. The FH-869S. using just one sheet this way will give you an extraordinary high resolution without any of the out of focus effects from the film bowing towards the edges. The scanner light isn't punching through 4 glass-air surfaces as well, just 2. I firmly believe scanning directly from the film emulsion this way gives superior results to a sandwich glass holder. Otherwise you're hobbling the LS8000 down to the level of an Epson 4490 as the extra glass turns the excellent negative scanner into a flatbed.

Phil Forrest

Hi Phil, In this case, with only one slice of glass and the negative, how would you hold the neg down flat? Use some sort of tape maybe?

Thanks,
Jeromie

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Hi Phil, In this case, with only one slice of glass and the negative, how would you hold the neg down flat? Use some sort of tape maybe?

Thanks,
Jeromie

You could tape it to the ANR glass but gravity should hold film that isn't too curled just fine.

Phil Forrest

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Found it, thanks. They have 2 thicknesses of glass for the FH-869S, 1mm and 3mm, one for the ANR on top and one clear to sandwich on bottom. But I read on the website some people don't use the bottom glass (I don't want to if I can lightly tape the neg to the ANR, I want the lens to directly scan the film if its underneath the tray). So I think ill buy just the 3mm ANR one, yeah?

Yup.
There are very good no-residue tapes that can be found at art stores you can use. Just don't use crappy "scotch" tape as it can peel into fragments then you have to scrape the glass to remove it.

Phil Forrest

 

[Godfrey]

Since there seem to be a lot of CS 9000/8000 owners in this thread I want to ask: can it scan all the way out to the rebate?

I like to print my work including the natural frame border and I'm trying to find a good scanner that will allow me to do this.

I have a Nikon 9000. (Don't use it enough so I'm going to sell it, but that's another matter. I shoot so little film that it's more sensible for me to use a copy camera technique to 'scan' my exposures.)

If you want to capture the full rebate, you *must* use the ANR glass film carrier because the standard film holder covers a portion of the rebate. As mentioned before, this is the best way to ensure that the negative is absolutely flat and returns the best image, but the ANR glass carriers are quite pricey.

The Nikon 8000/9000 scanners are outstanding machines and very versatile. They produce superb scans of up to 6x12 cm format film (I don't think they can go all the way to 6x17, but I'm not sure), handle two 35mm strips of six at a time, and people have produced other carriers as well. I have one carrier for Minox 8x11 format that allows me to scan 20 exposures in a batch with Vuescan.

G

 

[brbo]

The light and lens will adequately cover the rebate edge but with stock film carriages, you can't get that due to the way the film mounts. It would be easy to modify a holder with a file, razor or dremel to open it up to get the whole film area though. You'd have to use a dual-sheet glass carrier in this case.

Phil Forrest

If you will be scanning negative film you don't want to do that, believe me.

Coolscans flare like crazy (even when perfectly clean). Any part of unexposed film inside the scanning area will introduce light leak into the image area.

 

[moodlover]

If you want to capture the full rebate, you *must* use the ANR glass film carrier because the standard film holder covers a portion of the rebate. As mentioned before, this is the best way to ensure that the negative is absolutely flat and returns the best image, but the ANR glass carriers are quite pricey.

The Nikon 8000/9000 scanners are outstanding machines and very versatile. They produce superb scans of up to 6x12 cm format film (I don't think they can go all the way to 6x17, but I'm not sure), handle two 35mm strips of six at a time, and people have produced other carriers as well. I have one carrier for Minox 8x11 format that allows me to scan 20 exposures in a batch with Vuescan.

G

Sucks to hear, I really love scanning the entire rebate. But I digress, I'll deal with it for now or maybe use my flatbed to grab the rebate then join the two together if needed.

Thanks for your input, what kind of film did you scan? Im curious if its good at scanning 35mm I might get into 35mm as well, otherwise ill just stick to 120. Besides resolution, what exactly did you find superb about the 8000 results?

 

[k__43]

Looks great on my iMac screen, very neutral color and clean scan. I tried VueScan a couple times and absolutely hated the interface, the terminology was hard to understand and the sliders were insane. I like shadows, highlights, rgb, or cmyk levels style of color correction. Simple and to the point. But your scan looks good, you use ColorPerfect after?

No color perfect. As I said straight Vuescan.
Vuescan is great once you wrapped your head around it. You get quite consistent output from any scanner .. I used so far:
Plustek 8200
Canon FS4000
Epson V500
Canon 8800F
and the LS8000 to rule them all.
All with vuescan all with useable colors (as I mentioned sometimes you need to tweak channels in a curves tool a bit)
I tried Colorperfect once - isn't for me.

 

[Penzes]

I have had the Coolscan 9000, which is from scanning result quite comparable with the 8000. The advice, buy a glas carrier is to be considered very valuable. You need it!

It is slow and noisy. But beside that, a quite capable device.


Corvette by István Pénzes, on Flickr

I used the old Nikon scan program only.

In my stream, you can see a lot of scans made with the 9000.

good technique [goal variation] by István Pénzes, on Flickr

In direct comparison, the 9000 was almost equal to the Imacon 343.

 

[jbrianfoto]

If you will be scanning negative film you don't want to do that, believe me.

Coolscans flare like crazy (even when perfectly clean). Any part of unexposed film inside the scanning area will introduce light leak into the image area.

That can be taken car of by cutting a mask out of black construction paper and placing it around the negatives edges (leaving the boarders in view). I do that all the time, works like a champ.