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

[moodlover]

After a year and a half scanning/training for hundreds of hours with my Epson V800 for medium format film, I've come to the conclusion that I am not happy with the detail and color rendition captured by this flatbed (after all its a low-level flatbed). I've learned just about everything there is to learn using Epson Scan and SilverFast to pull out the best dynamic range without clipping anything, getting the negative flat and sharp, and color correcting in these softwares. Still, I am unhappy with my work when I compare it to how certain labs get this beautiful colors loohttps://carmencitafilmlab.com/esther-and-gabe/k like so.

So I'm on the market looking for a CoolScan 8000 (9000 insanely out of my budget so that's not an option). I've heard the 8000 can rival the quality of pro lab scans but getting the film's color like the lab scans from a Frontier is not easy/possible, is that true?

Lastly, is anyone here happy with their 8000 and can share their experiences/scans (good or bad)? Would a Plustek 120 be better? Truly appreciate it, thanks!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I've used a Nikon LS-8000ED for 16 years now. I would not give it up for anything. The scans give me a quality that makes it possible to make prints that fully equal darkroom prints in sharpness and tonality.

Some advice:

The glass negative carrier is required to get good quality from this scanner. The neg carriers that come with it are completely worthless. They're incapable of holding film flat, and the 8000 and 9000 have virtually NO depth of field in the scans, so the film MUST be 100% perfectly flat. Unfortunately, the glass carriers are impossible to find, and when used ones show up, they go for stupid amounts of money. If the one you are buying does not come with a glass carrier, I would probably not buy the scanner. Its that important.

If you do buy one, you'll need to decide what software to use. If you're a Mac user, then Nikon Scan will not work on Intel Macs, period. You'll either need an old Mac G4 or G5 to hook up to the scanner, or a Windows computer, or you'll need to buy 3rd party software.

Nikon Scan, even on a system it is compatible with, is slow, buggy, crashes often. It sucks. I use Vuescan. Silverfast for this scanner is criminally expensive, I think about $700. Vuescan costs $80 for the Professional Edition, which is the one you want. The standard version is seriously hobbled; the pro edition is worth the money.

Vuescan gives better image quality than Nikon Scan for black and white negatives and color negatives. Nikon Scan gives slightly better color for color transparencies, but not enough better to justify using that horrid software.

I have a Vuescan tutorial for the 8000 on my website. Its for BW negs. I am going to add one soon for color negs and color transparencies, but haven't gotten to it yet.

http://crawfordphotoschool.com/digital/scanning.php

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Damn, I just looked on the Vuescan site and it says the Standard Edition no longer allows film scanning at all. You must buy the Pro edition for a film scanner. When I bought Vuescan 16 yrs ago, you could buy either, and just lost some features with the cheap version.

 

[moodlover]

Thanks for the response! Regarding film flatness, I usually keep my film inside a book overnight to flatten them so by the time its ready to scan, it only has a slight curve to it otherwise its quite flat.

Have you seen this:

http://www.dantestella.com/technical/nikonholder.html

Unfortunately the 8000 I am buying only comes with this regular holder and costs $750 (is that a good price)? I saw the glass holder for $800 so I cant go for that.

 

[Ronald M]

Fairly certain you can no longer service this one. You are one lightbulb away from an $800 paperweight.

There is no way to find how much use it has had. After all it spent its life on a table.

Just make darkroom prints .

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Fairly certain you can no longer service this one. You are one lightbulb away from an $800 paperweight.

There is no way to find how much use it has had. After all it spent its life on a table.

Just make darkroom prints .

The Nikon 8000 does not use a lightbulb, it uses LEDs that basically last forever.

To Moodlover, please ignore Ronald. He spouts this same kind of idiocy (digital sucks, scanning sucks, inkjet sucks, make darkroom prints) in every thread where someone asks about scanning or digital work. He never contributes anything constructive, just silly snarkiness. Be careful of people who have no website, no images to see, no record of any professional accomplishments.

 

[brbo]

I've heard the 8000 can rival the quality of pro lab scans but getting the film's color like the lab scans from a Frontier is not easy/possible, is that true?

Yes, it's true. It will do nothing to get you nearer to the look and feel of color scans from Frontier/Noritsu scanners...

 

[k__43]

Love mine, works like a dream.
Excellet results too (just scan in fine mode)

 

[mani]

Yes, it's true. It will do nothing to get you nearer to the look and feel of color scans from Frontier/Noritsu scanners...

Absolutely disagree - the look that the OP refers to in his link from Carmencita Labs is totally possible to attain with the LS8000.

Starting with over-exposing Portra400, and then carefully getting a 48bit linear negative scan, and then converting with ColorPerfect, those colors and detail are totally within reach. It simply comes down to user-expertise - which can come from a good eye combined with experience.

The Coolscans are awesome scanners.

 

[k__43]

In regards to color.
I find that using this workflow
Vuescan(generic film setting)-->Jpeg24bit-->repairing the minor color errors in low and high and gamma in a curve tool per channel (Aperture, lightroom)
works more than good enough for me. One eye on the picture one eye on the histogram and you are able to get the shot where it needs to be
Even drum scanners don't guarantee for perfect color that part is software.

this is (if I remember correctly) a straight scan with no curve fiddling:
Untitled by Kay K, on Flickr
White might be a bit too blue but I found it good enough as is back then.
(sorry I do not have too much skin in my pics in generell, so those bits must do for skin tone in "normal" light comparison)

 

[Prest_400]

Absolutely disagree - the look that the OP refers to in his link from Carmencita Labs is totally possible to attain with the LS8000.

Starting with over-exposing Portra400, and then carefully getting a 48bit linear negative scan, and then converting with ColorPerfect, those colors and detail are totally within reach. It simply comes down to user-expertise - which can come from a good eye combined with experience.

The Coolscans are awesome scanners.

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.

 

[jbrianfoto]

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.

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. I'd like to know from Chris what sort of problems he encountered with his scanner and an Intel Mac - maybe I can help ?

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.

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.

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.

 

[brbo]

Absolutely disagree

Actually...

- the look that the OP refers to in his link from Carmencita Labs is totally possible to attain with the LS8000.

Starting with over-exposing Portra400, and then carefully getting a 48bit linear negative scan, and then converting with ColorPerfect, those colors and detail are totally within reach. It simply comes down to user-expertise - which can come from a good eye combined with experience.

The Coolscans are awesome scanners.

... you absolutely agree with me.

Scanning to linear on CS8000 won't get him any nearer the wanted look than scanning linear on V800.

(I've had CS8000 and more other scanners that I'm willing to admit)

 

[Timmyjoe]

Got to agree with everything positive that folks have said about the Coolscan 9000/8000. Bought one of the last new ones available back in 2009, and luckily bought a glass carrier at the same time. A must if you want good quality scans from your 120 film.

I have gotten NikonScan to work with an Intel Mac, but that was with OS 10.6 or so. The latest Mac operating system disabled NikonScan. Still have an old PowerPC Mac that the 9000 is hooked up to. Vuescan beats NikonScan for scanning B&W for sure. I also like the focus point option with Vuescan. I've found I like the results from NikonScan better than Vuescan when it comes to scanning chromes and color negatives. But your mileage may vary.

I have also had to clean the scanner mirror once (last summer after seven years of use). I couldn't believe how dirty it got. And you need to be VERY careful cleaning the mirror.

That's my experience with the Coolscans. Hope that helps.

Best,
-Tim

 

[SaveKodak]

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.

 

[moodlover]

Fairly certain you can no longer service this one. You are one lightbulb away from an $800 paperweight.

There is no way to find how much use it has had. After all it spent its life on a table.

Just make darkroom prints .

Fairly certain it uses LEDs. I don't care much use it had, the one I'm buying has been CLA'd and working perfectly. Thats all that matter. Why would I make darkroom prints when I'm interested in scanning for web? You got issues guy.

The Nikon 8000 does not use a lightbulb, it uses LEDs that basically last forever.

To Moodlover, please ignore Ronald. He spouts this same kind of idiocy (digital sucks, scanning sucks, inkjet sucks, make darkroom prints) in every thread where someone asks about scanning or digital work. He never contributes anything constructive, just silly snarkiness. Be careful of people who have no website, no images to see, no record of any professional accomplishments.

Haha yeah Ive dealt with his type all over the internet, usually old-schooled and simple minded. Let scan lovers scan 😎

 

[moodlover]

Absolutely disagree - the look that the OP refers to in his link from Carmencita Labs is totally possible to attain with the LS8000.

Starting with over-exposing Portra400, and then carefully getting a 48bit linear negative scan, and then converting with ColorPerfect, those colors and detail are totally within reach. It simply comes down to user-expertise - which can come from a good eye combined with experience.

The Coolscans are awesome scanners.

I'm not a fan of negative naysayers but facts are facts so if he's right about it not being doable then I cant argue with that. But I am intrigued by you saying otherwise.

Whenever I overexpose Portra 400 for the light and airy look and scan on the Epson v800 to save all highlight/shadow detail, then boost the curve in Photoshop it still looks nothing as beautiful as the Carmencita lab scans.

Can you please elaborate more or show examples if you have any? Ive heard of colorperfect before but when I try to use the trial it gave me garbage results on my Epson V800 scans. I guess I need to buy the full version and try again with the 8000?

 

[moodlover]

Love mine, works like a dream.
Excellet results too (just scan in fine mode)

Love the work I see in your flickr. You got anything medium format? Or is it all 35mm? What do you feel about handling it, where do you find annoyances/problems? How about the color, are you working hard to get classic filmic color? Let me know, thanks!

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Do it.

Phil Forrest

 

[moodlover]

In regards to color.
I find that using this workflow
Vuescan(generic film setting)-->Jpeg24bit-->repairing the minor color errors in low and high and gamma in a curve tool per channel (Aperture, lightroom)
works more than good enough for me. One eye on the picture one eye on the histogram and you are able to get the shot where it needs to be
Even drum scanners don't guarantee for perfect color that part is software.

this is (if I remember correctly) a straight scan with no curve fiddling:
Untitled by Kay K, on Flickr
White might be a bit too blue but I found it good enough as is back then.
(sorry I do not have too much skin in my pics in generell, so those bits must do for skin tone in "normal" light comparison)

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?