bw scanner

[marin149]

Hello all.

First post.

I am looking for a scanner to do my bw 35mm negs. I have heard that the Nikon Coolscan does not like bw/silver film.
The DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 II looks good, but its not in production any more...
Is there any alternative or do I need to source a used DiMAGE?

What do people out there use?

regards

marin

 

[rich815]

My Nikon LS-4000 Coolscan loves my silver-based B&W negs...

 

[kaiyen]

What you've heard about the Nikon scanners is not true. All scanners have fairly collimated, intense light. This does accentuate dust and these scanners don't like dense/high contrast negatives. However, all scanners are like that. The 5400 original was better, but only by a little bit, to be honest.

allan

 

[marin149]

Hello again

After I done some research today, it seem to be this ICE feature that does not perform so well with bw negs... is that correct?

Learning as I go along.

/marin

 

[markinlondon]

Hello again

After I done some research today, it seem to be this ICE feature that does not perform so well with bw negs... is that correct?

Learning as I go along.

/marin

Correct. ICE etc. don't work on silver grains, only films based on dye clouds, C41 b&w would be OK e.g. Ilford XP2 super or Kodak BW400CN.

 

[pesphoto]

coolscan works great for me. If you get the 5000 model with adapter you can scan entire rolls

 

[phototone]

All currently available "film" scanners do very well with b/w film. If.....you learn to scan. Scanning is not an automatic process to get top quality results. With traditional black and white film, dust on the negative will show up in the scan. You need to "spot" this out in photoshop using the "clone" tool. There is no way around this. There has never been a scanner made that can automatically eliminate dust from silver based b/w film. You should consider a scanner with 4000dpi resolution or higher. Anything less, and you will not be resolving detail down to the grain level of the film.