Can I Use Nikon Coolscan LS2000 With G5 iMac?

[jyl]

A friend is going to give me his Nikon Coolscan LS2000 scanner. I have a G5 iMac running Tiger, with 2GB RAM. I don't know anything about this scanner except that it uses a SCSI interface and my friend disliked the Nikon software.

Will I be able to use this scanner with my Mac? I'm assuming I'll want to bypass the Nikon software and buy Vuescan or Silverfast. Which one should I get? I understand there are SCSI-to-USB cable adapters, and I've even found a SCSI-to-Firewire adaptor. Does anyone have experience running a SCSI scanner through one of those adaptors?

Finally, will this scanner do a better job on B&W and color negatives than my current Epson RX620 all-in-one printer/copier/scanner? The scanner part is a flatbed, but the lid has a light source and a negative holder. I've tried scanning a strip of B&W negative, and the results were okay for contact sheet purposes and for printing 4x6 snaps, but not really that good.

My intended use for the scanner will be for making smallish B&W prints (like 5x7) and for making color prints to 8x10, all from negatives.

 

[Nick R.]

I'm using a mac and last night for the first time I tried using my scanner with firewire instead of USB. It was much faster. So if a SCSI-to-Firewire adapter is available, go that route. I also have both Vuescan and Silverfast. They both work well on the mac. I prefer vuescan but maybe only because I'm more accustomed to it. The software that came with my Epson and Minolta scanners was pretty poor, so I'm not surprised that your friend doesn't like his Nikon software. It seems that software should be left to the software writers not the hardware makers.

 

[hth]

I had a LS30 connected to a Linux box. It worked well and I used Vuescan because that was what was available on Linux. I was happy with that setup and made some nice prints using it (by moving the scanned files to a G5 mac).

I could not use the LS30 on my G5 as I had no SCSI and did not dare to go into using converters. I tried to get a SCSI card for the G5, but the Apple SCSI card was dropped by the time the first G5 appeared.

Besides, Nikon did not upgrade their software to work with MacOS/X, so I replaced it with a Minolta scanner, though I have no idea if that was a good or bad decision, time will tell.

I am interested in knowing how a SCSI converter on a G5 works with a Nikon scanner, my Minolta scanner is much slower, so for bulk scanning in lower resolution I wish I had that Nikon scanner...
If you try a SCSI converter, please let tell how it turns out.