Coolscan 5000ED vs Epson 4990

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I am looking to upgrade and improve my visual output and am considering changing scanners as one of the options.

Does anyone have an opinion as to whether the difference between the coolscan 5000 (which I am thinking of buying) and Epson 4990 (which I currently use) is worth the investment quality wise?

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[lewis44]

A Dedicated 35mm Scanner is always an improvement, and the 5000 is one of the two best. The other one(Minolta 5400) they don't make anymore. I've used both and shooting only slides I like the Nikon the best as I put the roll in the slide feeder and scan all of them at a low DPI, then scan the good ones, or One, whichever the case may be. Usually one. You also don't have to fool with holders as even with film, you feed it in and it takes care of the rest. At times I just have the slide film processed and not mounted and feed it in 6 at a time, If there is a keeper I mount it in a Gepe Glass Mount, but remove the lower glass so it will scan properly and ice is effective.
Hope that helps and not confuse. I some times ramble.
Randy

 

[smiler]

Thanks Randy

I shoot mostly B&W neg (Tri-X, FP4 HP5) but am dipping my toes into panoramic with a Horizon S3 shooting colour slides/negs. I want to sell the pano's commercially and was wondering if the 5000 would improve the quality.

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[john_nyc]

I have both and for scanning 35mm, the 5000 is king.

The ICE feature is a real time saver and runs MUCH faster than the one that runs off of the 4990.

I only use the 4990 for the odd occasion that I shoot MF on my pinhole or Holga, or when I just need to do document scanning. I've never actually tried to use it for 35mm scanning.

If you get to the point where you're considering going with the CoolScan V to save some money, don't do it. The amount of time that you'll save with the faster 5000 makes it well worth the money, even if you're just scanning 1 or 2 rolls.

I rented a 9000 to scan a bunch of negatives from my wedding (before I had the 5000 and when I was in my DSLR phase), and it was great. Much less grain accentuation. But, it's big, more expensive, and the film carriers are kind of a pain in the ass compared the the motorized feed on the V/5000.

The only drag with the 5000 is that when you feed a strip in, the leading edge of the first frame doesn't lay flat so you lose some image quality on that part. It's never ruined any photos for me, though. The solution for that is to use the no longer produced FH-3 strip carrier that you then feed into the supplied single slide adapter. They'll come up on the auction site every once in a while and usually go for around $100 (way over what they sold for originally). I never bothered with one myself.

Randy, you thought you were a rambler???

 

[aad]

You will see a big improvement in your slide scans. Less so on the negatives.