Nikon LS-1000; Any good?

[Creagerj]

I was searching eBay for film scanners and I happened to come across a couple of Nikon LS-1000 film scanners. I did a little research and it seems promising for the price. Does anyone here have any experience with this scanner? In particular, does anyone have any experience running an LS-1000 on an Intel Mac?

I'd really like to get a dedicated film scanner and the LS-1000 must be better than my Canon 4400F flatbed scanner.

Any information, thoughts and opinions would be appreciated.

 

[Creagerj]

Dang, no luck eh?

 

[historicist]

No idea if it's any good or not, but it needs a SCSI connection and intel macs don't support SCSI. You can get adaptors to USB but these are likely to be at best flaky.

 

[Lilserenity]

The LS1000 will almost certainly give you better quality than any flatbed, despite the fact it's quite old.

I think it lacks digital ICE.

I still use a LS2000 on my Windows 7 PC with no problems, even the original SCSI PCI card that came with it 10+ years ago. I use VueScan to run it. Mechnically I have had to work on it a few times but it's quite a serviceable bit of kit.

No idea about the SCSI/USB situation on a Mac. I would be inclined to pick up a cheap G3 or G4 tower, put a SCSI card in that, run Mac OS 9 on it and use it as a dedicated scanning machine, it'll probably cost you as much as a USB->SCSI interface and be a darn sight more reliable even given System 9's flakiness compared to modern day OS X.

Depends how much room you have.

 

[Creagerj]

The LS1000 will almost certainly give you better quality than any flatbed, despite the fact it's quite old.

I think it lacks digital ICE.

I still use a LS2000 on my Windows 7 PC with no problems, even the original SCSI PCI card that came with it 10+ years ago. I use VueScan to run it. Mechnically I have had to work on it a few times but it's quite a serviceable bit of kit.

No idea about the SCSI/USB situation on a Mac. I would be inclined to pick up a cheap G3 or G4 tower, put a SCSI card in that, run Mac OS 9 on it and use it as a dedicated scanning machine, it'll probably cost you as much as a USB->SCSI interface and be a darn sight more reliable even given System 9's flakiness compared to modern day OS X.

Depends how much room you have.

I have the room to do something like that. Heck I've got a desk that I have never used because I just sit on the couch with my macbook most of the time. I'd imagine that a G3 or G4 would run pretty well if it only had vuescan installed and nothing else.

I'd really like to have something with ICE so that I can scan my many thousands of negatives, but my limit is about $300. I was hoping maybe I could get something that worked pretty well without ice and only bother to edit the photos I intend to display.

I found some LS-2000's that I could also afford. Maybe I'll go for one of those unless someone has a better suggestion.

 

[Lilserenity]

The LS2000 is a good scanner, 12bit depth per channel (ok, not 14-16bits) and has digital ice. The 2700dpi resolution is perfectly decent for quite large prints with high quality, 16x12 is perfectly do-able from this scanner and will look good.

The caveat is making sure you have one in good order, the older Coolscan's may need some attention on the lubrication side so make sure you buy one that is working as otherwise you have to factor in an engineer's time to get everything lubricated otherwise you may suffer the dreaded blinking green light on power on; namely that the scanner rails are gummed up, need cleaning and some teflon lubricant.

About a year ago I'd have said you might just get an LS40 for $300, at the moment, these things go for silly money.

A G3 or G4 with OS 9 on it will be able to link to your OS X machine (you will need a late version, 9.2.1/9.2.2 or similar to talk over TCP/IP not just AppleTalk) will run the original Nikon software too.

My day job is technical, I have a technical mind, but when it comes to photography I just don't care about the equipment so it just has to work, so that's why I would make sure the LS2000 you buy if you buy it, is fully working because there's nothing more annoying in photography for me than something that doesn't work reliably 🙂

Vicky

 

[SimonSawSunlight]

I actually have one (with an old pumped-up G3 to go with it), but I lent it to a friend of mine last year. I think she still uses it, it's good enough for most negatives.

 

[Creagerj]

The LS2000 is a good scanner, 12bit depth per channel (ok, not 14-16bits) and has digital ice. The 2700dpi resolution is perfectly decent for quite large prints with high quality, 16x12 is perfectly do-able from this scanner and will look good.

The caveat is making sure you have one in good order, the older Coolscan's may need some attention on the lubrication side so make sure you buy one that is working as otherwise you have to factor in an engineer's time to get everything lubricated otherwise you may suffer the dreaded blinking green light on power on; namely that the scanner rails are gummed up, need cleaning and some teflon lubricant.

About a year ago I'd have said you might just get an LS40 for $300, at the moment, these things go for silly money.

A G3 or G4 with OS 9 on it will be able to link to your OS X machine (you will need a late version, 9.2.1/9.2.2 or similar to talk over TCP/IP not just AppleTalk) will run the original Nikon software too.

My day job is technical, I have a technical mind, but when it comes to photography I just don't care about the equipment so it just has to work, so that's why I would make sure the LS2000 you buy if you buy it, is fully working because there's nothing more annoying in photography for me than something that doesn't work reliably 🙂

Vicky

I didn't realize that the LS-2000 has ICE. That will probably be the scanner I go with then. I hear you on not wanting to fiddle with something to get it to work, so hopefully I can track down a decent one. Can you recommend a good place to acquire one.