Back in 2009 I was fortunate to get one of the last Nikon Coolscan 9000 ED's when they were discontinued. It's a fantastic scanner with one Achilles Heel, there is a small, front silvered mirror in the scanner path that attracts dust and once it builds up, the image quality goes to hell, and the scanner needs to be taken apart, the mirror needs to be un-glued, very carefully cleaned (again, it's front silvered) and then carefully glued back into place, then the scanner re-assembled. I've done it once, and it's a real pain, with a high chance of damaging that mirror, making the scanner a boat anchor. It needs to be done again, and I'm really not fired up to tackle it right now. So I've been looking for an alternative as I still like to shoot 35mm film.
And here it is. It's a Nikon Zfc - Nikon FTZ - Nikon Micro-Nikkor 55mm f2.8 - Nikon K3 - Nikon K1 - Nikon PK-12 - Nikon K2 - Nikon K4 - Nikon K5 - Nikon ES-2. This allows the Zfc to capture the full 35mm film frame on its 20.9MP DX-Format sensor. The Nikon K1-K5 comes as a set and they can still be found used, and you can still find the Nikon PK-12 on the used market.
And I finally figured out how to flip negative to positive in RAW Power (I'm on a Mac).
It doesn't scan quite as nice as the Coolscan 9000 does when the mirror is spotlessly clean, but it's good enough for what I need to do right now.
For those of us who still like shooting film.
Best,
-Tim
