Greetings,

I am looking at one of these scanners to use for my digital archiving / printing. Anyone have experience with either model? Right now I am leaning toward the Canon FS4000 for the following reasons:

- It is less expensive

- I have not seen a number of posts reporting "focusing problems". This seems to be a common complaint with the Nikon.

- D-Max, software, and accessories seem comparable to the Nikon.

- I do not generally scan large amounts of film at any one time, so the slower speed is acceptable to me.

If anyone has an opinion or experience they would like to share, please feel free. Thanks in advance.

-- Rich Green (kamurah@hotmail.com), March 16, 2002

Answers

Before you leap, consider the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II -- higher dpi, better features, better software, firewire, similar price...

-- Patrick (pg@patrickgarner.com), March 16, 2002.

I have never owned or used any of the Nikon scanners but I do have the Canoscan FS4000US and it seems to be a great buy for the money. I used to own a Polaroid 35+ and currently own the 45. One thing I really like with the Canon is it has a SCSI connector in addition to the USB. SCSI is faster, and I already have the adaptor in my PC for the Polaroid.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), March 16, 2002.

Rich, I use the Nikon 4000 and I am very happy with the results (especially in color). never had any problems with the focus, and I use it quite heavily. I must say that when I first got it, after owning the polaroid 4000, which I hated, I compared few scans to a drum scans that I have done before, and the comparison is very flattering to the Nikon. You get grate results on first scan, which saves lots of time (comparing to the polaroid). however, I do not have experience with the cannon. try to find a store that carries both, and scan 2-3 of your own negatives, and print them. you might need no advice after that. If your default is digital darkroom, make no comparison on that part of the chain.

-- rami (rg272@columbia.edu), March 16, 2002.

I meant: "...no compromises..."

-- rami (rg272@columbia.edu), March 16, 2002.

The Nikon LS-4000 kicks ass. 60mb true-optical and very sharp scans at 8 bits... I have seen worse drum scans. I get better scans off it than off the $10,000 Imacon I was using at my last job.

-- dave yoder (lists@daveyoder.com), March 16, 2002.

Thanks everyone for the responses.....

Oh, decisions decisions.....!

-- Rich Green (kamurah@hotmail.com), March 16, 2002.

Patrick, The Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II you mention is a 2820 dpi film scanner. How do you figure this is a "higher dpi" scanner than the Canon or Nikon... both of which are 4000 dpi scanners?

Lawrence

-- lawrence beck (stork@lawrencebeck.com), March 16, 2002.

Don't overlook the new Polaroid SprintScan 4000 Plus. Or if you can still find it, the discontinued SprintScan 4000. The SprintScans have always rated high, and have fixed focus. I bought a SprintScan 4000 last fall for $750, with a $200 rebate, making it $550 for a 4000 dpi scanner. The SprintScan also comes with SilverFast software which is a $500 film software scanning application, and far and away, although complex, easily the best film scanning software on the market. The scanning software with both the Canon and Nikon is so-so at best, and the reason everyone ends up buying Vuescan.

Leitz M6, Elmar-M 50mm 1:2.8, B+W KR1.5 MRC, Fuji Sensia II 200, Polaroid SprintScan 4000

-- Glenn Travis (leicaddict@hotmail.com), March 16, 2002.

One of the advantages of the Nikon LS-4000 (not sure about the Canon) is the D-Max rating - 4.2, as I recall. This is significantly higher than previous generations, and a key part of squeezing more Leica detail out of your chromes and negs.

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), March 16, 2002.

Patrick, I've also heard many good things about the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite. I'm told it's one of the easiest scanners to use. Do you know how it differs from the newer Elite II model?

-- Ken Prager (pragerproperties@worldnet.att.net), March 16, 2002.

The FS4000US is a fine scanner, easy to use, 4000dpi (unlike the Minolta Scan Elite II, which doesn't come close). The software it comes with gets you a great scan every time IMHO, but you can also do multi pass and long exposure scans (for those tricky negs) by using Vuescan software. It has a nice thumbnail scanning facility so its easy to do your own contact sheets, and its 'cheap' at £460. The only slight downside is that it doesn't have 'Firewire' (USB or SCSI), but as I think pretty well all new scanners still scan slower than the data transfer rate in newer PC's, it hardly matters.

-- Steve Barnett (barnet@globalnet.co.uk), March 16, 2002.

Hello Jay and Steve. I'm considering my first scanner,indeed an FS4000.Have you tried and had any success with Black and White or Kodachromes? I've heard that Nikon is optimised for E6 and may not scan Kodachromes successfully probably 'cause most shoot E6 today.

-- Sheridan Zantis (albada60@hotmail.com), March 16, 2002.

Sheriden wrote "Have you tried and had any success with Black and White or Kodachromes? I've heard that Nikon is optimised for E6 and may not scan Kodachromes successfully probably 'cause most shoot E6 today"

I have not tried Kodachrome but C41 and black and white scan OK on the FS4000, but only OK, not to the high level of slide film. I think all scanners have some problems with silver content in film, and the FS4000 is just like the Nikon. Having said that, we are not talkng about 'bad' scans, they are still better at neg/chromes than the previous generation was for slide.

-- Steve Barnett (barnet@globalnet.co.uk), March 17, 2002.

The Nikon Coolscan does not really like the Kodachrom according to my experince. It is really optimised to E6 and colour negs are also not as good as E6. I never experience focusing problems and I have scanned some 10.000 slides on the slowest mode (16x scanning). The slide holder that automatically feeds up to 50 slides is a great thing. It works during the night while one is sleeping.

I would like to know if anybody has an experince with Nikon Coolscan 8ooo? Would it give the same quality of 35mm slides as the 4000. If yes, one could space framing and with that a lot of space.

Rudolf

-- Rudolf KLEIN (ruklein@attglobal.net), March 18, 2002.