Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 film scanner
From London Hackspace Wiki
| Film Scanner | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Model | Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 |
| Sub-category | Darkroom |
| Status | Good working order |
| Training requirement | no |
| ACnode | no |
| Owner | Brent |
| Location | Darkroom |
The Project:Darkroom group has a high-quality film scanner which works with negative/slide film (35mm) only.
The scanner is kept in a cardboard box under the darkroom sinks. The box has all the necessary cables (power, USB), the original manuals and software CDs, and even a few test negatives & slides if you'd like to experiment before scanning your own film.
You have 2 options if you want to use the scanner:
- Buy your own copy of VueScan for your laptop, which is a good idea if you're going to do a lot of scanning and want to use your laptop with other old scanners which are no longer supported in recent versions of Windows or Mac OS X
- Use the laptop that comes in the same box with the scanner - follow the instructions stuck on the laptop to log in and use VueScan which is installed on this laptop
Some scanning tips:
- By default, the resolution setting on Vuescan is set to 'Auto', which seems to produce around 5MP images. If you set it to 4000dpi, you can get around 20MP.
- If you're scanning film strips, they need to be up to 6 frames long
- If the frames on your strip of negatives aren't evenly spaced (e.g. if you have a lomo-style camera with manual winding), you will have to experiment with the "Offset" setting in Vuescan to get the scanner to feed the film to the right position
- If you want to experiment with exposure later in Photoshop/Lightroom etc., best to set the VueScan output to TIF/DNG with 24 bits
You can read the full scanner manual for more information.
