Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 film scanner

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Revision as of 19:31, 13 September 2015 by Futureshape (talk | contribs)
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Film Scanner
NikonCoolscan.jpeg
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.