I recently ordered a second hand Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED from KEH. I am wondering if scans from this scanner will print nicely to 13x19"? Most of my film is 35mm Fujichrome Velvia 50 and Kodachrome 64. From what I have read, this scanner is capable of 4000dpi, and 14-bit color.
You'll have no problem. Good scanner. 4000 ppi is just over 13x19@300. The scanner won't be able to see fully into the shadows of your K64, but should make very nice overall scans.
I've been printing some 12X18 prints from my LS-4000 and have been very happy with them. Velvia can have very dense shadow details which are difficult to scan. You can try using the gain control in Nikon Scan to increase shadow detail, but it also impacts the highlights negatively. You can make multiple scans and combine through software with some success if you do not move the frame boundaries.
I've had some trouble with my LS 4000 and Kodachrome. The biggest issue is ICE. It doesn't work well with Kodachrome, so you'll probably need to dust by hand. But I've also noticed that I have more trouble balancing color with Kodakchrome 64 than any other slide film I've used. Otherwise it scans fine with plenty of detail.
I'm pretty sure this 100% crop came from the frame below. This was on E100G which is a bit more open in the shadows than Velvia.
On a Mac, the Nikon scanning software is a buggy POS (in my experience). Frequent crashes, "NEF" files that are little more than a cruel joke, and little control over the process. I would look into Vuescan for scanning software if you already have PS. You can also shell out some money for Silverfast, but I just couldn't justify paying $500 for it.
NikonScan is fine if you know how to work around its shortcomings. The biggest one is that you absolutely cannot use a custom scanner profile and are stuck using Nikon's canned version. The second is that you have to go in the preferences and set the black and white clipping values to zero otherwise it will clip both your highlights and shadows. Thirdly, you must use the multi-pass feature to get the best quality from the scanner, and lastly, you have to set the autofocus point manually, usually about halfway from the center to the edge to get good focus across the frame.
Kodachrome is always a problem especially for CCD scanners, but the biggest issue is that the base, which you'd think was black, actually renders as blue to most sensors. It's possible that that's not an issue with the Nikon as it can't see into the shadows as well as a pmt, but I certainly see the blue blacks on my drum all the time. The solution of course, is to just push the blue channel down at the bottom end.
Before soaking hours into scans which may not be their best, check out these matters if you are at all handy. The Coolscan series can, through routine use if used vertically, get dust and debris on the main reflecting mirror. This really affects the quality of your scans. I cleaned my 5000ED and saw a great improvement in quality. Warning - only do if you are comfortable, at your own risk, YMMV etc...etc...
I believe that Nikon have abandoned Mac OS support for their scanner. Look to a third party.
Practically anything these days will print nicely to 13"x19". The key is the viewing distance - the greater it is the bigger your print can be for the same image pixel count. A full-resolution scan of a slide will be about 21Mpx and is more than enough but there'll be some noise too.
The noise is not so much the film grain but the aliasing effect that occurs when the random film grain is scanned by a fixed-pattern sensor array. At 100% on the screen it can look terrible. A pass through Noise Ninja or Neat Image Pro makes a huge difference for pixel peeping but because I've never tried printing a scan I can't say how much benefit there'll be to the print.
Jared, be aware that a full scan saved as 16-bit tiff will be about 135MB. You should use that format so that you can edit the scans as required (sharpening, noise reduction, curves, etc.) before dumbing them down to 8-bit jpeg for ongoing storage. You should also consider - especially if you intend to rescan later on - how to reference your scans to the original slides. This can be a messy thing if you leave it too late. If you are making only a few selected scans then it won't matter but if you intend to scan everything then it will matter. In that case you might also want to scan at 2000 dpi initially and rescan the better images at 4000 dpi later on.
I have downloaded Nikon Scan 4 for Mac OS X. It did install on Leopard without any problems, but I still need to go get a firewire cable before I can hook the scanner to my MacBook Pro. Hopefully everything works okay. Guys, thanks for all of the tips, I hope to put them to good use.
"The second is that you have to go in the preferences and set the black and white clipping values to zero otherwise it will clip both your highlights and shadows. "
I have Nikon Scan 4 installed; how do I go about doing this?
I notice that there are several multi-pass scan options available. How many passes is optimal?
How do you manually focus? I can see the tab on the right side for manual focus, but am unsure how to use it.
The largest I've successfully printed from a 35mm Fujichrome 100 slide scanned on a Nikon Coolscan 5000, similar resolution to the 4000, is 20 x 30 inch.
Here is the first Velvia 50 slide that I scanned this morning. This was scanned with the Super Coolscan 4000 ED, 4000dpi, autofocus, digital ice normal, and 14-bit color. I must say that I am extremely impressed with the results that this scanner is capable of, they look as good as any file that I have seen from my 5D, or 1Ds Mark II. I have noticed that the slide frame is also scanned, what is the best way to crop the frame away, while retaining the most image? I cropped this one in CS2, but is there a better way?
