257
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #109,650 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
First personal transparency scanner
Having worked with professional drum scanners (Hell Graphic Systems), I know a little about scanning. This Nikon Coolscan V ED is the first personal scanner I have worked with and am pleasantly surprised. I have inhereted the old familly slide collection and several of the slides are grossly underexposed, or darkened with age. The V ED has the sensitivity to pull out more image than I had hoped for, with very little noise. The provided software is no replacement for Photoshop, but can go a long ways to giving acceptable results without other image retouching software. I am eager to see SilverFast for the V ED however!
The only problems I've encountered is unexpected termination of the program, and mis-judging frame boundaries of negative strips. Negative scanning is a snap, an unexpected pleasure as thinking color in reverse is painful (on German drum scanners).
For the price, this is a very highly capable scanner worthy of your consideration. If your scan rate needs are high, consider the faster version, and a FAST G5 Macintosh. A 1.25 GHz G4 gets a workout on the tougher scans.
