Nikon Coolscan IV ED Film Scanner (35 mm)

Pros: Excellent image resolution at 2900 dpi, Software is loaded with great & helpful features
Cons: none

The Nikon Coolscan IV ED is a 35mm/APS film scanner. It can scan slide and negative film, both color and black-and-white. Even though, it is an entry-level film scanner (according to Nikon) which aims at personal use, it is a high quality, high-speed...

Pros: Low noise, dust removal, sharp optics, useful software
Cons: No batch scanning of mounted slides, 35mm only (APS optional)

By way of introduction, let me just say that I am an advanced amateur photographer and graphic designer who needed to digitize photos with the best equipment in a "money IS an object" price range. My initial intention was to purchase a new flatbed...

Pros: Genuine Fractals software allows you to 'res up' your image with outstanding quality
Cons: Somewhat lower dpi rate than some of the comparable products

I just bought the Nikon Coolscan IV some weeks ago - and I must say it is a pleasure to work with!

I have been scanning a lot of old slides - 1960 and newer, which has been mounted with glass. They have all the problems you can ask for,...

Pros: Quality of results
Cons: Software

Nikon offer the Coolscan 4000, which offers a resolution of 4000dpi. This one offers 2900 dpi and almost everything else from its big brother, except batch processing. 2900 dpi is more than enough for the most discerning amateur. Dmax is 3.6; enough...

Pros: Wonderful colour repro, excellent software controls, ease of use
Cons: Noisy, some quirks

I love it. The colour repro is fantastic, ice is great. It really does a fantastic job of my slides, and really shows me just how sucky a lot of my pics have been. (A $3 hand held lightbox is very forgiving) Getting a scan done was dead easy. Some...

Pros: Great scans and fast
Cons: Strange sounds

I replaced an old Minolta scanner with this unit. This unit has much better scans, sharp and great detail in shadows and highlights. Plus the controls and adjustments are terrific. Only problem is that it sometimes makes sounds like a broken coffee...

Pros: Size of scanner, superior quality, ease of use, excellent bargain.
Cons: Tendency to lock up when using 512K.

Coolscan V has proven to be one of the best upgrades possible. Not only did it come down in price, but the features are excellent to operate and scans with greater detail. Being a complete computer novice, it took about 2 hours to get it going, probably my fault, but once it got going, using the factory defaults gave me better results that I could have ever expected. If anyone doubts the ICE function of the scanner they did something wrong. Scanned dirty slides that were 34 years old, and it WORKS.

Pros: Great quality on negs, relatively fast, easy to install
Cons: Completely fails to capture accurate color on slides

I made a big mistake buying this product. It does a fantastic job on negatives, and if you're only buying it for that, this is a great choice. Unfortunately, the product is abysmal when it comes to slides. It is wildly inaccurate when capturing color ranges on slides. After scanning, I typically need to push the red range up to the max, and pull down the blue and green ranges substantially. Technical support told me to reinstall their software. I've done that twice on three different computers. The results are precisely the same. Nikon tech support wrote me off after that. Don't buy this product if you use slides.