Nikon Super CoolScan 9000 ED Film Scanner
See it at Amazon.com for $2,199.95Average Customer Rating
(5.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First (5 out of 5)Pretty Good.
If I could update my rating it would be 4 stars (instead of 5). 1/9/06
Original review: This was incredibly easy to set up and overall the scans are sharp and the color is nice. The Digital Ice 4 included with this scanner does a tremendous job with removing scratches, dust speckles, etc. It's too bad Digital Ice isn't offered with more scanners--it's really a key selling point for this brand. One problem I am having is with a horizontal shadow at the top of each frame. This seems consistent no matter which negative I am scanning. I am currently investigating and trying to contact Nikon about this. If this very faint shadow were not there---this would have been a perfect scanner. I will update when this issue is resolved one way or another. 5/25/05
Update 1/9/06: the shadowing effect described above seems to happen primarily with high contrast images shot on negative film. Most images shot on transparency do not have the shadow problem
Update: 1/9/06: I learned through usage and contacting Nikin support that you must turn Digital ICE off when scanning black and white negatives (meaning you'll have to manually clean up those images yourself). Too bad, because the ICE does a tremendous job in removing dust speckles.
Update 1/9/06: my scanner had a problem where it wouldn't eject the 35mm tray, it had become stuck in the unit. I had to take it back to a Nikon support office about 45 min from where I live. They seem to have fixed the problem as it has been working fine since then (that was about 2 months ago). Fortunately, this happened while the unit was still within warranty. Nikon support did not give me any hassles when I took the scanner in for repair.
For the most part this works very well. I have had some problems (the shadowing, the tray becoming stuck) which I don't expect for an (approx) 2K piece of equipment. In lieu of something better from another manufacturer, this seems like the best piece of equipment if you need to scan in film negatives or transparancies to get high quality scans.
(5 out of 5)scanning 120 film slides
I purchased the Nikon 9000ED scanner mostly because I could not find anything else that would scann my 2.75 x 2.75 slides. There may be other products out there but the recommendations I got was to go with the Nikon. Basically I inherited a case of these slides which feature my family from roughly 1960 to 1979. Most of the slides are badly faded, underexposed or otherwise not usable. So I figured in order to save the memories I need to spend the money to do it right.
I am not disappointed. Initially I kept getting a mysterious error in the post-processing cycle. After many emails back in forth with 3rd level support staff at Nikon (nice to be able to get support) we figured out that I was setting something called digital GEM on when that wasn't necessary. The process works on badly grained film which I didn't have. Once I changed the default scan settings by not asking for GEM corrections, all has gone beautiful for me.
The red-brown slides magically come back to me with their original colors via the digital ROC process. I'm not too technical on all the things that happen within the hardware-software process but the results an amateur like me can get are simply awsome. I scan the slides at a full 4000 bpi and store the results as huge TIFF files. I figure that disk space is cheap but at least I have the original in a best possible digitized format. The slides will continue to deteriorate but not the digiatl data.
Fred Rump
(5 out of 5)Amazing scans of seriously degraded film
I bought one of these units primarily to digitally archive hundreds of old photos shot and mounted as 6x6 and 35mm slides, as well as lots of B&W 35mm negatives. The 6x6 color slides are as much as 50 years old, with some mounted in glass -- which was a bad idea, as those slides have had exceptionally severe color shifts and many have been partially eaten by fungus trapped behind the glass. The scanner's digital ICE and ROC were downright magical (GEM less so, and DEE was sometimes great but touchy to adjust for some slides). With just a few exceptions, even gross over and under exposed slides still yielded usable images. Infected slides that I could barely see through came out perfect except for little pink splotches where the fungus was particularly nasty. The only other defect observed was that interference rings were highly visible on 3 out of about 50 glass-mounted slides... which I suspect was due to the slides having been overheated years ago when they were viewed by projection. Some non-glass mounted slides had significant heat warp damage, but I didn't see serious problems in their scans. BTW, scanning 6x6 slides requires an optional adapter... it's a pitty that the adapter doesn't hold at least three 6x6 slides at once and it does take a little time to put a new slide in, but that time was hidden by the processing time using my 1.6GHz Turion laptop.
The 35mm slides are better exposed, newer, and in better condition; the worst of them was handled very well by this scanner. I haven't yet tried scanning the B&W negatives.
(5 out of 5)Amazon came through!
I ordered my Nikon Coolscan 9000 back on June 18th. It arrived on July 13th just as the updated Amazon shipping estimate email promised. I admit I was a little skeptical when I placed the order that I would ever see it, especialy at the price Amazon had at the time - $1804.99 I checked with my contacts at B&H in New York (I order alot from them and have come to know a few of the salespeople) - they said "no way" could the price be for a legitimate USA model. In addition to being lower than B&H's cost, Amazon was giving a shipping date way ahead of when anybody else could promise. It turned out that Amazon was about a week late on their "original" shipping date, but they kept me updated and it came exactly when they said it would.
As for the scanner, it seems to me to be just about perfect. The scans are beyond belief. Nikon Scan software is a little confusing...I might give Vuescan a try. The scanner does make a bit of noise from the stepper motor during the scan process, but this appears normal. Overall, I could not be happier with my purchase. Amazon has never given me a bad experience so far and with the new Amazon credit card, I have intrest free financing for 10 months to pay for this beauty. I'm completely satisfied with my Amazon transaction!
(5 out of 5)Fantastic
The quality of this scanner is amazing. The detail that it picks up from slides and negatives is incredible. The only drawbacks are that you have to scan bw negatives without Digital Ice (so you'll have a lot of manual cleanup to do) and the fact that there are no trays to scan 110 and 126 negative film (you could conceivably rig the existing trays to accomplish this). Still, it definitely gives you professional results. Sometimes the tray does go off track, but it's sporadic and so far nothing that can't be fixed with a reboot. A true value for your money - paying to have your negs and slides scanned would cost much more than buying this unit.