"Upgrade" to a Coolscan?

desf

desf

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I'm wondering if something like a Nikon Coolscan V would be a big step up from an Epson V500 scanner?

I'm considering selling my MF kit and going 35mm only for film so wouldn't need the 120 capability.

Anybody use a Coolscan scanner?
 
Just throwing it out there - considered the Plustek dedicated 35mm scanners? Offer a lot of scanner for the money, and are better supported than the Nikons (which are very difficult to get spare parts and support for these days). Not to say that the Nikons are necessarily a bad choice, just that there is alternatives.

But a dedicated 35mm scanner is definitely a worthy consideration if you need high quality 35mm capabilities only - I think the flatbeds are good for 120 but for 35mm I think they are adequate at best.
 
I was thinking about getting a film scanner as at the moment I just use the built in scanning hood on my Epson 4490 flatbed.

The Epson 4490 will scan 2 strips of 6 negatives as a single action so I only have to perform 3 scanning actions per roll of 36, so I'm not sure if most dedicated slide scanners have this ability. It would be a bit tedious if I had to do 36 separate scans per roll!
 
Thanks guys.

freecom2 - I have read some bad things about some Plustek scanners but maybe they were low end models. I take what you say about the Nikons being out of support though. Good point.

boliston - I think the Nikon do a strip at a time, so 6 frames I guess. I don't tend to scan everything I shoot, most aren't good enough to be honest! so it wouldn't be a big problem.
 
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I am waiting to hear about the new scanner from plustek. It's a 120 and 35mm scanner that sounds from the specs to be quite good. The price is still awaited though.
 
I have an older CoolscanIV. Think I bought it in 2003 and although it does not get a heavy hammering it has been fine.

I use Nikons own software which is fine and not difficult to use, I believe it will work with Win XP and 7 and certainly works with OS X Snow Lepoard 64bit.

FC2 is right in the fact that if it did go wrong you might run into problems getting it fixed, but to be honest it is more software issues that you will encounter, Nikon software is not the best I have ever used but for me better than Silverfast or View Scan(?).

The IV will only go to 2900dpi where as the V will go to 5000dpi. They will certainly get all the details out of the neg/slide your after and they have the ability to create custom profiles for the various film types.
 
I use a coolscan IV too, and also have the v500. While the flatbed is fine for mf, I definitely wouldn't use it for 35mm while the coolscan is working for me. On standard 100iso+ films I get the feeling it is getting most of the detail present so no issues on the resolution point. I use it with vuescan on win 7 with no problems - I've never even needed to install the Nikon drivers since vuescan's driver sorts things out.
 
I had a Nikon V until moving to the Minolta DiMage multi pro. It will do strips of 6 however I found the loader sometimes to be very frustrating to use as I had to try and feed a strip several times before it was accepted.

Also I was using to mainly scan slide and imo the way it fed the film in to scan and the colour profile did not produce great results, hence my switch.

I agree that their own software is simple & easy to use, and may be good for neg scanning which I did not shoot.
 
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