Nikon CoolScan V ED Film Scanner

Nikon's own LED illumination technology ensures accurate color with no warm-up time or risk of heat damage. Scan times are as fast as 38 seconds including image transfer to display, and as fast as 14 seconds in preview mode. Automatic color/contrast compensation helps you achieve accurate results, while the ICE4 advanced digital image correction suite of technologies helps to restore old slides to their original glory. Additionally, the included Nikon Scan 4 software provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use interface for managing your scans.

The CoolScan V ED has a convenient plug-and-play USB interface, while one-touch scan and preview buttons will have you scanning film in no time. PC and Mac compatible, the CoolScan V ED also comes backed with a one year limited warranty.

What's in the Box
Scanner, CD-ROM, strip film adapter SA-21, slide feeder MA-21, instructions

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.


Scanner does not disappoint   April 28, 2004
PJ (GTA, Canada)
176 out of 185 found this review helpful

Decade's collection of fading film this COOLSCAN can handle. You can obtain detailed images that are truly vivid, sharp, and better than the original then technology. Just remember to use DEE correctly. Read below for further details on DEE.

Batch scanning can be done with one click on the Scan button in Nikon Scan 4's firmware. The maintenance free red, green, blue, and infrared LED light source is gentle to film. The 4000 ppi optical resolution is an ideal start for outputting A3+ prints on the new crop of large format bubblejet and inkjet printers.

Reading the Nikon Scan Reference Manual in the Nikon Scan Reference Manual/Easy Scanning Guide CD would be your best learning tool to get the most out of your scanner. For the most accurate results, the first thing to do before scanning is to set your preferences by clicking on the Prefs button in the Control Area of the Scan Window.

When enabled, the Digital ICE quad Advanced software works well with most film. The Manual will explain that ICE, ROC, GEM, and DEE will not operate with the optional FH-G1 Medical Holder.

ICE will not work on monochrome film unless the film has been developed in colour. ICE will not work properly on Kodachrome, but will work on other brands of slides. Noise may appear if ICE is used on overexposed or very vivid images. ICE will reduce the overall sharpness of the image. ICE is not not designed nor does ICE advertise itself to remove all dust and scratches from film. ICE will reduce most of the dust and scatches, however. You will have to use a third party application like Adobe Photoshop to remove the remaining dust and scratches. ICE alone will double the scanning time of 38 seconds.

ROC may add colour to monochrome or grayscale images. ROC is not necessary for properly exposed colour images. ROC alone will almost double the scanning time.

GEM will remove most grain and soften the image. Best to just use the default setting of 3 for a balanced smooth-grained result and to elimate any annoying hot pixels provided you haven't oversharpened or overused DEE. GEM alone will almost triple the scanning time.

DEE works best when the image is cropped to exclude other unexposed areas of the film. Don't get me wrong, DEE does work beautifully! If Unsharp Mask (UM) is used incorrectly prior to processing the image, DEE will mainly show hot pixels in mid-tones and shadow areas effectively ruining the print. To avoid hot pixels in most photographs, either sparingly set the UM in Nikon Scan to less than 25% Intensity/25% Halo Width/0 Threshold Level or set the UM in Photoshop to about 125% Amount/1.5 Radius/1 to 3 Threshold. Depending on the image, using the default setting of 50 on DEE and adjusting the highlight lever from 190 to 255 will produce smooth and pleasing tones. Turning DEE off and using Photoshop CS's Shadow/Highlight tool sparingly on the processed image in LAB Lightness provides similar manual control of shadows and highlights. Also, remember to set the resolution output to your printer by clicking on the Custom button and select your printer in the Crop Menu. Also it's usually better to crop the image to the desired output dimensions to ensure 100% coverage (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) on your bordered prints. DEE alone will almost quadruple the scanning time.

When enabled, Scan Image Enhancer (SIE) will automatically adjust hue. It does not work with darker images. In fact, the scan produces darker images. You are better off using DEE to pull out hidden detail in the shaded areas.

ICE, ROC, GEM, DEE, and SIE together will almost quintuple the scanning time. While waiting for the breathtaking results, you can spend the next few minutes to contemplate on the next advanced Nikon or Canon DSLR to buy to release you from ever having to scan 35mm film.

UM can be created to all colours, or individually to red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, or yellow colours in the image. Deselect blue if you do not want to emphasize the grain in an image with blue sky. Remember to use UM at the end before scanning the negative to output the final image.

The SA-21 strip-film adaptor only works for 2 - 6 frames. To save money by not having to buy the optional 1 - 6 frame FH-3 film holder, place a 1 frame negative into an empty cardboard slide holder and insert into the MA-21 slide holder. Remember to select Neg (color), and Calibrated RGB in the Control Area before scanning.

Along with a short USB 2.0 cable, included in the package is a Nikon View 6 CD, which is an application, used to organize saved pictures in TIFF and JPEG file formats only. According to the Manual, large files created in Nikon Scan may not show on Nikon View slide shows.

Before clicking on the Scan button, press Ctrl (MS Windows) and the Autofocus button. Then left click on a focal point in the preview image to ensure accurate focusing at that point. You can always change the focus point using the same method, or by using the Focus Tool in the Layout Tools palette. The palette can also be customized to suit.

If you have to use the Analog Gain palette to correct or adjust the colour values for each of the elements in the scanner's light source, your LED's may require repair. The probability of repair to the LED's is not specifically discussed in the Manual.

If desktop or cubbyhole space is an issue, the scanner can be placed with either the top or side vents facing up. Remember to provide the minimum clearances to the scanner for ventilation. The dual wrap around band of rubber feet will ensure a cushioned slip resistant footing.

After processing the image and for most situations for the various film brands, Photoshop gives you better fine-tuning control of the scanned image because of their larger selection of imaging enhancing Tools.

Compared to filmstrip scanners that come with flatbed scanners, COOLSCAN has more options and is by far the better equipment to use to obtain satisfying scans, especially at 14-bit depth. Practice and patience will make perfect photographs.


The best affordable film scanner   May 2, 2005
JLP (New York, NY United States)
57 out of 57 found this review helpful

I have a ton of negatives both black and white and color and simply scanning the prints wasn't always satisfactory. So I shopped around and found this particular scanner to be the best for under $1000. You can only scan 35 mm slides or negatives not medium format. The scanner has functions which cleans up dust and scratches, restores color, reduces grain among a number of functions but turning these functions on will prolong the amount of time it takes to scan the negative. However, the wait usually the longest being 5 minutes is highly satisfactory. The ED glass in the scanner and Nikon engineering has a lot to do about this. You have your choice of destination file types but generally given the very high resoluton you can have files up to 60 MB or more which I reduce to around 1-2 MB. The product was ready to use within minutes after installing the software and taking it out of the box. It's competitor Minolta Dimage IV was plagued by setup problems and also lacked the digital clean up of negatives. If you have a box of 35 mm slides or negatives and want to archive them digitally or restore then I highly recommend this product.


Fantastic scanner!   October 17, 2005
T. Milligan (California)
53 out of 53 found this review helpful

Four words: This scanner is great!

What makes it great is the combination of Digital ICE and Digital ROC.

1. I've used a film/slide scanner without digital ICE and for each slide I scanned, I would need to spend 1/2 to 1 hour manually removing dust spots. The Digital ICE built-in to the scanner driver is fantastic. I never see dust spots anymore and the scan is as sharp as ever.

2. Digital ROC (Restoration of Color) is fantastic. I have scanned ancient slides from the early 60's through the mid-80's and the Digital ROC compensates for the fading color in an amazing, adaptive way. I don't know how it does it, but it works!

Finally, when I first bought this scanner, I wondered if the fact that there isn't a slide carrier that allowed batch scanning of slides would cause a problem. It turns out that the opposite is true. I have found that it takes more time to position a slide in a carrier and then feed the carrier into a scanner (the way I used to do it) than to simply slip a single slide into the slide reciever that comes standard with this scanner. Even factoring in scanning multiple slides, I prefer this scanner to one that uses a multiple slide carrier.

I have noted some quirks with the software: All occur when batch-scanning color negatives (scanning multiple images on the same filmstrip). However, if I manually "preview" each frame and then setup the crop and scan parameters for each frame the scanner software works great and I can walk away while the scanner does its thing on several images, unattended.

This scanner is fantatic. I highly recommend it.