Dudley Simons wrote
Peter wrote:
I bought one of these, with the bulk feeder, to scan in a few thousand slides.
It paid for itself on that one job but I now want to sell it.
Obviously there is Ebay but this is a fairly pricey and specialised item. I think the lot cost about £1500.
Does anybody have any better ideas?
Hi Peter
I am afraid i can’t help you much with a value on your
scanner……………….
but I was rather hoping that as you have actually used this unit extensively you might be able to pass on some information about it! – Rather than the twaddle that some spotty faced oik who has never seen one outside of its box let alone actually used one would spout when asked!
I have a big digitisation project coming up at work and am trying to persuade the bean counters that we should invest in a decent slide scanner and bulk feed unit.
How did you get on with it? I assume that you ran it with the software supplied (I assume that Nikon actually supply scanning software!)rather than via Photoshop. I take it that the Nikon app scans and then saves files as it goes rather than trying to leave them all open within Photoshop or CS. Is the scanning ap any good?
The software is Nikon’s own and can save to BMP, TIFF, Jpeg etc. It is clunky but works. Loads of options for things like dust removal (does a double scan) and enhancement which I never used.
I scanned the lot into uncompressed TIFFs, about 80MB each, and then batch-reduced them in Photoshop into ~ 7MB Jpegs – simply because I *hope* that PS does a better job of it than any other software out there. It is certainly practically impossible to see a difference with the naked eye, at 100% zoom.
Any problems with the bulk feed mechanism. I guess that any slightly dog eared kodachromes will have to be remounted into plastic, but how does it cope with ultra thin Leitz mounts and old GAF mounts that are as thick as paving slabs? Did you run any glass mounted slides through it? Or slides with sticky labels that are lifting at the corners etc?
I didn’t have problems with any slides, 1970s onwards. Damaged ones won’t work, sure, but I didn’t have any of those. I did scan glass mounted ones too. The feeder takes about 50 at a time.
I think if you will have problems then it might be with the very thin paper ones. But for me everything worked.
Did you find any ‘gotchas’ – those less than endearing short comings in the software, scanner design or functionality that you only find out once you start using it in anger?
The software is a bit odd in the way it works but once you suss it, it just runs and runs.
The quality is stunning – as good as the film itself ever managed.
I am uploading some images here
http://www.zen74158.zen.co.uk/ed5000/ One of these, file3012.jpg, was used to compare the ED5000 against another Nikon scanner costing about £5000 and neither myself nor the shop could see any difference.
Any pointers would be much appreciated – and good luck with findig a buyer. :o)
Well, mine will be for sale; looking for about £500 🙂 In original packaging, with cables, software, etc.
I was quoted a min of 50p each for commercial scanning, and one firm wanted £10 each!
My email is above but replace o with 0 and 0 with o.
regards
Dudley
PS – remove THE.OBVIOUS to reply off group!