{"id":918,"date":"2009-04-13T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2009-04-13T08:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/04\/a-guide-to-creating-digital-scans-from-35mm-film-with-a-nikon-coolscan-4000-ed.htm"},"modified":"2009-04-13T08:00:34","modified_gmt":"2009-04-13T08:00:34","slug":"a-guide-to-creating-digital-scans-from-35mm-film-with-a-nikon-coolscan-4000-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/04\/a-guide-to-creating-digital-scans-from-35mm-film-with-a-nikon-coolscan-4000-ed.htm","title":{"rendered":"A guide to creating digital scans from 35mm film with a Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED"},"content":{"rendered":"

I started writing this post in March 2006, so why did it take more than three years to complete? Well, it was partly a lack of time – scanning is a time-consuming process and it’s only in the last few weeks that I think I’ve finally cracked the image-scanning process. In the meantime I’ve considered outsourcing the job of scanning my old negatives and slides but just can’t bring myself to use an overseas service for something so precious (anyhow, the service I’ve heard good things about – Scan Caf\u00c3\u00a9<\/a> – is not available in the UK). Anyway, here goes, my long-overdue guide to creating digital scans from 35mm film.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"NikonA few years ago, I was advised that, rather than switch to digital photography, I should switch to transparency film and buy a decent scanner. I did exactly that, but it took me some time to save up for the scanner, by which time I had a mountain of film to scan. A year or so later, 6 megapixel digital SLRs had become affordable and I switched to digital capture<\/a>, keeping my film body as a backup although it’s hardly seen the light of day because the digital format provides me with so much freedom.<\/p>\n

I’d still like to scan those slides (especially as many of them are from my honeymoon) but it’s a time-consuming process and, up until now, the odd frame that I have scanned has left me unimpressed with the quality. Even though 4000PPI is a lot to ask of any device, I couldn’t believe that a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED<\/a> (which cost me just short of \u00c2\u00a31000 at the time of purchase) would offer poor quality scans and after contacting the Nikon European Customer Support<\/a> desk I found that it the scanner is actually excellent – it’s just that the user (i.e. me) didn’t really know what he was doing!<\/p>\n

After Nikon had set me in the right direction, I googled a bit, read the NikonScan user manual<\/a>, and learned lots. This post is a quick summary of how to get the best from a (Nikon) film scanner with Nikon’s NikonScan 4 software. Most of this information is lifted from the user manual but a short-ish article on the web should be quicker to read than a 150 page PDF.<\/p>\n

In common with many other film scanners, the 4000 ED offers Digital ICE3<\/sup> technology. Actually, this is three technologies from Applied Science Fiction<\/a> that will increase scanning times significantly; however they will also affect the quality of the resulting images:<\/p>\n