Nikon coolscan 4000 ed manual

He even helped me to replace the damaged front panel only charged me half price. I highly recommend him! I picked up one of these Coolscans as well, a few years ago now, and it has the dusty mirror issue.

I finally got round to opening the scanner up, which was a lot simpler than I thought it would be I used to service Sony Professional cassette Walkmans, and they're far fiddlier to work on. Having taken the mirror out, I'd have to say it's got enough dust on it that it looks furry I'm a n00b really when it comes to cleaning this kind of thing, so does anyone have any recommendations for how to clean the mirror?

I tried gently blowing some of the dust off with canned air, and very little of it moved. Nikon LS and LS scanners are, in my opinion, very well built and are extremely reliable. Still some maintenance is desirable to make sure the scan image quality remains high.

In particular, there is one optical component, a mirror, that is more likely than other components to accumulate some dust. I think it is worthy checking the mirror cleanliness if your scanner was stored in a dusty environment, or used extensively over 10, scans , or if you purchased your scanner used and the seller did not clean the mirror prior to sale.

The procedure is relatively straightforward and is outline below. I purchased mine from keh back in 07 and keep it covered with a grocery bag when not in use and haven't had to clean mine. The vents on the side let in a lot of dust. We dig into the detail The Nikon Z mm F2. With a versatile focal length range and a fast aperture for low light photography and blurry backgrounds, this lens promises sharp imagery and smooth bokeh with minimal aberrations.

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Submit a News Tip! Reading mode: Light Dark. Login Register. Best cameras and lenses. All forums Pro Digital Talk Change forum. Started Jan 28, Discussions. Jan 28, I need The name of an experienced and reliable tech to service this scanner and, DIY instructions specifically for this model.

Thanks in advance for your time. Reply to thread Reply with quote Complain. Reply Reply with quote Reply to thread Complain. Dave - The Coolscan was introduced in Kevin O'Neil www. It's not the fact the scanner isn't supported Re: Nikon Coolscan LS online cleaning instructions. There are several online instructions for cleaning it yourself.

I did mine a few years ago. I also highly recommend Alex Ketzner - his service is amazing. Outstanding customer service. I highly recommend him. So if 5 thin paperboard mounts follow 5 thick mounts you can accordingly adjust the metal bar before the scanner draws the paperboard mounts in.

There are the same kind of problems with the transportation of the slides just as with the predecessor: it happens that slides get stuck on their way into or out of the scanner, jam on the turnout or that the transport slider slips past the mounts.

Thus the dream of automatically batch scanning 50 images at once becomes true only occasionally. Slides with double sided glass mounts get stuck almost categorically and can even damage the feeder. You'd better not digitse this kind of slides with the SF at all. The Nikon scan software brilliantly supports the SF after prescanning the first image you can make all settings like scan area, resolution and colour settings.

These settings then apply for all images being scanned in one pass. The maximum number of batch scans is 99 by the way, you can not set a higher number with the software.

The images are automatically numbered serially, for example Image Of course you can't place 99 slides into the magazine at once. But nothing argues against placing further slides in the half-empty input magazine and remove the already scanned slides out of the half-full output magazine during scan mode, in order to allow non-stop scanning of up to 99 images. Overall I can say that the slide feeder SF is a worthwhile purchase for people who have to digitise thousands of slides.

But you should be aware of the fact that not everything works fully automatically by itself and without problems, but that you have to check the scanning process from time to time and that - just like with a copier - you sometimes have to manually remove jams.

The APS adaptor is installed in the scanner just like the strip film holder until it locks in place. After all ist's responsible for the automatic film transport. You can place IX films with 15, 25 or 40 frames negative or postive in the adaptor. Attention: only developed films can be placed in the adaptor, otherwise a mechanism prevents closing the front cover. If you try to close it anyway, you can damage the APS adaptor.

Right after placing the film in the adaptor an automatic pulls the film out of the cartridge by itself. The cover of the APS adaptor is locked then and can not be opened any more. Even if the computer crashes the cover stays locked as long as the film wasn't rewind back into the cartridge. In this case only restarting the scan software and rewinding the film by clicking the appropriate button helps.

With an index scan you'll get thumbnails of all images on the film. Thereby you can see if all frames are exposed or if the film has been rewind before. When scanning a single image it can of course happen that the whole film has to be winded first, what can take a lot of time if you want to scan frame 3 and then frame 37 for example.

But it's really comfortable to scan a whole APS film at once: if you make the desired settings after prescanning for example image 1, then you can assign these settings to all other images and scanning the whole film proceeds fully automatically in batch mode.

That's really comfortable! It's not a pleasure to scan certain IX films which can not be winded easily. Here problems with drawing in the film frequently occur - the adaptor crashes and you can't use it anymore!

Only resetting it by the Nikon servie helps, you can not do it by yourself. I had never problems with Kodak APS films though. Now it's getting exotic but by no means unrealistic. The field of application seems to be very small for this optional accessory at first sight, but preparates are produced in many sciences and not only in medical science.

For example I have already scanned transparent cut preparates of different kind of rocks for a mineralogist. In principle a film scanner with a resolution of dpi can be used as a microscope with camera by means of the FH-G1.

You can insert object slides with a width of up to 26 mm into the medical slide holder. Bearings on both left and right hand side fix the object slide so that it can't shake or fall off. In the slot area the object slide is secured by two assembling clips springs and at the bedstop another notch prevents movement of the slide. The medical slide holder FH-G1 can be inserted into the serial slide mount adaptor MA just like a normal slide mount.

There is no limitation in the length of the object slide, but the scan area is as big as the normal 35mm frames - about 23x35 mm. The field of application for the FH-G1 designated by Nikon actually is digitising medical preparates. But you can scan virtually all sorts of things with it.

Due to its guides on all four sides you can insert and fix virtually any original with a height of up to 2mm and a width of up to 26mm. In this way I've alread scanned 16mm films, glas pattern, samples of rocks between glass plates and pieces of microfilm. I've already mentioned that Nikon does not ship its new models of film scanners with Silverfast anymore.

Thereby the price reduction compared to the predecessors LS and LS levels out - thus the scanners didn't really get cheaper, they were only reduced in the scope of delivery.

Nikon supplies a threepart software bundle with the filmscanners:. Some owners of a Nikon digital camera will ask themselves "What's Nikon View doing with a Nikon filmscanner? But what is this programm used for with a film scanner? Of course you can always create a slide show and so on with existing images, no matter if they accrue from a digital camera or from a scanner. But the actual application for owners of a Nikon film scanner should be the possibility to process NEF images.

NEF is Nikon's own raw format which can be selected as output file format when scanning with NikonScan. This raw format contains almost all original information from the scan process, so that you have numerous possibilities of image enhancement and changing scan settings after the scan with the help of Nikon View. Many users already adjust the settings with the scan software, and for the "normal" image processing you'll get the Elements version of the best imaging software currently available my humble opinion anyway.

There are almost innumerable possibilities for colour enhancement - from a simple brightness slider up to the gradation curves tool there is virtually every nameable tool for processing colours available. And who wants to apply filters to his scan afterwards, for example to sharpen the image, finds almost boundless possibilities here, too.

Does the extra charge of the 10 times more expensive full version pay off? I really do miss one appreciable feature in the light version: batch processing of images - whether embedded in the program or as separate batch processing software.

And there is one more reason for the expensive full version: the Elements version can only process an image file with a colour depth of 16 bit if it is previously converted into 8 bit. The full version can load, process and save image files with 16 bit per colour channel. Let's deal with the scan software Nikon Scan. At first glance the new Version 4 doesn't seem to have changed a lot compared to the old version. The user interface looks virtually identical, the settings work as known.

A few drawbacks have been improved, new features have been added. And I'd like to mention a very pleasant one right at the beginning: you can choose for which scanners you want to use the program for already at the installation. Those who have five different Nikon scanners of different generations on their desktop like me will be very happy about not having to install every single driver separately. That's great! Of course John Doe purchases exactly one scanner and hence only benefits indirectly from this feature, for example when downloading a new version of the software.

So how good is NikonScan really? Can the software be recommended? There are people who are so sworn in the leading scansoftware Silverfast, that they depreciate any other program as crab without looking at it any closer. You'll easily realize the importance of the scan software when using a cheap film scanner.

Owners of a cheap scanner who switch from the cheap scan software of the manufacturer to Lasersoft's Silverfast suddenly can see an increasement of quality of their scans as big as if they had purchased a new scanner.

I've always said: it's not only the scanner that makes the image, it's also the software. You definitely won't see a gigantic increase of quality when you use Silverfast instead of NikonScan. NikonScan is so good and extensive in the meantime that you can perfectly use it for comfortably producing very good scans.

In my opinion it's rather a matter of personal prefernce which program you choose. Who already knows Silverfast from his flat bed scanner or even already owned another film scanner with Silverfast doesn't want to become acquaintetd with another scan software of course, because handling this kind of software correctly requires a lot of time.

So what are those special features of NikonScan that make scanning so easy? The user interface is very clear and easy to use: there is a preview window, a little window showing the scan progress and a palette window containing all settings. Most other film scanners fail with this special task. You can adjust all scan settings in a palette window: image format portrait or landscape and image size can be set in different ways and units.

For setting the colour there is gradation curves, colour balance sliders, a LCH editor and an analog-amplifying slider. To achieve a higher sharpness you can use the function "unsharp mask" with a live preview in the preview window. Furthermore you can switch the Scan Image Enhancer automatic setting of brightness and contrast on and off.

But what would all those settings which can be comfortably adjusted one after another be, if they could not be saved? NikonScan provides the opportunity to save and load complete sets of settings. So you can save for example all settings for mounted colour slides as "SlidejpgICE. Once you have made and saved your different settings you can quickly perform a scan or a series of same scans virtually at the push of a button. That's really comfortable and in my opinion no other software handles this task better than NikonScan.

Of course NikonScan has got some shortcomings too which I don't want to keep secret. While scanning it happens every now and then that the software totally crashes. But it doesn't crash with an error message or demands restarting the computer - no, it simply quits itself with the motto "I don't feel like scanning today.

Let's try again tomorrow Another shortcoming is that sometimes the communication with the scanner doesn't work anymore - the software then messages that no scanner is connected.

It's annoying when suddenly the progress bar stands still in the middle of the scan process and nothing happens for a couple of minutes. Another drawback of the NikonScan software is enormously annoying: when using the Nikon Super Coolscan ED together with the slide feeder SF the maximum number of slides you can set is But what if you want to digitise a whole slide magazine with exactly images at once in batch mode?

It's clear that you can't put slides into the feeder at once. But it's no problem to keep supplies coming during the scan process, so that the scanner virtually runs non-stop. This actually works perfectly, but after 99 slides the scanner stops. It's annoying everytime you have to manually scan exactly one leftover image.

The scan software is very clearly arranged and easy to learn. The settings for a good scan can be adjusted easily and intuitively. And last but not least the scan software delivers very good images and really makes the best out of the connected scanner. For me NikonScan still is the best film scanner manufacturer own scan software. Appendix The scan software NikonScan from Nikon does not run on actual operating systems any more. How can the image quality of a Nikon Super Coolscan be actually judged?

Should we scan maybe 10 standardized test slides with resolution bar, colour patterns and gray scales to check to what extent the scans match the original?

With such experiments you can indeed determine certain numerical values, but you often can't use them to find out what an image will look like. Maybe it's better to simply scan different images to make a conclusion by rule of thumb. Or should we just assume the Nikon scans normal snap shots perfectly and fade to discerning originals like night shots or back light shots?

A good image is first of all made by a good film scanner, second by the scan software and third by the following image editing. It's clear that you can't fix too much with the image editing software if already the first link of this chain is weak. The second link of the chain is also very important - and often overlooked: the scan software.

A scan of an underexposed image though will be too dark as well if scanned with the standard settings. Does this mean poor image quality? An image like this can be slightly lightended either directly with the scan software or afterwards with an image editing software. You can make all settings adjusted with the scan software with the image editing software, too, except for one: the dust and scratches correction ICE. ICE works perfectly with the Nikon dust, scratches, fingerprints, lint etc.

An additional infrared source identifies what doesn't belong to the image and sophisticated algorithms correct the corresponding spots with close pixels. Back to my statement that all settings which can be made within the scan software except ICE can be made with the image editing software, too.

From this it follows that it's not that important what the scanned image effectively looks like, but rather which information it contains. Example: a black and white astronomy shot looks worthless with standard scan settings. A lot of stars, dust in space, not on the image and clouds disappear. If you scan an image with 48 Bit colour depth and save the outcome in the TIF format, you'll have all image information in a large file, so that you can make a virtually perfect digital image by editing it afterwards.

You can particularly see it with discerning twilight or night shots. When performing a resolution test the Nikon shows its strength. The horizontal and vertical lines of the second element of the sixth group are still clearly visible - the corresponding resolution is dpi. If you enlarge element 6. When fully zooming into element 6. So I conclude that the Nikon Super Coolscan ED has got an effective resolution of horizontal dpi and vertical dpi, thus it averages about dpi.

This is a sensational performance, which just characterizes a Nikon scanner. You can hardly find other scanners which effectively almost reach their nominal resolution. The scan software NikonScan offers to the user a multitude of settings to immediately perform a good looking fine scan after the prescan. Just like with an image editing software you can achieve the same effects on the individual gradation curves by using different controls.

I myself prefer working directly with the gradation curves, although setting brightness and contrast could be done more comfortable as well. I already mentioned that the ICE dust and scratches correction works flawlessly. I can only confirm rumors which accuse a certain blur to the ICE process insofar that in areas where big dust particles have to be corrected away with the surrounding pixels a certain impression of blur inevitably occurs.

But this does by no means apply for the whole image. GEM works very well with very coarse grained film material. Analyzing the image for repeating patterns which can be assigned to the grain works very well, but inevitably causes a slight blur, too.

Thus GEM is not a function that you can always keep turned on without hesitation, but you should perform tests with every single film to find out if there is any annyoing grain effect or not. The automatic colour enhancement ROC somtimes works wonders. Ancient, faded images suddenly appear like newly shot, just like restored. See my page about image correction. Corrections as they are done by the ROC technique can be done manually, too, but you'll need a lot of time to adjust the individual colour channels in a way that the restoration effect is visible.

You should in no case turn ROC on permanently though. With a night shot or an image of the sea or of a ski trail you will get such disguised images, that it's rather manipulation than restoration we're talking about.

Besides the three already known ICE 3 techniques a fourth one now came along with the Nikon Super Coolscan ED: when scanning underexposed images or back light shots the digital DDE technique reportedly performs automatic corrections which enhances the details in very dark and very bright areas and achieves natural colours and brightness. This sounds very promising, but after careful consideration and a little testing you will quickly find out that you can achieve this kind of effects by changing the gradation curves, too.

By the way you can not only automatically adjust the shadows with DDE but the highlights as well. In my opinion the DDE function is needless, because it's not generally useable, i. But I don't want to ignore those users who are not familiar with using gradation curves: for them the DDE slider is a comfortable way to get more details into very dark image areas.

This function is a very recommendable feature of the NikonScan software, because it can notably improve a bigger part of the images. But as aforementioned this kind of function does not enhance image quality but only allows comfortable adjustment of image editing tools directly within the scan software. An image scanned with the Scan Image Enhancer in fact appears better than a standard scan, but this advantage is leveled out by the following image editing though.

The Scan Image Enhancer is also a very useful feature that must not be turned on permanently. Everybody knows what auto level does with an image of a ski trail: the few people shilhoutted against the consistent white become extremely coloured and glaring.

Conclusion of the last 5 paragraphs: The scan software of the Nikon contains a great many algorithms for automatic image enhancement which positively affect the image qualitiy in a comfortable way.

But the actually good image quality is not due to these comfort features, but it's due to the fact, that the Nikon Super Coolscan ED is capable of distinguishing finest shades of colours. In a scan with a colour depth of 16 Bit there can easily be shades of grey between black and dark grey - and that makes up the image quality.

One more word about the sharpness: it's sensational what the Nikon LS produces with a standard scan with dpi: you can see smallest details and a 20 megapixel image is still sharp when fully zoomed in, provided that appropriate film material is being used, of course. Who needs a feature like the "unsharp mask" in the scan software then? Naturally this artificial sharpening gives the final touch of details to the scan, but I'd recommend to do the sharpening with the image editing software afterwards, because a once performed unsharp mask can not be undone easily, particularly if the parameters were set to high values.

Another postive issue of the Nikon that surprised me: while I had some problems with scanning Kodachrome slides with the predecessor LS ED, the new Nikon can handle this film material very well.

There is a special setting for Kodachromes in the scan software, and only with this setting the colours match the originals. Highly accurate color management system. It has 14 bit, 24 bit, or 48 bit per channel user selectable color input. Fast scan time. Multi sampling Scanning 2,4,8. He replaced a part and cleaned and lubricated it.

Cosmetics are not perfect. I scanned my slides a. City: Winchester, VA. Posted: 1 year ago. City: Fredericksburg, VA. City: Southern Maryland, MD. City: Frederick, MD. City: Martinsburg, WV.