A page of real-life how-to's for scanning film
on the Nikon Coolscan 4000ED...

Nikon Coolscan 4000
Strengths and Weaknesses

Strength
Weakness
Fast.
This scanner is really fast. One pass covers both the IR and RGB exposures. Running Nikon's scan software, the throughput at 4000 DPI is usually under one minute per image! This is way faster than flatbed film scanners. 		 
 

Kludgy "win-95 like" scan software.
Even the latest/greatest Nikon scan software (currently at v4.0.2) has two fairly serious problems:

For Color Slides, NikonScan has a show-stopper bug if you're using the SF-200/210 slide feeder: Autofocus simply does not happen. There are settings in the software to turn on "autofocus before each scan" but it simply does not happen that way. In a batch of 10 slides, 1 or 2 will be in focus, only by accident.

Auto-Feeders.
The SA-30 roll film feeder and the SF-200 / SF-210 really make the difference between a scanner you use a few times, and a scanner that actually vaccuums its way through your film archives. I really like the Coolscan's SA-30 roll film feeder, which you can also make by converting the free SA-21 strip feeder. 		 
  Harsh Black & White.
Maybe it's just me, but I haven't been able to get a useful BW scan from the Nikon 4000. Kodak TMAX scans far better on an Epson 4990 flatbed. On the Nikon Coolscan, for some reason it's harsh - really crackly grain that just can't be cleaned up. It's as if the grain particles are amplified - darker black specks that suck in and convert their surrounding area to white. I hate it.

Excellent, Excellent Analog Electronics.
This is where the Coolscan 4000 shines. The 14 bits of dynamic range really are worth 14 bits. Lots of other scanners I've used claim 14 bits, but they really fall short in the final output.

For Color Slide Film, gray tones are smooth and neutral all the way from off-white down to the deepest blacks. I've scanned lots of reference slides on various film and flatbed scanners, and find the straight linear handling of the full range of grays to be excellent on the Nikon 4000. (In contrast, a Canon Canoscan FS4000 gave me lots of dark violet in the deepest shadows that couldn't be cleaned up. The Canon analog front end had a nasty "twist" away from neutral at the bottom of the curves.)

For Color Negative Film, it's more important to have a high bit range than with slides because the final image sits "inside" the full range of the scanner's front end. There's probably a loss of at least 2 bits when scanning color negs (on any scanner), which reach neither black or white - just the dull orange tones in the middle. The Nikon 4000 really brings out a smooth range of full color from this block of dull orange - A good example is skin tone: A face scanned on an Epson 4990 will have a splotchy color pattern (basically not enough bits for smooth, close gradations), where the same neg on the Coolscan 4000 will be substantially smoother - even though both scanners claim 14 bit analog electronics.

  


Red Fort, Old Delhi, India


Detail, prior to cleaning the scanner optics.
After cleaning the scanner optics - Contrast!

Cleaning the Scanner

First, you should take a look at cleaning the scanner optics. Virtually all Coolscans will collect dust inside the main chamber, including the critical mirror that sits in front of the lens.

It's easy to do the cleaning. You just need to clean the lens-side mirror and the front of the lens. These parts can be accessed without taking off the side cover, though taking off the cover can make the job easier.

In this Nikon 4000ED, there's a white nylon gear just inside the front of the scanner, shown in this photo with the cover off. Turn the gear with your finger to move the optical sled forward, until you can reach the mirror from the front of the scanner. The mirror is at the bottom of the main chamber, tilting at 45 degrees.


Turn this white gear to drive the mirror up to the scanner's front opening.

Choosing the Software

For scanning color slides, the Nikon scan software is OK. Color choices are usually better than you could do by yourself in a hurry. It's sometimes not obvious how you get the Nikonscan software to save settings or generally behave, but it does a pretty good job with color slides. The Nikon software is also very fast in processing IR dust cleaning (Digital ICE), and can process and save a full resolution JPEG in just about the time it takes the slide feeder to push in the next slide. It's fast.

For scanning color negatives, the Nikon scan software is not the tool of choice (see weaknesses, above). I've found Vuescan (www.hamrick.com) to do a much better job:

  • Adjusts color based on the selected frame crop - ignores what's outside the crop.
  • Allows extensive manual control from a single window of options. You can dial in an exact color profile that stays constant through all scans.

Still, the automatic negative colors in Vuescan aren't very good - Better than NikonScan but far worse than the king-of-the-hill, Epson's scan software. The trick is to setup a manual color curve, and have Vuescan apply it to all your scans uniformly.

Adjusting Color, Vuescan

To adjust the color in Vuescan, you'll use a sample image to setup points manually. Each separate exposure will be controlled automatically, to optimize dynamic range, but the points you set manually will be "locked in" to keep an accurate color balance in place over all scans.

Slides

For slides, the strategy is to set one color profile that's then applied to all slides you scan. I find this optimum for the slides I'm scanning, as they're all fairly recent (no old Kodachromes) and don't need any color correcting - only accurate copying.

  1. Use NikonScan software to scan a small lot of slides, say 5. They should represent a range of colors that you'll be using.
  2. Close the Nikon scan software and start Vuescan.
  3. Preview one of the sample images in Vuescan, and don't bother saving it. Eject the slide from the scanner.
  4. Display the corresponding Nikon image within a white window background. Hold the slide up to the light of the white window background. Thus, you'll be viewing the slide against the "white" of the monitor, in the same window that the saved thumbnails from Nikon's software are displayed.
  5. Go into the "Color" tab in Vuescan and set the color method to "Manual".
  6. Adjust the white and black points, and other curve controls, by setting numeric values for each. I've shown my settings in a table, below.
  7. Refine the settings by doing the same steps for the other sample images, until you're convinced that the settings will yield consistent results on subsequent slides.

Nikon Coolscan 4000 color negative scanning, with Vuescan. Click this image to view in full size for more detail.
Color Negatives

For scanning color negatives on the Coolscan 4000, don't even bother with the Nikon scan software, which effectively offers almost no control over color.

Again, we use Vuescan. But here I outline a method that's easier than what Ed Hamrick recommends, still yielding consistent results through a whole roll:

  1. Turn Batch Scan to "Off".
  2. Insert the film strip or roll and adjust the Frame Offset until you are able to pre-scan frame #2 as centered.
  3. Adjust the crop box. (This shouldn't be done on an image made with a symmetric super-wide lens, such as the Leica Super Angulon. If other lenses are used on the same frame, the crop will be too large, which will effect color balancing.)
  4. Pre-scan a "typical" negative frame that represents the range of dark to light values. It's best if this frame includes a large area of flesh tones, which are the most critical for balancing.
  5. In the Input tab, do not lock the exposure time. Vuescan will pre-scan and expose each frame individually. This means you will also not lock the film base color.
  6. Go into the Color settings tab, and set color balance to Manual and don't bother with any of the built-in film brands or types - just leave on "generic". Make the following manual settings:
    1. Black point: 0%
    2. White point: 0.3% (careful - a slight increase here can blow out white detail.)
    3. Curve low: 0.25
    4. Curve high: 0.75
    5. Finally, use the right-mouse button to select an image point that should be white. This will set the white balance, generally within the first one or two tries. Iterate on this step if needed, to fine-tune flesh tones.
  7. Eject the strip or roll, to remove all pre-scan images. Vuescan will re-aquire fresh pre-scans as needed.
  8. Set Batch Scan to "All" and re-insert the film to start the batch.

I've found that, doing things this way, I spend minimal time fiddling with scanner settings, and only need to tweak a few things in Photoshop. The images scanned have full detail and virtually nothing is lost.

Modifying the Slide Feeder

The Nikon slide feeder does jam, and it has to be modified before you can really let it run unattended. This is true for both the SF-200 and the SF-210. The worst offender is the cardboard slide mount - they routinely bunch up and try to squeeze down the chute in pairs.

There are basically two problems with the feeder:

  1. The entry gate is wide enough for 2 or 3 slides to enter at once. And they will!
  2. The channel width necks down too quickly with a plastic overhead ramp, which tends to grab cardboard slides if they're not heading into the exposure chamber perfectly straight.

Following is a description on modifying the slide feeder for uninterrupted runs of all 50 slides - even high-friction cardboard mounts!

Modification 1 - Single slide limiter: Most important for preventing jams. I inserted a small cutout of thin aluminum sheet, extending the wall that divides the input and output stacks. The edge of this divider narrows the admittance slit down to a single slide thickness, so only one slide goes through at a time. (Center of photo)

Modification 2 - Overhead ramp-down: Second-most important for preventing jams: This thin strip of aluminum sheet guides the top of the slide entering the channel, preventing a "tilted sock drawer" effect. (Top-left of photo)

Modification 3 - Pusher top lip: Helps the last few slides in the stack, as they approach the shuttle. Nikon's design of this pusher ignores tolerance slop on the spring track, resulting in a slight tilt-back of the pusher (bottom of photo). The cardboard lip on the top of the pusher counters the tilting pusher, presenting the slide stack with a vertical face that aligns perfectly.

 Nikon Coolscan SF-200 slide feeder, with crucial modifications for batch scanning

Shown in greater detail, right, are the two most important modifcations to the Nikon SF-210 slide feeder.

After making these modifications, I scanned about 2000 slides in many different mounts without a single jam! These included cardboard mounts, glass (Gepe), Polaroid, slides with stickers on them, etc.

Close-up of the first and second modifcations: Slide gate reduction (1) and ramp-down strip (2).

Using the Roll Film Feeder

Check out the page on converting the SA-21 strip feeder to an SA-30 roll feeder. The only thing you won't have is the roll take-up reel, but this isn't a big deal because even the SA-30 kit doesn't have a reel for the front - Film will hang from the scanner either way. I perch my Coolscan on top of a high-end floor speaker and let the film hang straight down in both front (going in) and rear (coming out).