Scan Your Slides / Negatives Using a Nikon 5000 ED Film Scanner
Good ol’ Nikon CoolScan 5000 ED Film Scanner. If you have one of these, here’s some tips for you. I have a small biz doing scans, and I’ve done over 100,000 scans on these guys, and they haven’t let me down. Too bad they don’t make them anymore. Anyway, let’s get to it.
So, I assume you have the machine plugged in and the software installed, ready to go. First step, which way do I put in the slide? That was my first question too.
There’s two sides to a slide:
1) Matte Emulsion Side. This side is the side the printer actually printed something on the surface. So you’ll see it’s less brighter, has a few beveled ridges/lines, and is usually curved in.
2) Reflective Side. This side is more shiny, takes in more light, has a smoother surface, and it usually “bubbles” out.
The winner? Always have the shiny side DOWN. I just say, shiny down. This way you won’t be scanning your slides backwards.
So, shiny down, throw your slide in your machine. Next, see a green button on the left — Preview? Click that:
Now that you have the image in the preview panel, its time to adjust the resolution. Lets move over to the right to the Tool Palette:
Ok, what I’m doing here is, the factory settings has the resolution at 4000-ppi / dpi to scan at the original size of the slide (1.45″ x 0.99″). What I did was set the Output Size to 4″ x 6″ and resolution to 300 ppi / dpi. Why? If you walk into a print shop with a scan resolution of 4000 dpi they’re going to tell to to scale it to 300-dpi and change the output size to 4×6. It’s just the print shop industry standard to print at 300-dpi, because any thing higher than that you’re no longer scanning image detail but the surface of the scan (minute dust/scratches and other surface artifacts you don’t want). Of course if you want a 8×12 image, then change it to that. Just keep the resolution to 300.
Quick Tip: when you change the res and output size, the marquee tool (the hash marks around your preview screen) will have to be stretched out again to fit the screen.
Next, scroll down the Tool Palette until you get to Digital ICE:
Enable the following: Digital ICE, Post Processing (ROC, GEM), Digital DEE, and Scan Image Enhancer.
That’s the beauty of the Nikon, it does all the heavy lifting. Of course you can tweak a lot more, but to get excellent scans, that is all you need to do. Here’s what all that stuff does:
Digital ICE: removes surface defects like dust and scratches without altering the underlying composition of the image.
DEE: reveals details lost in shadows and highlights.
Digital ROC: restores colours lost through fading of the original film.
Digital GEM: reduces the effects of film grain.
Scan Image Enhancer: doesn’t do too much, but say you have a dark image, and you up the DEE (or exposure levels), the shadow areas will turn brown or look grainy. Image Enhancer just makes sure too keep the dark areas dark (like shadows) while you’re making it brighter.
However, the truth is I DO NOT use Digital Ice. It is a nice short-cut, and can save some time. But I found that it takes away more than it adds. And since I do this as a buisness I want to get the best quality scans as I can. To discover exactly how I edit my customer’s scans, check out…
How ScanCanada.ca Edits Customer Slides, Negatives, And Photos: Step By Step Scanning Tutorial
Hope this helps. If you have any questions you can always email me, Konrad at info@scancanada.ca
K.
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