nikon coolscan scanners - are b+w scans feasible??

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I'm sitting on the fence about buying a coolscan III scanner, principally because I'm getting the impression that good black and white scans aren't possible. Can anyone with direct experience comment on this??

-- paul richardson (paulhrich@aol.com), May 20, 1999

Answers

I don't have the Nikon CoolScan, but I do have an HP Photosmart S20. I've scanned many B & W negatives and am very pleased with the results. I've done darkroom work for years - so feel like I have a pretty good eye.
I'm curious as to where you get the impression that B & W is not possible...
I scan the negative in, load the image in Photoshop and remove the color information before I print or post. (There's no color-cast that forces me to remove the color information - it just saves on file size) That's pretty much it.
I would assume (yeah - I know that's dangerous) that the Nikon scanner would be even better than the HP.
Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), May 20, 1999.

Hi, YES, you can get really fine B&W scans. The only drawback is that you CANNOT use the 'clean image' function in B&W. It simply will not work at all. It gets confused by all the silver etc. in the emulsion. The scan quality is excellent. It does everything the HP does, better. NIKON tech support is awful though and their message board is heavily screened. (If you complain, they will not post your message) Howard

-- Howard (hposner1@swarthmore.edu), May 21, 1999.

You got me interested. I just got my Polaroid 4000 one week ago. I just grabbed a strip of BW negatives to try it. It scanned well. I tried the dust removal feature and it worked well. The negative was pretty nasty and it removed 75% or so of the dust/scratches and like the Nikon (as I have read on forums) degraded the detail slightly. I did get a better detail scan at 4000 ppi than at about 2700 ppi. From watching the scanner operate, I believe that the dust removal a software application.

-- Robert Johnson (rjjohnson@silverlink.net), May 21, 1999.

I wish the Polaroid did medium format. I'd buy it in a flash! I really would like to get a good MF scanner.

Howard

-- Howard (hposner1@swarthmore.edu), May 26, 1999.


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