Getting your Nikon Coolscan to work on W7 x64

datrat said:

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sygnus21 said:

Hi @datrat,
I no longer use my scanner since I no longer have a need for it, and therefore cannot say what's going on with it and Windows now. Furthermore, I am now running Windows 11, so I haven't even been keeping up with Windows 10.
If you're tried everything and the scanner isn't working, suggest you give Vuescan a try (they have a trial version) if you still want to use the scanner, or move on as the scanner is getting long in the tooth anyway.
Good luck.

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1. How good is the latest VueScan driver? I just visited their page, and they say they support infrared dust removal, which is basically what the 'ICE' feature of the native scanner did, as far as I can remember. So if VueScan supports (or replicates the function of) ICE, is it every bit as good as the original Nikon software?
2. Are there any modern commercially available scanners that one can buy that do a better job than the old Nikon Coolscans when dealing with slides? Logically, there ought to be better / faster / cheaper alternatives now, but - since no one has 35mm slides these days, maybe not!

Steerpike said:

I'm revisiting this thread after a 10+ years gap! I used it to get my Coolscan V ED to work with Windows 7 64-bit way back. Now I'm contemplating a whole bunch more scanning, now with Windows 11. Before I go too far down the rabbit hole, I'm curious to get people's input on a couple of thoughts -

1. How good is the latest VueScan driver? I just visited their page, and they say they support infrared dust removal, which is basically what the 'ICE' feature of the native scanner did, as far as I can remember. So if VueScan supports (or replicates the function of) ICE, is it every bit as good as the original Nikon software?
2. Are there any modern commercially available scanners that one can buy that do a better job than the old Nikon Coolscans when dealing with slides? Logically, there ought to be better / faster / cheaper alternatives now, but - since no one has 35mm slides these days, maybe not!

Thanks for keeping this thread alive!

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spoolin01 said:

I just did around 1800 Kodachrome slides with the 5000 ED and 50-slide feeder, on a Win7 machine using the Nikon software, and can't really complain too much about the process or results, but even with the feeder it was pretty slow. I can't comment on VueScan comparability. I did use the digital ICE feature of the Nikon software and it made a big difference as many of the slides were quite affected by scratches and spots. The need to adjust the scan light intensity for various slide exposure levels was an enormous reduction in the throughput otherwise offered by the feeder.
If I had it to do over, I think I'd invest in the SLR - projector approach. I had around 1100 slides done that way by the local camera shop before setting up my scanner. Even with their inexpensive (50c/slide) and no-review process option, I think their results were as good or better. Color saturation - to my amateur eye - seemed notably better. The major issues with their results was the lack of review, which resulted in a lot of over-exposures (and some under), and the lack of uncompressed file output. They offered 3000+ dpi scanning, and I got back only 3MB JPG files. Given the ability to perform review and adjustment myself if I had that sort of setup, and the vastly faster throughput, I think that would be the better option if you have a lot of slides. From what little I've looked into it, the additional hardware needed to modify an existing carousel projector and SLR to do this in manual fashion, is not much expense. To automate the projector and camera would be much more involved.

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Steerpike said:

I'm not sure what you mean by 'SLR - projector' approach, but it reminds me of something I tried way back, before buying the Coolscan. It was basically an adapter that attached to my SLR, and presented a slide holder at an appropriate distance from the camera focal point - here's a random example found on the web - Slide Duplicator Compatible With Modern DSLR Cameras Now Available | ePHOTOzine . Another example would be Amazon.com : Polaroid HD Slide Duplicator With Macro Lens Capabilty For SLR Cameras : Slr Camera Lenses : Electronics .
I don't recall now what the challenges were, but I broke down and purchased the Nikon Coolscan.

My challenge with the Coolscan was that there were so many settings to play with, I could never arrive at a standard approach; and since each 'trial scan' took minutes, this made scanning a slide a real pain. I would scan with each feature on/off, creating an '-I' variant (for ICE), a '-G' variant (for GEM), a '-R' variant (for ROC), plus a few combinations of them. I think the only thing I finally concluded was that 'ICE' was very useful, and that GEM and ROC were mostly useful. I ignored "DEE". I think eventually I arrived at a semi-standard approach of doing an 'IG' scan, and an 'IGR' scan, then eyeballing which was best. The IGR was typically the best, but once in a while the 'R' variant was bad.

Thinking more about it, I think the fact the coolscan had the 'ICE' feature, which includes an infrared scan component that can somehow identify dust 'on the surface' of the slide, was the compelling reason for favoring the Coolscan over the slide copier; but - this is well over 10 years ago now.

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spoolin01 said:

I hadn't seen those two particular devices, but the setup I was referring to works somewhat the same, but by pointing the camera into the lens of a carousel projector, so you get the benefit of active illumination of the slide. From what I could tell, many commercial services use this approach for their entry-level scanning service, though they probably use a commercially-manufactured system, rather than a retrofit to a consumer projector.
Here's a $3500 system SlideSnap Pro – SlideSnap but there are several youtube videos where people have cobbled together similar technology using standard projectors and cameras, and I recall reading commentary from semi-pros who also use this approach. Some of them spent a lot of effort to get automation, but that shouldn't be necessary and might even undercut the rapid-review and adjustment potential of using a DSLR. I thought I recalled that there are bulbs and maybe even projector lenses made to be suitable for this, but can't find those at the moment.
I didn't end up using any Coolscan post-scan modifications aside from ICE (do I recall that the ICE on the V is not the same version as on the 5000?). I vaguely recall that was because GEM and ROC were not recommended for Kodachrome. I did use the auto-correct in Lightroom for White Balance and Tone when I imported the scans, and thought that significantly improved most scans. Despite some initial learning curve challenge, I became a fan of Lightroom for organizing, reviewing, keywording, and exporting slide scans, and thought the $50 or so paid for Lightroom 5 on eBay well worth it (along with a few 3rd-party free or low-cost add-ins).
When I looked at the results with and without ICE, it seemed clear that ICE produced a remarkably cleaner scan with little image degradation (again, I'm not a sophisticated digital imaging person). However for viewing of typical family slides, I might still think the improvement in color and exposure control and throughput, worth the loss of the ICE cleaning, considering that schmutz is usually not prominent on normal viewing. I think some dirt and scratch clean-up is possible in post-production software, but haven't looked into that.

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