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Scanning B&W Negative with Nikon Coolscan 5000

Discussion

3 replies
Posted by Kirk Greene on December 18, 2006 at 1:38 PM
I have some old B&W Kodak TMax 100 negatives that I have been trying to get a high quality scan from using my Nikon Coolscan 5000. I get consistently good results when scanning my color slides but can't get the same with B&W negs. Any recommendations as to settings in Nikon Scan that I should try different? Thanks for the help.
Kirk
Posted by Hank Pennington on December 18, 2006 at 2:35 PM
It's been a while so my version was older (as is my scanner). However, I was never happy with Nikon Scan for color or BW. I have been much happier with Viewscan for both. Silverfast does an even better job than Viewscan with BW, but I do so little it wasn't worth the extra cost. There's a free trial version of Viewscan here.
Posted by Brent Murphy on December 18, 2006 at 3:49 PM
Make sure you turn off Digital ICE for black-and-white film. Digital ICE doesn't work with b&w. Unfortunately, this means a lot of extra time doing dust and scratch removal manually in Photoshop. I wish someone would make a better effort to point this out. It took a lot of web searching to find this out back when I first got the scanner. It seems like they should put that somewhere in the software's Help file.

Personally, I love Nikon Scan and the results I get with it. I tried Viewscan, but wasn't all that impressed. Nikon Scan gives me great results, and the price was right.
Posted by Paul Skoczylas on December 22, 2006 at 2:26 PM
I think Brent got it right. ICE won't work with traditional B&W or with Kodachrome. (I say "traditional" B&W, because ICE will work with the C-41 B&W, but that's not what you're using.)

-Paul