coolscan v example

A couple of people have asked me about how well my Coolscan V ED scanner works. When I bought it, I had considerable trouble finding examples of full size scans on the internet, so here is a scan I made on my Coolscan V ED.

The first image is of the Royal Palace, Cambodia. This was a full size 4000dpi (5781x3495 pixel) scan with no adjustments made in Photoshop. It was mounted in it's slide when scanned hence the black border around the image. If you look carefully you can see a couple of marks on the slide that I missed in the cleaning process. I resized the image to 680x464 pixels before uploading to this web page. The 'enlarged area' was 680x464 pixels on the original scan.

   


The Royal Palace, Phnom Pehn Cambodia
Nikon F5, Nikon AF Nikkor 24mm 1:2.8 D,Fuji Velvia
 
The second image (below) is a full size part of the original scan to show what kind of detail the scanner can yield.

 
 

I've been using this scanner for a few months now, and I have to say I'm really happy with it. Remember your scanner is like any other piece of equipment - the more you practice the better you become with it. The quality of my scans has improved a lot since I bought my scanner which is pretty impressive, bearing in mind how pleased I was with my first scans. Previous to buying this scanner, I tried my friends flatbed and I got some scans done in my local camera shop. There is no comparison in terms of quality; my coolscan wins hands down.

I think the scanner has great dynamic range, which can be manually expanded and it runs pretty fast. Using additional options (dust removal, dynamic range extender etc) does slow the scanning process down. Colour reproduction is excellent. Many people complain about the quality of Kodak scans when using this scanner. My first few attempt with Kodak slides did not produce amazing results, but after practice and tweaking the controls, I'm now pretty confident about getting nice scans from Kodak slides. All the film shots on my site have been scanned with my Coolscan.

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