ICE,ROC,GEM (This is the main reason I chose this scanner)
Physical size
Color
tone
2900dpi

some bugs in the Nikon Scan3 software !

The picture comes out clean, great color, dust free, scrach free, workable file size with 2900dpi (4000dpi is too big to edit later). I have not had any crash yet. I tested with a 450MHz, 256Meg ram, and If ICE3 is "on", it would take 33 min for 4 frames of negative. However increasing the memory with additional 128Meg, it took 30 min for 4 frames.
Bottom line: It is the greatest, and buy it.

Customer Service

Not needed yet.

Similar Products Used:

HP Photosmart (a piece of junk sitting on desk)
I would sell cheap if you want it.

High quality package, as is expected from Nikon. Of course the ICE, ROC and GEM. Works like a gem!

None discovered so far

Looks like a very good investment. The results are stunning, better than I expected. You need a lot of memory though in order to get some speed. I can recommend this scanner very very very much.

Similar Products Used:

None

Nikon Quality
Accesories are great.
USB!!
Vertical and Horizontal
2900 DPI
ICE,GEM Etc

Manual
A few bugs in the PC Software
Noisey

Ummm, this is one heck of a scanner! It makes more noise than my old scanner did. Anyway, the scans are superb! But makes sure you have LOTS of Ram (I recommend at least 300Meg, I have 524Meg) The software will take a bit of getting used to, the printed manual only tells you the basics the PDF manual on the CD tells you to nitty gritty.

In my humble opinion its a real winner, as long as Nikon keep the software up to date, (they have an habit of NOT doing this but i have been assured that V3.1 is due out soon that fixes many of the bugs reported by Mac and PC users alike.

In the UK it comes bundled with FotoStation 4.5 which is a useful tool if you don`t have a photo catalogue program, included is 50meg of space on Nikon UK`s fotoshare web server as well.

Customer Service

Nikon have never messed me about. If they do i`ll go to Canon!

Similar Products Used:

Minolta Dimage Scan Dual

Digital ICE3, resolution, dynamic range, color fidelity

Nikon Scan software very clunky. User Interface is poorly optimized

An outstanding product. Dynamic range on the scanner definitely exceeds what most camera shot film can reproduce. I tested the Coolscan IV against calibrated FUJI 100 output from a CSI LightJET laser film recorder with nearly a one-one correlation on dynamic range. ICE3 is slow, but very, very powerful...it really cleans up image dust and scratches nicely. ROC does a fine job on faded negatives. No crashes, Jams or unusual behavior noted. A fantastic product. I just wish the GEM feature could be used on scanned print files.

Customer Service

Not Necessary

Similar Products Used:

HP scanners....drum services

Digital ICE3

None that I can honestly say. Maybe a little bit noisy at preview and pre-scan, but I can live with that.

The Coolscan IV (LS-40) performs as advertised!
Digital ICE3 really works, altho it adds to the scan time significantly - if you do not need ROC or GEM, you can selectively turn them off, leaving just the dust/scratch removal - helps in reducing scan times.
The Coolscan IV has greatly reduced the time I spent in Photoshop cleaning up and color correcting.

Also, I have installed the Coolscan IV attached to a powered USB hub (I know its against Nikon recommendations), but so far, it has worked perfectly.

Customer Service

Not required yet

Similar Products Used:

None

Accurate scan for colour slides and negative
Wide tonal range

No ICE for black-and-white

Before I bought this scanner I have heard complaints in this forum about Nikon software. The fact is, with my Pentium III 1.0G/128M system, I have not experience any software problem. The manual is also easy to read. It only took 30 minutes from openning the box to scanning to first photo.
Scanning time with full resolution, ICE on but not ROC and GEM takes about 1minute and 40 seconds. With the ROC and GEM on, it takes about three times longer due to the post-scanning processing.

The result from colour slide is amazingly accurate. It can scan shadow detail detail that my old ES-10 could not do. It also performs well for colour negative. The colour is not as good as the slides. But this perhaps is due to the aging of the films. ROC does not always restore colours in an accurate way. Sometimes it can make things worse.
However, when I scanned b/w film, I got something that totally un-viewable from preview window. After spending a couple of hours, I called the Nikon help line. The help line did not sound very professional, with a lot of laughing and talking in the background. And the operator has to refer to other sources several times. Nevertheless the answer had helped to explain the problem: to scan b/w, you have to uncheck the "Nikon Color Management" checkbox in the preference menu. Also, you need to disable the ICE cubed.
Without ICE in such high-resolution scanning, you end up with a lot of time removing dust in the Photoshop. This was NOT mentioned anywhere in Nikon's document. If I knew the fact, I would have thought twice of buying it.

Customer Service

friendly but not professional.

Similar Products Used:

Olympus ES-10

Accurate color, able to reproduce subtle tonal ranges well due to excellent Dmax and color reproduction.I wondered whether Dmax was in fact better than 3.6. Relatively fast even at highest resolution and color depth settings. Excellent resolution.

Memory utilization not optimized. I have a fast G3 Yosemite with 892K RAM and the photoshop plugin still tells me memory is full. Also autofocus selection indicates host application needs more memory even though I have 512K assigned to Photoshop 5.5. Clearly the software needs an update. Nikon Scan 3.0 works well so I'll just save images as tiff files and export to Photoshop for now. Default preview image is also too small.

Nikon needs to put some serious effort into a software revision that cures the problems noted in many of the reviews; inefficient memory utilization, small preview screen, and poor interface with Photoshop. Still, this is an excellent optical and mechanical tool capable of superb work if these problems are fixed.
I'm considering going to the Silverfast software.

Customer Service

NA

Similar Products Used:

Olympus ERS-10
Canoscan 4000

Dynamic Range 3.6 is great
Clean sharp scans
USB
Digital Ice 3
2900 dpi

None thus far

I purchased the coolscan online from ritz and paid no shipping or sales tax. It works great with my Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop, it is a 650mhz Pentium III with 128 meg of Ram. I will soon be upgrading to 250 meg. Nikon seems to have set a new standard for film scanning with the new Coolscan series.

Customer Service

N/A

Similar Products Used:

None

AWESOME software.
Dynamic range - seems that it's more than 3.6. I've compared it to the Nikon 4000ED which is supposed to have 4.1 or 4.2 dynamic range, I don't see the difference. (Scanned the same shot).
No problems installing/running NikonScan 3. Never crashed: not once, knock on wood.

I'd like more resolution, but that's not a weakness, rather a money issue. so.... i'd like more money *g*

I do recommend it if you find the resolution acceptable. Most of the time 35mm is used at 8.5"x11" size anyway, and you get 9"x14" at 300 dpi with this scanner, which I find sufficient.

Customer Service

haven't needed yet

Similar Products Used:

HP PhotoSmart (the first SCSI version)
Nikon 4000ED
Canoscan FS4000ED

Great colours, quality - I use Contax bodies and Carl Zeiss T* lenses.

THE SOFTWARE IS AWFUL!!!

Excellent quality scanning for the money - makes you want better lenses and slide film. The software is totally awful and I only use the TWAIN part - BUT note you can't change some of the settings without running NikonScan 3, like use TIFF file output with 12 bit depth for 70MB scan files. I use a P3-600 with 128Mb of RAM and Paintshop Pro 6 under Win 98 runs fine - Photoshop and PSP7 both disk thrash and crash. The addendum in the box says get 384MB RAM minimum but I'd say get 512MB for $150 instead.
Scan speed is definitely affected by the USB port and CPU - a Pentium 4 with 256MB halves the time.
This scanner is good enough to show up films and lens quality. A4 prints come out excellent.

Customer Service

Never used

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Coolscan 3 internal IDE