Quality hardware, good software, ICE,GEM & ROC are great if you need them.

2900 dpi
A little slow when using GEM & ROC But if needed they do work very well.

I tried both the FS-2710 & the FS-4000 by Canon and was disappointed. I returned them and got the Nikon IV. I am very impressed with the scans that I have gotten. The hardware is just plain superior to the Canon scanners. I attempted to scan several slides with the FS-4000 that were very dark and the results were extremely noisy. The Nikon gives shadow detail that I was unable to obtain with the Canon.
I have had no problems with the software and I have a VIA chipset. (AMD 900 MHz with 256 meg ram)
Nikon IV is a great scanner.

Customer Service

OK, I only called once before buying. It took a while to get through but they knowledgeable.

Similar Products Used:

Kodak Photo CD
Canoscan FS-2710
Canoscan FS-4000

good scans requiring little work
Digital Ice is great
decent scan times

nothing really. 'noise' in shadow detail is minimal and non-issue when printing on my photo printer

I agree that Nikon scan 3.0 is horrible and crashes often. Fortunately, i've just got 3.1 and so far, it hasn't crashed yet. I'm running a p3500@667 with 512Mb of RAM.

I own a HP photosmart and the ls-40 is far superior in every area. Scans are sharp and the colours are pretty accurate

I use my ls-40 for photoprinting on my Epson 750 and also for archiving of slides. 2,900 dpi is just nice for a comfortable 20Mb+ compressed tiff file (35Mb uncompressed). Basically, I can squeeze 30 onto 1 CD-R.

I can't see myself paying double for the ls-4000. Furthermore, I think the file sizes for 4,000 dpi are too large to be practical (until DVD-R arrives). 2,900 dpi is also just enough for a 11x14 print.

Incredible price/performance ratio. Highly recommended.

Similar Products Used:

HP Photosmart

ICE3, DRange=3.6

Software, requires some time to get used to.

I first considered Minolta Scan Dual II, but reviews shows that Minolta performs not as good in dark images. Although Nikon is expensive, but it is worth.
Scanned image is accurate, with good details. ICE3 saves my time.
Software cannot run on Traditional Chinese Windows 2000 Professional at all. But it works fine in Windows 98.

Customer Service

Tried once about the software, but no help.

Similar Products Used:

UMAX flatband

ICE + GEM
Color
Software

Slow
Consumes lots of RAM
Small preview

Well, first I bought Minolta Dual Scan. "It's half of price and has the same resolution. I don't need this ICE, I don't scan 20 years old films." After two weeks I was incredebly happy to return that scanner. Colors were afwull, software - terrible, the scratches and dust even on yesterday-developed films became a nightmare.

Well, Nikon was uncomparably better. The ICE and GEM work excellent. The color is good. The software crashed a lot but stopped after upgraded to 3.1.

Still some improvements could be made. The scans are slow. It is impossible to disable ROC/GEM for preview, while you can do it for ICE. Preview with GEM takes more than a minute, without - 10 seconds.
The color is constantly bluish-reddish, although can be easily adjusted after scan. The print on HP Deskjet 930 had quite bad colors. I'm still struggling with the color profiles.

Similar Products Used:

Minolta Dual Scan

ICE3, USB INTERFACE, FILM AND SLIDE CAPABILITY, GEM, ROC, LOW PRICE AND HIGH RES, EASY SETUP

?

I was considering the LS4000, but after finding this scanner for half the price, and reading the reviews below I was sold. Unless you can personally or professionally justify the added cost for the 4000, I wouldn't bother. The scans made with this scanner are unbelievable, and quick, depending on your setup. I can't believe that you gain a whole lot by moving from 2900dpi to 4000dpi, not only does the given file size double but so does the price. Another added bonus for me was the included Photoshop 5.0 LE, perfect to get me started down the digital road without becoming burdened by the complexity of full-fledged Photoshop. Not only that, I would rather wait for a OSx compatible Photoshop version after I have mastered the features within 5.0. Setup was a dream, 20 minutes until I ran my first scan, and that was after updating both Nikon 3.0 to 3.1 and firmware from 1.05 to 1.10. Very stable, no problems. I can not comment on previous software because I did not bother to try before updating. As for all the complaints on the Nikon software's usability, I personally don't know what people are talking about. It is very simple and easy to use, I guess it just depends on your technical know-how. If you are planning on using a scanner, then one would think that you would already be fairly technically adept. Buy one now, and enjoy!

Customer Service

Great, no hold time.

Similar Products Used:

LS 2000

- 2900 dpi
- Digital ICE
- Ease of setup and operation
- Adapters included for both slides abd strip film. There is even a special adapter for those damaged negs or negs cut too short for the normal strip adapter
- Resolution is excellent, and with Digital ICE on, the rendered images are much better than with Canon's new FS-4000 scanner which is at 4000 dpi

- Can't get a roll film adapter for this scanner

- This is an excellent scanner at an excellent price
- At 2900 dpi, resolution is excellent, and rendered images are near-perfect in terms of sharpness, color and being virtually "flaw" free
- Images with Canon's new FS-4000, even at its 4000 dpi, are not as sharp, and require a lot of work to correct color balance)
- Nikon has produced a great product with the Coolscan IV (FS-40) with most of the features of its higher end 4000 and 8000 scanners but without their high price tags

Customer Service

- Excellent

Similar Products Used:

- Canon FS-4000
- Minolta

- Easy set up
- Simple operation
- Gorgeous scans
- Works with Win XP Beta (even though Win XP warns you it doesn't!)

CDROM included with package was defective

Tested out fine on a variety of Kodak and Fuji films shot under a wide range of lighting conditions. No image degradation or scanning artifacts, great results from every roll. It also handled some old, decaying film brilliantly -- it's almost like the negatives were still in mint condition.

Not for casual use, but if you're serious about digital work and don't want to abandon film, this is one great piece of hardware.

Customer Service

Had to download a full set of software from the Web

Similar Products Used:

PIE Prime Film 1800u

Colour consistency
Lack of noise in shadows
Shadow detail not bad as this is not multi-scan
ICE - even better than the 1st gen
Reasonable speed

Software is not memory efficient.
Multiple crashes

CAVEAT - I have not used this scanner in enough different scenarios to give a more exhaustive list

I have had this scanner for only a week so have not had the opportunity to really give it a run for the money. So far I have scanned only Provia and Velvia slide film, both in strips and mounted. I will not be using this scanner for much else (so I am not looking for a great all-round performing machine). It took me a good weekend to make this scanner, my computer and printer work well with each other to produce a good print. It also took me dozens of sample prints to get something good. But now that I have done the hard work, my saved profiles should make life easier.

It worked great out of the box. But the second time I used it, the crashes started. Solution - chuck the 3.0 version of NikonScan and got the 3.1 version. Crashes still persisted. Disable everything but this scanner - open software without scanner turned on so don't get preview window - then turn on scanner and click the "Nikon" button to open preview window. Then start loading film - so far this has worked without the crashes. I suspect a lack of RAM is the culprit. I am running Gateway Pentium 3, 850mzh, 256 RAM, 30G hard. I think I will need to at least double my RAM, but since this is so cheap I might as well fill all my bays and get a total of 1G.

I wish the preview lets me zoom in more, just so I can see whether or not ICE is needed. ICE is great as scratches and dust are gone; but picture is a little softer. I use the unsharp mask right in the software to bring back some sharpness.

The amount of changes I can make via the curves and LCH from the NS3.1 really limit how much Photoshop I need. In fact, I import the TIFF file into PhotoDeluxe 3.1, do a bit of cropping, sizing and then print. That's it - so simple. I'm sure as I get more advanced I will begin to use other features which PhotoShop 6.0 will give me, but with the colour fidelity of the scanner, I have not needed to fix any colours! The only exception was some shots in the shade (too blue) where I have had to add warmth. But this is a problem with me not using warm-up filters in the shade rather than an issue that I have with scanner. Believe me, the colour fidelity of the scans allow me not have to mess about with PS, which is a godsend and is enough for me to rate this machine a 5. But given all the software problem, I would give it a 2. Overall I would have to rate it a 3.8 because I think once the initial hard work setting up is done, the scanner will be a joy to many.

How to get to a 5 in my book - take the 8000, knock off a grand, and fix the software so there are no glitches out of the box. So a 4 is pretty d*** good.

Customer Service

No customer hotline - only work weekdays during regular business hours.

Better if they had a 24 hr hotline

Similar Products Used:

None

Very Sharp Scan
Easy to Setup

Bulky unit

I agree with all the other folks that own this machine. This is one piece of equipment that you should invest! I notice so much detail was missed out from the print that came back from the One Hr. processing Lab after using the Film Scanner!

Customer Service

N/C

Similar Products Used:

N/C

Value for money, D max and resolution,Filmstrip loading, scansoftware (if it works), support from various third party hard-and software
manufacterers.

Nikon Scan 3.1 software
doesn't recognize it's own scanner.

Still trying to get my Coolscan IV working..
Everything is installed on my beige G3/333/256/9.1 as instructed by Nikon, my Keyspan PCI card sees the Coolscan, but i'm still looking at "Nikon Scan could not find any scanners attached"....therefore 1 overall star.

Similar Products Used:

Sprintscan 35 and Nikon LS 1000.