My Nikon V-ED is sufficiently good. The style of lightsource is
problematic in that it does increase grain, scratches, dust, etc. Just
as there were two different styles of enlarger lightsources, each has
advantages. The Nikons do have extremely good dynamic-range and tend
to maximize sharpness. DoF is narrow, but that's usually only a major
problem with slides that have been projected as they are warped.
Halos and other loss of contrast issues with the Nikons is usually a
sign of a dirty mirror and optical path. I've blown mine out a couple
of times with partial disassembly, but otherwise, it has performed
flawlessly. It has been 100% reliable and in fact, the Nikons are
easily the most solid of any film scanner to hit the market.
My only beef with the V-ED is that I should've gotten the 5000
instead. My wife was right, I was wrong. But now, if I was to get a
new scanner, it would be a Canon flatbed so I can scan 4x5 and
medium-format negs. The biggest drawback of flatbed vs roll scanners
is dust. I'll take the Nikon over flatbed anyday of the week for that
reason alone.
I REALLY like the latest formulations of Kodak Portra films. These
scan so well that the two must have been optimized for each other.
It's like the marriage made in heaven. I'll save my money from getting
the E-5 and just buy more Portra instead.
The NikonScan software is actually quite good. I have no problem with
it at all. I use it more than VueScan, but VueScan does give me other
options. NikonScan is very good in a "pro lab" environment where you
just want the software to figure things out the best it can and just
run prodution. For that, it's very good. When scanning rolls of neg
film, I just kinda put it in auto and let it cruise. Only on rare
occasion do I have to go back and tweak a scan.
AG
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