Keep Nikon 9000 or sell it in favor of Eversmart/Fuji C-550/Agfa XY-15

[Vord]

I've been debating whether it would be a good idea for me to sell the Nikon and buy a pro flatbed instead but I find it incredibly difficult to figure out if this would be a smart move.
My biggest concerns are scan quality, how the hell I would get one over here on the second floor of my elevatorless apartment (in this respect the eversmart would still be an option, plus I'm probably moving soon so perhaps the size weight won't matter in the near future). It's proven to be be extremely difficult to find any comparisons done on the internet or even to find a proper high res scan done on one of these pro flatbeds and opinions are all over the place, one person says the Nikon isn't far off from what these flatbeds can do, one says the Nikon is better and another says the flatbeds are much better... most of the times when these things are discussed at some point you can distill somewhat of a general idea of how something compares... not so much when it comes to these.

I'm quite satisfied with my Nikons scan quality (I scan mostly 6x4.5 and 6x7) but the process is tedious and I would welcome an increase in productivity, I was hoping one of these flatbeds would be a great alternative without having to compromise on scan quality, but after all this reading and googling I'm still very much in the dark about whether this would be the case. I'm hoping some of you experts can somewhat enlighten me.

Also, I live in the Netherlands so if anybody has one of these for me to try out I would love to come over so I can draw my own conclusions.

[MisterPrinter]

I have recently been comparing scans from a Nikon and iQsmart3, and with dry mounted film in the iQsmart there isn't a lot in it. Wet mounting on the flatbed is an improvement, but the real benefit is productivity.

On the iQsmart I can lay down many frames, preview and draw a crop around each one, then set it scanning for the day whilst I do something else.

There is a good scanner comparison on this very site:

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/scan-comparison/

[Vord]

Oh yeah totally forgot about that comparison, judging from that though it seems to me that most of the pro-flatbeds even the ones that are considered amongst the best like the Fuji C-550 don't achieve the same amount of resolution even as something like the older Imacon Precision II which from what I've seen achieves something similar to what I get out of my Nikon 9000. The Eversmart seems to do quite a lot better than the Fuji C550, whereas the eversmart supreme scan seems quite bad and the supreme II looks great... I know the operator makes all the difference but the results look erratic to me.

To be more specific, the options I am looking at right now are:

Eversmart Pro II, which comes with most of what I'd need (SCSI Card, Software) except a old mac but I have that. No support available on this end of the world that I'm aware of.

AGFA XY-15, doesn't have the transport locks though but it's not too far from my house (Would it even be wise to move it without them at all though?), no real way to test it either but it wouldn't cost me much except a bunch of hassle moving the thing.
Software is included, nothing else. I have the mac as mentioned but no SCSI card. AGFA won't do any more support on this scanner.

Fuji C-550, comes with software and an old mac. Not sure if it's still supported by Fuji over here.

Another option would be to sell my Nikon first in order to be able to buy a Heidelberg Topaz II from Karl Hudson, big advantage of this would be that it'd be a refurbished scanner, with all the bells and whistles and a support system if it ever gave me trouble.


The Eversmart, Fuji and the Agfa all can be had for a steal and them being built for commercial use I imagine these things are quite durable so they may still be working great?

[MisterPrinter]

The Fuji and Agfa appear to me to be quite rare and difficult to support. The Eversmarts have a few users and spares are available, for now.

Why not look at an iQsmart3 ? It's nearly as good as a late Eversmart, mine just resolves 6/6 on the USAF test target which equates to about 5700pi. It has firewire and software will run on reasonable Mac hardware, and is easy to use and maintain. A wet-mounting station is available too.

[Vord]

That would be ideal definitely but those cost far beyond what I can afford.
The Fuji, Agfa and Eversmart are offered for literally a couple of hundred so I could afford getting them in the short term without first getting rid of my Nikon 9000.
I found out there's a company in the UK that services Eversmarts though so I might give that a go.

I found a review a year ago or so that had some Downloadable high resolution files made with the Eversmart pro, that was reasonably impressive I thought back then I believe, I haven't been able to find it anymore though. The way I understood it the Eversmart pro and pro II are pretty much the same scanner but the pro II has 16bit saves which I would want, right?

[Peter De Smidt]

Do you scan color or bw? When you scan on the Nikon, do you use ICE? That is not available on the pro scanners, and spotting manually adds a lot of time.

[Vord]

Yeah I do use ICE most of the time, great time saver, though I scanned with a Polaroid Sprintscan for a few years which didn't have it, it's annoying but not a deal breaker and I imagine the flatbeds are a bit easier to make dust free than a glass holder with effectively four surfaces to have dust settle on.

[Peter De Smidt]

I can only speak to a Screen Cezanne, as I have one. I use their clam shell holders, which is just like a glass carrier but with special plastic. There are just as many surfaces for dust. If you use the main tray for scanning, you also need a hold down tray to lay on top to keep the negative flat. While the main try is 6mm, and so any dust under the main tray is pretty out of focus, dust on the top, or on the negative, or on the cover tray will be apparent. I haven't used an Eversmart of Lanovia, but I expect they need to keep the film flat too, which means something which does so, along with surfaces for dust.

I bought my Cezanne because I want to scan 4x5 and 8x10 film. If I only needed 120, I would've bought a medium format Coolscan. I used to have a 35mm one.

[MisterPrinter]

I imagine the flatbeds are a bit easier to make dust free than a glass holder with effectively four surfaces to have dust settle on.

They're not too bad, the Eversmart top glass is floating in the top cover, it moves about 5mm to allow it to press film down. When you lift the top cover the glass stays still for the first 5mm of lift and this creates a bellows effect which can suck dust into the top cover through the side vents. Dust that settles on top of the top glass can appear as dark patches on scans but it's very rarely a problem and fairly easy to clean.

Eversmart lamps are still available, but ( this is a guess ) they might not be for much longer. They are a fluorescent tube with a special gap in the phosphor coating.

Glass is expensive, but because the Eversmart can scan at full resolution over the whole bed you can avoid using the part with scratches. Check the printing on the butting target at the end of the glass, these can get worn / scratched by careless users and if the pattern is damaged the scanner will not work. There is a white reference underneath the bottom glass, this can yellow with age although I guess you could correct colour problems afterwards.

I have a some software for these, let me know if you need it.

[Vord]

I bought my Cezanne because I want to scan 4x5 and 8x10 film. If I only needed 120, I would've bought a medium format Coolscan. I used to have a 35mm one.

How come Peter? Like I said I'm quite happy with the results of the Nikon, but swapping out frame after frame doesn't make for very good productivity, at the time I'm just making contact sheets with an old Epson 4870 I have select off of that and then scan them properly on the Nikon.

[Vord]

Thanks MisterPrinter! Probably having a look at it next week so I'll let you know.

[Peter De Smidt]

How come Peter? Like I said I'm quite happy with the results of the Nikon, but swapping out frame after frame doesn't make for very good productivity, at the time I'm just making contact sheets with an old Epson 4870 I have select off of that and then scan them properly on the Nikon.

Professional flatbeds are huge, and they often depend on very expensive parts. To buy bulbs, for example, for my Cezanne would be $400, assuming they are still available. Second, ICE with color materials is a huge time saver, and the pro flatbeds don't have it. It's true that with a pro flatbed you can load up the bed and set up a bunch of scans, assuming your computer has the hard drive space.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Any moment now the Plustek Opticfilm 120 is set to launch. If it's all that the specs suggest, it may leave the Coolscan 9000 in the dust, particularly wrt 645 format. So your Coolscan may never be more valuable than it presently is, going forward.

[Vord]

Professional flatbeds are huge, and they often depend on very expensive parts. To buy bulbs, for example, for my Cezanne would be $400, assuming they are still available. Second, ICE with color materials is a huge time saver, and the pro flatbeds don't have it. It's true that with a pro flatbed you can load up the bed and set up a bunch of scans, assuming your computer has the hard drive space.

Spotting has never been much of an issue for me, it wasn't on my other scanner at least and I reckon it'll be even less so on a scanner such as this, at least not more so.


Any moment now the Plustek Opticfilm 120 is set to launch. If it's all that the specs suggest, it may leave the Coolscan 9000 in the dust, particularly wrt 645 format. So your Coolscan may never be more valuable than it presently is, going forward.

I however highly doubt this will be the case given Plusteks track record of scanners... i.e. their 35mm scanners.

[Deliberate1]

I used a Nikon 9000 for about 5 years, mostly scanning 6x6 from Rollei 6008 shot chromes. It was a great rig. The program was easy to use and the ICE feature was a time saver.
And then I bought a Toyo 45A. The Nikon could not handle chromes that big. So I found an Eversmart Pro II on Ebay and have been using that for the past few years for both MF and LF. Whether dry or wet mount, the Eversmart produces superior scans. With a well exposed, "easy" image, you may see little difference between the two. But when it comes to harder images, particularly with dark shadows, there is no comparison. You can pull much more detail out with the Eversmart. It is more cumbersome and time consuming to use. It does not have the slick holders that the Nikon does (I had the glass one). And you have to use templates to get the best results. But I do individual scans (no batch), so the time issues are not important. And despite the lack of ICE, if you do a good job cleaning the film, there should be little to clean up on Photoshop.
Finally, you may know that Nikon stopped producing the 9000 in December 2009. That caused a spike in the used market. I bought mine about eight years ago for $1800 and sold it last year for just under twice that.
In short, I can highly recommend the Pro II. I actually bought an IQIII "cheap" on Ebay. It needed a bit of work and did not have the Oxygen software, which I have since acquired. While talking to a Scitex tech, he told me that the optics for the ProII were superior to those on the IQIII, so I never bothered to put it on line.
Hope this helps.
David

[Kodachrome25]

The only reason I would ever get rid of my 9000ED would be to get an X5, but at $25,000, I just don't know if it would be worth it because all I would really be getting it for is 4x5 which I could outsource for far less money...

[Lenny Eiger]

The only reason to get rid of it would be to get a drum scanner. With all of those scanners, you are still working with a CCD... some have better lenses than others, but withy all you are going thru another lens. If you want better results, go to a PMT.

The idea of spending 25K is ridiculous, IMO. There are so many scanners out there for $1500-$7500 with all the trimmings, which would be far superior to the X5. We don't even know how long film will be around. I'm hoping forever, but we don't really know. Investing 25-50K doesn't make sense unless you can make that back in a year or two.

Lenny

[Kodachrome25]

You are right Lenny, but instead of trying to fit a drum scanner in my small ski resort sized apartment, I am better off using my D800 as a web / comp device for 4x5 and then getting professional scans of the selects. But I have been looking at drum scanners for at least 4 years now. The 9000ED is pretty fantastic for everything else though, I had West Coast Imaging do a scan of a New York City aerial shot at night on Kodachrome a few years back. Then I scanned the same image on my Nikon and with some work, it looked pretty darn good. Not as good as the drum in terms of shadow detail or the finest of details, but surprisingly good for a $2,000 CCD running Silverfast...

90% of what I print is black and white in a true darkroom anyway, the scans are just for promotion and book projects..

[Ivan J. Eberle]

The 4K dpi scan resolution of the Nikon CS9000 makes it a great scanner for 6x7* and up, but it may be leaving 1/2 the available resolution on the table for the best that the smaller formats can achieve. So hell yes, if big prints from 645 are in the mix, sell it for $3K and get something that can hit 8K instead. This "when I need a better scan I'll outsource it" argument is okay as far as it goes, . But typically it ignores all the redundant time spent in post/Photoshop, or that color-matching between old and new scans can be painful, For instance, if you have existing prints and someone requests an outsized one.
*exception being Mamiya 7.

[Kodachrome25]

Exactly Ivan, the 9000ED for my 35mm and 6x6 and true drum scans for my 4x5. I read your service offerings, I might use you for the latter...

[Ivan J. Eberle]

K25, I don't have any service offerings. You might be confusing me with Lenny Eiger. But I can recommend that you do hand Lenny a really crisp 35mm or 645 Kodachrome slide or neg to scan on his Aztek Premiere at 8k dpi (say, 6 microns aperture). The difference in a large print between one of Lenny's scan and ones from Tangos (Laserlight at 5k, and the now-defunct Calypso at 10k, interpolated) for me was like cheese and chalk. I mention this as WCI advertises that they too scan on a Tango. Fine for 4x5 transparencies, not so great for negs if not true 16bit (it is a matter of what software they're using), and to me just not worth the money compared to a high end CCD, on small format images, those Tango scans...

[georgl]

Are there any samples available on the net? I've done thorough research before buying the Tango and when looking for samples showing superior quality of 3micron-aperture I always ended up with marketing comparisons done by Aztek itself. I only had the chance to compare to two different Howtek D4000 (6micron) and the effective resolution wasn't better than with the 10micron Tango - but the build quality is certainly worse...

[Lenny Eiger]

Are there any samples available on the net? I've done thorough research before buying the Tango and when looking for samples showing superior quality of 3micron-aperture I always ended up with marketing comparisons done by Aztek itself. I only had the chance to compare to two different Howtek D4000 (6micron) and the effective resolution wasn't better than with the 10micron Tango - but the build quality is certainly worse...

There are no real comparisons on the net, none that actually can help one distinguish. The Tango is a good scanner. The 4000 is 5 generations back from the current Aztek Premier. The Premier's build quality is excellent, ceramic bearings on the main screw, etc. 3 micron capability does make a difference. So do the choice of apertures, the technique of the operator.

Lenny

[Vord]

The only reason to get rid of it would be to get a drum scanner. With all of those scanners, you are still working with a CCD... some have better lenses than others, but withy all you are going thru another lens. If you want better results, go to a PMT.

The idea of spending 25K is ridiculous, IMO. There are so many scanners out there for $1500-$7500 with all the trimmings, which would be far superior to the X5. We don't even know how long film will be around. I'm hoping forever, but we don't really know. Investing 25-50K doesn't make sense unlesss you can make that back in a year or two.

Lenny

A drum scanner does seen like the only proper upgrade I could get.
I'm looking at a Howtek D4000 this Sunday that comes with everything I would need.
I'll be holding on to the Nikon 9000 for prints up to 20x30 etc. but found that's the point things go downhill a bit.
I'm also looking to venture into 4x5. Any additional advice anyone has for me going this route is much appreciated.
Thanks for all the advice thus far everyone, I'll ofcourse also be delving into the forums archive for information.

[David Higgs]

I once found an article (since lost - I'll try the bookmarks on another computer) where a guy was scanning 4x5 on his 9000. If I remember correctly he was using the glass carrier, he could get the 4x5 in there by trimming away the edges on the neg hidden by the dark slide. Then scanning 4 times, flipping the 4x5 between each scan, until he could stitch them up in photoshop. The results were impressive and looked comparable to the Imacon. I never bothered as if I need a big print from 4x5 I ditch the V750 and pay for a drum scan. I'm lazy and an hour of my time is worth as much as a drum, which will be better after all, but might be worth a try with your current set up.

[coisasdavida]

Sometimes you find scanners for free, that would make the decision quite easy.

[Vord]

I once found an article (since lost - I'll try the bookmarks on another computer) where a guy was scanning 4x5 on his 9000. If I remember correctly he was using the glass carrier, he could get the 4x5 in there by trimming away the edges on the neg hidden by the dark slide. Then scanning 4 times, flipping the 4x5 between each scan, until he could stitch them up in photoshop. The results were impressive and looked comparable to the Imacon. I never bothered as if I need a big print from 4x5 I ditch the V750 and pay for a drum scan. I'm lazy and an hour of my time is worth as much as a drum, which will be better after all, but might be worth a try with your current set up.

I saw that article and considered it, it could also be a possibility.
The Howtek isn't too expensive though and right now I can afford it so I figured I'd try that out and see how I like it, I could always sell one of the scanners on based on my findings.
My reasons for wanting to try the Howtek is because I'm curious about drum scanners in general, I don't think I'd mind the process as much as having to spend additional time stitching and photoshopping my scans and it does seem to me a proper increase in quality. From what I've been able to find out and compare maybe not that much an increase in resolution, but the quality increase seems to be mostly in the way a drum scanners renders a scan, nice and uniform, even sharpness all over, better colour separation, no halation etc.. Apart from that I'm starting to make bigger prints and would like to go even bigger, but like I said I've found that for me 20x30 inch prints is the limit of what I consider the Nikon can do perfectly. Another thing I figured is that I could recoup some of the costs using it to do scans for others.

[Don Dudenbostel]

No experience with the Nikon but if you're happy with the scans stick with it. On big plus I'd Nikon support and size. I've had hundreds of scans done on Eversmart machines and had three Fuji. I used a 5000 Finescan Fuji for six years till it died and bought a Lanovia Quattro which is the updated version of the C550. I currently own a Hasselblad / Imacon 848 that I bought from Hasselblad.

The Eversmart and Fuji scanners are pretty much equal with a slight edge to the Fuji. The Fuji is extremely fast compared to the Eversmart. I believe the Fuji 5000 and Agfa XY 15 are the same machine. Unfortunately there is no support for the Fuji. Sad because it's superb. I found it very easy to use and keep running. The last version of software was Mac OSX 10.4 and Windows XP. You must have their software and dongle with appropriate and unique unlock codes. I sold my Lanovia Quattro last year and still have an OSX and OS9 dongle with software I'm trying to sell. Without this it only runs in demo mode.

The c550 is a monster at nearly 350 pounds. The 5000 and Lanovia Quattro are around 150pounds. They are quite large at around 28x36 inches. The floor stand came with some and is very large and heavy too.

The 848 is comparable in quality to the Fiji and Creo. It's slightly slower but still plenty fast. It's a very fine machine with comparable dynamic range to the Fuji LQ. The big plus with Nikon and Hasselblad is current support and modern software.