I broke down and bought a Nikon Coolscan 9000 today. For two reasons: I found a small crack in the glass of my Epson 4990 yesterday, and also because I am very excited about my photos from Sicily and want to be able to print them larger than 12×12. I’ve never been satisfied with the print quality of medium format scans on the Epson beyond 12×12. I think I may have gotten the only 9000 in New York City, since Calumet is the only shop that had it in stock, and they had exactly one.
I’ve had the scanner just long enough to realize that the software isn’t 100% compatible with OS X 10.5 or Photoshop CS3, that I am going to need to upgrade to the glass negative carrier (or maybe save $300 and do the DIY version like this guy did?) and to realize just how big and loud the thing is. From the one or two scans I’ve managed to make so far I can already tell that I don’t like the software at all, but the final scans seem quite a bit sharper than the Epson at 1800 dpi. More reports as they come in.
UPDATE: Just for comparison’s sake, here’s the same negative scanned with the Nikon Coolscan 9000 and the Epson 4900 at 2400 DPI. (Click the image to see the 100% view) Both were scanned as raw tiff files in VueScan and inverted in Photoshop with ColorNeg. The complete photo can be seen here.
The glass carrier is impossible to keep clean. It attracts dust like Brad Pitt attracts females. It does come in handy if your negs are curling but I find myself using the original carrier 90% of the time.
Michael, thanks for that information. I am noticing softness in the grain in some areas of the scan, suggesting that the original carrier is not keeping the film completely flat, though. I had a few pieces of anti-reflective glass cut for me at the frame shop and tried laying one in the channel on top of the film. Seems to be working very well so far, so I can hopefully save my $250 for something more useful.
Next up, a home-made wet mounting carrier?