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.

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

I think my situation is a pretty common one: I love film, especially black and white, but I don’t have the space or the time and energy to devote to a complete darkroom. Developing film is relatively easy and requires very little space, but printing means setting up an enlarger and trays of chemicals. And so, I use a hybrid process: I shoot and develop my own black and white film, but scan and print in digital.

It’s a pretty great situation, as far as I’m concerned. With my mid-range flatbed scanner (an Epson 4990) and my mid-range printer (Epson R2400), I can print excellent quality 12×12 black and white prints with no trouble at all. Larger sizes are beyond my capacity at the moment, but I’m thinking that a better scanner and printer are looming somewhere in the not-too-distant future.

I had been planning a long, drawn out technical discussion about scanning, but I got about half-way through writing it and gave up. For the few people who are using similar equipment and materials, a lot of the research has already been done. I think it’s probably wasteful for me to scan a negative ten different ways just to show that my approach is valid. I have done a lot of research, spent a significant amount of time experimenting, and I have come to the point where I feel like I am getting the most out of my somewhat limited equipment. I am happy to share my approach step-by-step; anyone who is curious can do their own experiments or further research to see if my methods prove out.
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I will be posting some in-depth details on my current scanning process when the “taking a picture” series continues, but some posts about scanning I’ve come across recently are worth pointing out.

I purchased a refurbished Epson 4990 flatbed sacnner about a year ago, knowing that it was only an interim solution until I could justify the cost of a dedicated film scanner. I deliberately stayed away from the top-of-the-line V750 flatbed, knowing that I would want to replace it in a year or two anyway. I have been able to coax a lot of performance out of the Epson, using VueScan and specialized holders from betterscanning.com; sometimes even going as far as to wet-mount my negatives for maximum fidelity. The 4990 was always a compromise, though, and I have come up against the limits of the scanner again and again. At some point in the future, I would like to be able to make larger prints than I am currently able, 16×16 or even bigger, without having to send my film out to be scanned. And so, I’ve been collecting information about the Nikon CoolScan 9000, which is probably the best film scanner most amateurs can expect to own.

• Michael Dominic, of weaved.net, posted some information about wet-scanning with the CoolScan 9000, using a modified glass carrier. Looking at the 100% crops, the wet-scans at 4000 dpi have me drooling. I have a wet mount carrier for the 4990, but the highest optical dpi is somewhere around 2000, and even then, those pixels are not nearly as sharp as a scan from the CoolScan. This isn’t just overly-enthusiastic pixel peeping—the real world difference between the two scanners means that I can currently print at a maximum of 12×12 at a quality I am happy with. Scans from a CoolScan 9000, on the other hand, can be printed at 24×24 and beyond, given a good enough original negative.
• Colin at Photostream wrote about “The disappearing scanner”, mentioning that the CoolScan 9000 is getting harder and harder to find in stock anywhere, and is likely not in production any more. The number of options remaining for those who need to scan medium format film are dwindling.

This is bad news for medium format fans like myself. I am coming to the party quite late, but I have the enthusiasm of the newly converted. I am happy to be shooting medium format black and white film for the forseeable future, but the supplies and equipment are going to get harder and harder to find. With the decline in film usage, it’s obvious that R&D for film scanners has been put on the back burner and we can expect no new, significant improvements any time soon. I get the feeling that the CoolScan 9000 represented a golden age in the medium format digital darkroom, and that time may be quickly passing.