Great thread!
I have been putting off scanning most of my old archive of 35mm negative and slides. Just saving up to buy a Nikon CoolScan 4000 or 5000 and using the Digital ICE(?) noise and scratch filter that supposedly very good at removing dirt and scratches.
Anyone use either of these scanners?
I have a Fuji frontier minilab and for the regular work of printing and scanning negatives it's fantastic. Quicker, better and easier to use than my coolscan 5000. This is normal, it is a high end professional machine. For slides I was surprised of the quality of the coolscan especially when you scan old and faded slides. Digital ROC is stunningly good as you can seen on the scans attached to this post.
The first scan was made with the frontier with some basic correction an needs further correction with photoshop or another photo editing program. The second one was made with the coolscan and can be printed without further corrections on photograpic paper. It takes quite a lot of time to make the preview, correction and scan but the result is much better than the slide 50 year old slide probably ever was.
Scanned with the Fuji Frontier (no further corrections) :
scanned with Nikon Coolscan 5000 using digital ICE/ROC and extra corrections in Nikon Scan :
