Product Description

NIKON Super Coolscan 9000 ED -- Engineered to meet the exacting standards of imaging professionals, this advanced scanner handles a broad range of film formats such as 35mm, 120/220, 16mm, 6 x 7, 6 x 9, electron microscope and more. True 4,000 dpi optical resolution, 16-bit A/D input signal conversion and 16-bit output combine to deliver brilliant, color-true images. Digital ICE4 Advanced suite include - Digital ICE -- removes surface dust & scratches Digital ICE Professional -- automatically rebuilds & restores deteriorated color values Digital GEM -- reduces effects of film grain, revealing hidden details FireWire ( IEEE-1394 ) interface Dimensions - 19.6H x 9.8W x 8.0D; weighs 19.8 pounds

Product Details

• Brand: Nikon
• Model: 9237
• Released on: 2004-02-15
• Dimensions: 20.00" h x 8.00" w x 10.00" l, 31.00 pounds

Features

• 4,000 dpi optical resolution
• 16-bit A/D conversion, 8 or 16-bit output
• Scan speeds as fast as 40 seconds
• Digital ICE4 advanced suite of image correction technologies
• IEEE 1394 FireWire interface, PC and Mac compatible

Amazon.com Product Description
A high-performance dedicated film scanner designed for imaging professionals, the Super Coolscan 9000 ED offers high-quality scanning of 35mm slides, 35mm film strips, medium-format film, medium-format slides (with optional 120/220 mounted film holder FH-869M), glass slides for microscopes (with optional Medical Slide Holder FH-8G1), and 16mm film (with optional 16mm film holder FH-816). The Scanner-Nikkor ED glass lens offers a 4,000 dpi optical resolution, while the 10,000-pixel, three-line monochrome linear CCD image sensor and 16-bit per color A/D input (8-/16-bit output) provide true-to-life, brilliant results.

Nikon's own LED illumination technology ensures accurate color separation with no warm-up time or risk of heat damage. Scan times are as fast as 40 seconds including image transfer to display, and as fast as 13 seconds in preview mode. Automatic color/contrast compensation helps you achieve accurate results, while the ICE4 advanced digital image correction suite of technologies, including digital ICE, digital ROC, digital GEM, and digital DEE, helps to restore old slides to their original glory. Additionally, the included Nikon Scan 4 software provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use interface for managing your scans.

The Super Coolscan 9000 ED has an IEEE 1394 (FireWire) interface, while one-touch scan and preview buttons will have you scanning film in no time. PC and Mac compatible, the Super Coolscan 9000 ED also comes backed with a one-year limited warranty.

What's in the Box
Scanner, CD-ROM, interface card for Mac OS and Windows, strip film holder FH-835S, slide holder FH-835M, 129/220 strip film holder FH-869S

Customer Reviews

scanning 120 film slides
I purchased the Nikon 9000ED scanner mostly because I could not find anything else that would scann my 2.75 x 2.75 slides. There may be other products out there but the recommendations I got was to go with the Nikon. Basically I inherited a case of these slides which feature my family from roughly 1960 to 1979. Most of the slides are badly faded, underexposed or otherwise not usable. So I figured in order to save the memories I need to spend the money to do it right.

I am not disappointed. Initially I kept getting a mysterious error in the post-processing cycle. After many emails back in forth with 3rd level support staff at Nikon (nice to be able to get support) we figured out that I was setting something called digital GEM on when that wasn't necessary. The process works on badly grained film which I didn't have. Once I changed the default scan settings by not asking for GEM corrections, all has gone beautiful for me.

The red-brown slides magically come back to me with their original colors via the digital ROC process. I'm not too technical on all the things that happen within the hardware-software process but the results an amateur like me can get are simply awsome. I scan the slides at a full 4000 bpi and store the results as huge TIFF files. I figure that disk space is cheap but at least I have the original in a best possible digitized format. The slides will continue to deteriorate but not the digiatl data.

Fred Rump

Pretty Good.
If I could update my rating it would be 4 stars (instead of 5). 1/9/06

Original review: This was incredibly easy to set up and overall the scans are sharp and the color is nice. The Digital Ice 4 included with this scanner does a tremendous job with removing scratches, dust speckles, etc. It's too bad Digital Ice isn't offered with more scanners--it's really a key selling point for this brand. One problem I am having is with a horizontal shadow at the top of each frame. This seems consistent no matter which negative I am scanning. I am currently investigating and trying to contact Nikon about this. If this very faint shadow were not there---this would have been a perfect scanner. I will update when this issue is resolved one way or another. 5/25/05

Update 1/9/06: the shadowing effect described above seems to happen primarily with high contrast images shot on negative film. Most images shot on transparency do not have the shadow problem

Update: 1/9/06: I learned through usage and contacting Nikin support that you must turn Digital ICE off when scanning black and white negatives (meaning you'll have to manually clean up those images yourself). Too bad, because the ICE does a tremendous job in removing dust speckles.

Update 1/9/06: my scanner had a problem where it wouldn't eject the 35mm tray, it had become stuck in the unit. I had to take it back to a Nikon support office about 45 min from where I live. They seem to have fixed the problem as it has been working fine since then (that was about 2 months ago). Fortunately, this happened while the unit was still within warranty. Nikon support did not give me any hassles when I took the scanner in for repair.

For the most part this works very well. I have had some problems (the shadowing, the tray becoming stuck) which I don't expect for an (approx) 2K piece of equipment. In lieu of something better from another manufacturer, this seems like the best piece of equipment if you need to scan in film negatives or transparancies to get high quality scans.

Amazing scans of seriously degraded film
I bought one of these units primarily to digitally archive hundreds of old photos shot and mounted as 6x6 and 35mm slides, as well as lots of B&W 35mm negatives. The 6x6 color slides are as much as 50 years old, with some mounted in glass -- which was a bad idea, as those slides have had exceptionally severe color shifts and many have been partially eaten by fungus trapped behind the glass. The scanner's digital ICE and ROC were downright magical (GEM less so, and DEE was sometimes great but touchy to adjust for some slides). With just a few exceptions, even gross over and under exposed slides still yielded usable images. Infected slides that I could barely see through came out perfect except for little pink splotches where the fungus was particularly nasty. The only other defect observed was that interference rings were highly visible on 3 out of about 50 glass-mounted slides... which I suspect was due to the slides having been overheated years ago when they were viewed by projection. Some non-glass mounted slides had significant heat warp damage, but I didn't see serious problems in their scans. BTW, scanning 6x6 slides requires an optional adapter... it's a pitty that the adapter doesn't hold at least three 6x6 slides at once and it does take a little time to put a new slide in, but that time was hidden by the processing time using my 1.6GHz Turion laptop.
The 35mm slides are better exposed, newer, and in better condition; the worst of them was handled very well by this scanner. I haven't yet tried scanning the B&W negatives.