Help with NIkon LS-9000 Settings

Hello,

I recently purchased a Nikon LS-9000 to scan my medium format film. I was wondering if anyone here owning one and has worked with it a while might share there typical scan settings for transparency, B&W neg and color neg film using Nikon scan. I would like to have good resolution to print at least 16x16 and maybe even larger 20x20. Any recomendations? I do have the glass carrier already.


Jamie

Hi Jamie,

I've been using my coolscan 9000 for a few years now. I use nikon's software for my scans.

For b/w film:
scan as gray scale positive
16 bit
no ICE, no sharpening. No multi sampling.
Another important tip is to mask your negatives, when placing them in the glass carrier. For the longest time I would get dark bands across the top and bottom of my 6x6 frames. Its caused by stray light hitting the negs - I made some small strips out of black paper that I place in between frames, and it takes care of the problem. I usually don't see this problem with slide film, but it does happen, so I'd recommend always using the masks.

For slides, I scan as rgb transparency, 16 bit, no sharpening, and no ICE. No multi sampling.

My standard print size is 10.5" x 10.5" so I scan at 2500, which gives me plenty of resolution. The biggest I've printed from 6x6 negs is 15" x 15" and if I remember correctly I scanned my neg at 3500 and the resulting print was tack sharp.

Hope this helps
Mike

Hi Mike,

Thankyou for your reply! Your settings our pretty much what I have been doing in my own experimenting so far. I noticed when I try multisampling it really makes the scan time go up. Not sure if its giving me that much more of a better image. Do you find you have to manual focus much?

Jamie

No problem,
I did small test using multisampling and honestly never saw enough of a difference to bother using anything other than normal. One thing I now do i use the superfine ccd scan mode - I was getting an odd screen pattern from time to time some scans, and using that mode took care of it - its most likely just a problem with my machine.
In all the years I've had the machine, I never used anything but auto focus and I have never had a problem with sharpness.

Mike

Hi Jamie,

My settings are also pretty lean. Three things I would add.

First, I always set the focus point. Assuming the negative is perfectly flat it shouldn't matter, however, its not a lot of work and it makes sure that the focus point in the original is the focus point for the scanner.

Second, I scan at full resolution 4000ppi but set the scale to 50%. I found this tip reading Steinhoff's book and it can also be found on his site. Anyway, medium format at full resolution kicks out too large a file to work with - at least on my machine and software combination. The goal here is to get all the resolution of the machine but scale the output as part of the scan and not as part of post-process.

Finally, I always set a custom black and white point. My understanding is that it is better to do this as part of the scan and not leave it for post processing.

Hope this helps,
Brian

What would be largest optimum print I could get when scaling down to 50% on 6x6 or it does not matter. I would be printing 12*12 mostly.

I have often wondered what the scanner does internally for lower res scans like 2000dpi.

Since it is faster it is obviously scanning half the lines. Do the optics reconfigure or does it essentially "skip" every other scan line? As for the sensor, is it averaging two adjacent pixels or is it simply only reading every other one?

I would like to know how to drive the machine in the most intelligent way...