Nikon scanners being discontinued?

There is a report on RFF that the Nikon 9000 scanners haven't been produced in a while. Indeed they don't seem to be in stock at B&H and the price has been annoyingly constant for some time.

Too early to say, but should I fear that these scanners are going out of production? That would be a very unpleasant piece of news for 35mm and MF film shooters.

I also read that Nikon hasn't been forthcoming with new scan software for the newest mac OS.

The price of the 9000 is beyond what I am willing to pay right now, and I've been patiently waiting for it to go down... and now, maybe it will never come down.

It's going to get too pricey if I have to drum all my MF stuff.

Keith

I'm not holding my breath on new software for my 8000 either. Using SilverFast with my new Intel Mac.

Nikon's making too much money on digital cameras to bother with film scanners.

That said, haven't heard that they are discontinued.

You might be able to buy a nice used (working) drum scanner for the price of a new Nikon 9000. However at that price you are going to need to set up an old Mac running OS9 or maybe even OS8 to run it. Throw another $1000 at it for software that runs on a PC.

Haven't seen anything about them killing the product, they do have a recent update for the 32 bit version of Windows Vista (which seems kind of silly since everything that is Vista capable is 64 bit). And in the Knowledge Base it does say that Nikon Scan 4.0.2 is compatible with Intel Macs as long as the computer never goes into sleep mode. Dead Link Removed dated 1/14/2008

This would leave two choices for me:

keep both scanners (5000 and 9000) and keep on trucking.

sell both scanners, my 35mm and 6x9 systems and lenses and invest into digital.

I prefer the first version

Because nothing can beat the lenses, the resolution, the feeling, the advantage of film (and in my case **slides**). I just hope the IT industry won't abandon USB and Firewire ports the next 10 years, because I wouldn't be able to invest into a new Imacon scanner... and Nikon will service my scanners for the years to come, or somebody else (at least I have a detailed instruction manual with images on how to disassemble a 5000 to clean the mirror and lens).

Concerning the software: I've talked to Nikon Europe and they informed me that they don't have too much interest in improving their NikonScan software, rather I should use VueScan...

I hope VueScan will be around for the next 10 years as well, because we will see always some sort of scanners in the future.

This is the dirty trick on how the camera industry forces us to abandon our excellent equipment and trade it in for some plastic garbage which needs to be replaced every 6 months!

That's cheap! Aztek gets almost $6000 for a refurbished 4000 with DPL and warranty. But compared to a brand new Nikon 9000, it is only $500 more and will do much larger sizes.

One thing to note about NikonScan 4.0.2... On my win2000sp4 laptop it causes a bug when I exit the NikonScan software. The bug causes a crash when I shut the laptop down.... Really strange. Need to buy ViewScan so I can get rid of this problem. The other problem is that I can not scan frame 4 from my 645 pinhole.... The back I'm using spaces the frames a little too much, so by the time I get 4 frames in there I can only get half of the fourth, even with the compensation all the way at the end. The fourth frame does indeed fit within the active area, I just can't get to it.