Silverfast Software

[John_M_King]

I am tempted to buy a used Nikon LS5 35mm scanner. I have found one privately owned which has only had about 1 weeks use....Yes really one week! I have had one before, but sold it when my XP based computer went up in flames and I had to settle for a Windows 7 outfit.

I know that Nikon no longer provide software to run the scanner on 64bit processors, but it is apparently possible to get the scanner to work with Silverfast Software. I am now using Windows 10, would that make any difference to using Silverfast?

I have googled 'Silverfast' and found the site, but it gave precious little information relating how effective it is. There is no indication of a price either. has anyone on this forum got any information about it or know personally how good/bad it is, and of course how much?

 

[Dave Swinnard]

Have you considered Vuescan? I use it on my Nikon 8000 scanner - it works very well both on my old Windows machine back when, and on my various Mac machines since. Price was nice too. (https://www.hamrick.com/)

 

[John_M_King]

I must confess I have never heard of Vuescan. Who produces it? When you say 'old Windows' machine, what sytem was it operating on> Since Windows 7 I have updated and use Windows 10 - will it work on that?

 

[rbultman]

+1 what Dave said. I use it on a 64-bit machine running Win7. I use it with and LS-8000 scanner as well as an Epson 4490. Scanning 35mm on the Nikon is easy. Scanning 120 is less so as I've never been able to get Vuescan to automatically find the frames. The old Nikon software was brilliant at that.

It's a free download with a reduced feature set but the purchase price is cheap, especially compared to Silver Fast. Buy it once and you get free upgrades plus the ability to use any supported scanner, unlike Silver Fast which is a per-scanner program.

All of the pictures on my Flicr account were scanned using Vuescan, except for the digital pics of course.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[juan]

I've used Vuescan for a decade. With my modern Epson V750 I use the 64-bit version, but with my older 35mm scanner, I have to use the 32-bit version of the software. You may find the Nikon is the same. There is no additional charge for downloading the additional software.
Juan

 

[John_M_King]

I am tempted even more now!

What do you see when the computer is open and ready to scan is my next question. Can somone post an image please? Then the next question did anyone have problems following the download of the free software, and how did you get around it?

 

[John_M_King]

Sometime I can be a bit slow on the uptake.

I have just remembered that my lap-top - this one - is still running on Windows XP, so it should be feasable to use the original Nikon Software. It does very little work apart from the web and E Mail. I have checked the details of the operating system and they are:-

System pack 3 Installed. Speed is 2 GHz with 1.9 Gig of RAM. The Hard Drive is 53 Gig (an Odd number???) but I have 32gig still available so that should be adequate to run the Nikon Scanner. Scan and save onto a memory stick then transfer it to my Desk Top to be worked upon then saved to an extrnal Hard Drive.

 

[John_M_King]

Well that's sorted. I bought the CoolscanLS50 and loaded it onto my laptop without a problem. When compared to my flatbed the scans are as different as chalk to cheese. The quality is so very much better, and with a dynamic range of 4.2 and a full scan file size of 69meg that makes them very good indeed.