Nikon Scanner

By John | Published
Dec
15
2014

Yesterday I had to scan a Velvia slide from my files.  Yes, for those of you don’t remember the “old” days, there was a thing called “film” which had to be digitalized before you could use Photoshop on the image.  A film scanner was the answer.  But, a dedicated 35mm film scanner (rather than a flatbed scanner with a film holder) is now quite a rare beast.  I’m not sure such a thing is even manufactured any more.  I have a long discontinued Nikon Coolscan 4000, which is certainly adequate for magazine-sized reproduction.  The problem, however, is getting the scanner to work with any current computer operating system.

I’m running Windows 7 64-bit on both desktop and laptop machines, but Nikon scanner software was written many years before this OS.  I guess I could have kept an old computer around, but no thanks, I don’t want to do that.  So how have I been able to use my scanner — infrequently though I do — along with Nikon Scan software on my current machines?  Ah, Google to the rescue.  Type in “how to use a Nikon scanner with Windows 7 64” and this link appears (there are other links but this is the one I used):

Follow the directions, and all is well.  Don’t have Nikon Scan software?  It’s still available for download directly from Nikon’s website.

7 Comments

  1. Andrew McLachlan December 16, 2014 at 6:21 pm #

    Thanks for sharing this John. I will give this a try tomorrow. Currently I have an old Windows XP computer that I kept around just for scanning slides with my Coolscan 5000 because I figured the software would never run on my newer Windows 7 computer.

  2. Earl Robicheaux December 17, 2014 at 5:58 am #

    Happy Holidays:
    FYI; Laser Soft Imaging (SilverFast Software) sells a scanning software solution that supports all of the Nikon film scanners that is a decent product. (http://www.silverfast.com/show/scanners-nikon/en.html). You should contact them a see about being a rep…:-)

  3. James Doyle December 17, 2014 at 2:45 pm #

    John,

    I have the same scanner, the Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 and ran into the same problem when upgrading computer operating software some years ago.

    I ended up using VueScan Scanner Software which is compatible with all current operating systems including Mac.

  4. John December 17, 2014 at 5:26 pm #

    I actually did this when I first upgraded to Windows 7, some time ago. Thought I would mention this option since I recently received an email query about scanning.

  5. Mike December 18, 2014 at 2:39 pm #

    Plustek makes a number of film scanners. I don’t know how they compare to the Coolscans since I never owned one. When I stated to look, they were already long gone.

  6. Jay December 20, 2014 at 9:24 pm #

    So everyone, what modern day film scanner do you recommend for all my old slides with my super fast Windows 8.1 machine? I’m afraid that I may have exceeded my technology upgrades far beyond my ancient slides product!

  7. Rikard December 21, 2014 at 4:26 pm #

    I recently sold all my digital gear and went with leica m6 for 35mm and a mamiya 7 for 120-film. The film scanner I bought is called Plustek Opticfilm 120 and I must say that it is excellent. There is a long thread on rangefinderforum.com with discussions and scan samples.