Nikon Coolscan 8000 / 9000 ED

Tim Shim · May 19, 2006

I was just wondering if anyone has tried scanning a roll of 16mm/35mm 'motion picture' film with Nikon's Coolscan 8000 / 9000 which is capable of accepting 16mm/35mm film strips.

I would think there'd be problems with registration but I don't know for sure as I've never used the Coolscan.

Has anyone tried this?

Filip Plesha · May 19, 2006

Well you'd pretty much get killer scans, even from reversal and prints, but the registration would probably be bad.

Matt Pacini · May 19, 2006

Forget about it.

I entertained this idea a long time ago, but when I did a rough calculation of how much time it would take, it would be literally months and months of round the clock scanning to scan even a short film.

Add to that the time you'd have to tweak every strip of film you scanned for registration, and it would be like 3 years before you could start editing, and this is if you didn't have to work, eat and sleep!!!

MP

Tim Shim · May 20, 2006

Forget about it.
I entertained this idea a long time ago, but when I did a rough calculation of how much time it would take, it would be literally months and months of round the clock scanning to scan even a short film.

Add to that the time you'd have to tweak every strip of film you scanned for registration, and it would be like 3 years before you could start editing, and this is if you didn't have to work, eat and sleep!!!

MP

Matt, I did some calculations and although yes, it is on the slow side, but not exaggeratedly so. Ok, I based these calculations on Nikon's spec of 40 sec per frame scans. Of course, I assumed this was for full res 4000 dpi so scanning at less than that would speed things up somewhat. Also, this is 35mm so 16mm would theoretically halve the time. I presume.

Here's my calculation: Say for a 10 minute short, that's 14400 frames (60sec x 10 x 24fps). At 40 sec/frame, that would take 160 hours or about 7 days of non-stop scanning. Practically, I'd say maybe 30 days to work on it with about 5 hours dedicated each day. (Not quite the months and months you quoted, Matt, but you were either using a different (albeit slower) scan time or calculating based on a longer short film.)

Yea, it is still a bit of a tedious process and would require quite a bit of dedication and mind numbing persistence, but hey, for personal experimental stuff, it's a possible option. All this of course disregards the time needed to correct for registration, which in my opinion, is the bigger problem.

Has anyone actually been crazy enough to have tried this though, I'm wondering? :P

Edited May 20, 2006 by Tim Shim

Dan Salzmann · May 22, 2006

Yes but that does not inclue the time it takes to cut the film into strips and align them into the film holders.

Some kind of auto-fee system so you could keep the film on cores woul be great but also some major if not impossible tinkering with the scanner.

Greg Gross · May 23, 2006

Nikon provides a 16mm filmholder for the CoolScan 9000 ED(FH-816). From what I'm looking

at on line its only available for 9000 ED. Workflow:1. Choose adapter holder,2. Insert adaptor,

3.Start up Nikon software,4. Insert film holder,5. Select type film,6. View thumbnails,7. Display

a preview image,8. Adjust settings, 9. Adjust image quality, 10. Select image to scan, 11. Scan

and save images, 12. Eject the film. Cannot find anything about registration with the 16mm film

adaptor. Of course you would be using Nikon ED glass.

Greg Gross

Bryan Darling · May 23, 2006

I think the 16mm strip adapter could be for 16mm still camera frames not motion-picture frames. Meant for such cameras as the Minolta 16 series. I could be wrong. It would make more sense to use something like the JK optical printer with a digital still camera attached such as Canon or Nikon DSLR. They actually advertise their new printers for this person.

As for the time it'd take in comparison to a 35mm frame. Keep in mind that 16mm is about a 1/4 of the size of 35mm.