Sorry, I didn't read your post carefully enough.

So with all the digital ICE options enabled, how long does a scan take?

I realise 6x4 negs won't be the same as 4x3 slides, but can you give me an approximate idea?

If it's quick enough to be nearly finished by the time I've loaded up a second holder, I can see the second holder being very useful, as you say.

Thanks for this.

It's negatives I want it for, though, not slides. I have no slides.

I've done a lot of poking about in comparative reviews and forums in the last couple of days, and I have to say that the Nikon does seem to be coming out ahead. In quality by a small margin, but in speed by quite a large one.

Interesting to hear this, Martin.

It's negs I need it for, not slides - I've got 20+ years' worth (something between four and five thousand) to do (and I don't have the prints, so I don't know what I've got), and I'm not getting any younger.

I had a go with a flatbed scanner some time ago, and it took me ages to do two films - completely impractical. And the dust problems were horrendous.

The thing that attracts me to the dedicated film scanner is the speed, the digital ICE software, and the optical density range of 4.8, which is better than anything else I've seen.

From what I read, it is possible with saved settings to pretty much feed in a strip, press the 'go' button, and have it do everything. I realise that to get the very best scans, this approach won't be optimum, but at least I'll then know what I have, and I can go back and redo the relatively few that are worth spending time on.

Do you still think the flatbed is better for this set of requirements? Very open to better ideas...

My feelings too. I'd have to get it for a real steal to make it worth taking the chance.

Yes, I had messaged him, and he's replied already.

He says:

"I'm an American photographer living here in the UK for many years, and I do this to make a little bit of extra cash to fund my lens buying habit! It is a US scanner which is the same as the UK version- just needs a UK kettle lead."

So mystery solved, I guess. He's basically importing them, one at a time, somehow managing not to pay the taxes, and taking advantage of the price difference between here and the US.

And if it goes wrong, it would have to go back to Nikon USA for warranty repair.

He seems pretty up front about it - I guess it's a question of, you pays your money and you takes your choice.

I've virtually decided to buy a Nikon Coolscan 5000-ED film scanner, so I'm looking around. Microglobe have them at £729, which seems to be the best price at the moment.

There's also one with no reserve on eBay, new apparently, from someone in SW London. He's got 100% positive rep.

Looking closely, though, he's been selling several Nikon scanners. The first one (in March) he advertised as "selling because he's finished scanning his slides".

Since then, however, he's sold a "never opened" Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 ED (the top of the range one - £1500 at Microglobe), and now another "never opened" 5000-ED.

All positively repped, but I'm smelling something of a rat here...

... any ideas what might be going on?

Much, much better.

You also need to clean your sensor!!

Agreed. Certainly on my monitor the blues look very unnatural on some of them. Also some of the horizons are sloping, which distracts from the dramatic subjects.

Gulls in flight are almost impossible to capture well. I find, like these, that mine tend to be not quite sharp enough; the bright bits tend to be over- and the dark bits under- exposed, resulting in not enough visible detail.

Gulls aside, I like the kitesurfers. I particularly like number 6 - the close up of the guy with all the spray, and it's put in context well by the series.

Reduce the saturation down so that the colours look natural, fix the horizons, and they'd look really good IMHO.

I'll post at more length when I've refined my approach a bit, but I've done a very rough preliminary look, aimed more at choosing subjects and setups than a careful investigation into SR.

However, although I've seen no evidence of SR causing shake yet, with things set up right, I've found a very, very easy way of having SR produce much worse results than no-SR, with longish hand-held exposures (about 0.3s).

It's if you're using a non-AF lens, and set the SR focal length grossly wrong.

I used a 28mm SMC-A lens, but told the camera it was a 200mm.

The results with SR were appalling (so much worse that it was blatantly obvious even looking at the full frame on the camera LCD). Much worse than without SR.

When I set it back to 28, the results were better with SR than without, although I had to put the pictures on the computer to see this easily.

As I say, though, I'll post again when I've had a bit more of a careful look.