scanning 35mm B/W slides with coolscan V

I wonder if anyone else has encountered this:

when I scan 35mm b/w slides with a Nikon cooolscan V ED the machine
sometimes claims there is no film in the scanner and refuses to scan
or preview. it only does this for certain slides but I cannot fathom
why.

Any thoughts? How does it detect the proesence of a slide?

thanks for any helpful comments,

Robert

 

Very thin (optically) slide? No contrasting items for the AF to focus on?

Turn the slide?

I've had the 5000ED balk at a number of B&W films even in the strip feeder,
sometimes inserting the strip backwards would resolve the issue sometime
not.

Make sure the ICE is off if it is a silver based film.

-Jim

 

I've never used the Coolscan, but perhaps if you've set the media to
"slide", it is expecting a colour slide (which maybe also allows ICE to
be turned on, which isn't compatible with "real" B&W film).

 

II:

It could be that glass-mounted slides cause problems.

If you haven't already (and if it doesn't affect the frame spacing), try
setting your scan software to B&W negative and then reverse it afterwards.

 

Robert,
Make sure that your choice of film is set to NEG-MONO and the scale
is set to GRAYSCALE in the nikon scan window. This does tell the
software you are scanning a B&W Negative. If it still has trouble
"See" the film, then try turning the film over so the emulsion is
facing up. This may allow the AF to "see' the film. If that trick
still doesn't work, there maybe some dust on the lenses and the
scanner will have to go in for service.

Any how, good luck.

Draco

 

thanks for all the suggestions. I have tried them already in fact.
the slides are mounted and I can happily scan many otehrs from the
same batch but a few just seem to always be undetectable. Turning the
slide round does sometimes help. It's not the focussing that fails,
it's the detection of whether there is even a slide in there.

strange,

thanks anyway,

Robert

 

RobertL wrote,on my timestamp of 31/10/2008 7:03 PM:

indeed. Are the mounts in any way different from
others you might have used with colour slides?
Like, thinner for example?

 

It's just a few slides from a batch where all the others scan fine. I
can't see anything odd about these ones. very odd. What i'd like to
know is how the scanner detects that it has a slide in the gate -
tehre seems to be no swictc hso perhaps it is optical.

Robert

 

RobertL wrote,on my timestamp of 5/11/2008 11:49 PM:

Hmmmm, just removed the mounted slide insert on mine
and there are no switches anywhere. I guess it's optical.
Only thing I can think of is this:
mounted slides go into the insert in "portrait" position.
That is: with one of the narrow frame sides facing the
front of the scanner. As opposed to "landscape", where
it's one of the wide sides of the frame.
Maybe for those you're inserting in "landscape"?

 

Try giving Vuescan, a scanning software, a try. The demo version
(watermarked) is free, so you can see if it makes a difference.

With my own scanner (Minolta 5400) + Vuescan, I can scan blank frames if
I want to...

 

I am inserting it the correct way, and as I said, most slides from the
same batch, with the same mounts etc, work.

One possibility (for my slides) is that the slide detection is optical
(as you say, there seems to be no switch) and that it detects using
the centre of the slide - as I suupose it would

My slides are stereo pairs (two images 24mmx18mm side by side) and
the "centre line" of the slide is actually nearly black. Perhaps this
fools the detector for some slides.

Robert