Accessories

If you're looking at this scanner you're already serious about photography
Pros
Best scanner for the money
Fastest high resolution film scanner currently on the market (as of 2008)
Allows you to use your old 35mm as a 19+MP camera
Digital ICE and other corrective extras are great on most images
Works with C-41 process B&W negs

Cons
Expensive
Fastest is still slow, especially since ICE is usually necessary and slows the process down
Does not work with regular B&W negs
Has problems giving proper tone and shadows on some slides, mostly Kodachrome

Conclusion: Good or bad, it's about the best you can get if you need to convert your old negs and slides and don't have thousands of dollars to get something better.

This is my second Nikon scanner. I used to own the LS2000 which was excruciatingly slow and tedious to use. The results were great, yes, but the length of time it took to scan was too long for me. I also really didn't have the hard drive space for storing the huge files. Back then you didn't have hundreds of gigs at your disposal.

I purchased the 5000 because I needed the highest possible resolution and quality within a reasonable price range. If you want better you're probably looking at a drum scanner that costs a whole lot more.

Thankfully, the 5000 is considered one of the faster 35mm scanners you can get. But if you're new to film scanners, plan on waiting. The best to expect is about 30 seconds without any use of ICE or other corrections to the image. In my experience, ICE is always necessary which means the estimated times given by Nikon (under 30 seconds) are overly optimistic at best. I scanned fresh negatives after being developed and they still required ICE. The scanner just picks up every single detail - which is both good and bad.

I use an Intel Mac and overall everything works fine. Ditto what others have said about Nikon's software which is indeed buggy. It's crashed a few times on my computer. However, it's always up and running fine after I restart it (the program, not the computer). Have not tried VueScan yet, but it's something I'm looking into.

I wasted several hours when I first got the scanner trying to find the ideal setting for my work - negatives and slides that go back more than 25 years. They have dust on them and some of them have minor scratches. With that in mind, I strongly recommend the following settings to anyone in a similar situation:

Use ICE on every scan. Start with normal setting at first and go up to "fine" if the image still has flaws.
Enable "post processing" and put ROC at zero (don't ever need it) and GEM at maximum (for grain) for negs. In my experience no more than level 1 for grain is necessary for slides and you might not even need it at all. Negs, however, must have it unless you want a grainy image.

These settings work with the majority of negs and slides.

A major plus and two major minuses to keep in mind:

This scanner WILL work great with C-41 based B&W film. Because it reads it as color the ICE function works just like it does with color. I was extremely thankful for that.

The scanner's ICE function will not work with regular B&W film. Unfortunately, B&W film is extremely prone to scratching and major flaws that show up when they're scanned. I found major scanning services online that actually refuse to deal with B&W negs because there's so much post-scanning (Photoshop) work involved to make the image look good. Why some company hasn't come up with a solution for this is baffling given the popularity and abundance of B&W film, especially by pros and semi-pros. In any case, I've tried to scan my B&W negs and the end result is horrible. I'm looking at a couple hours of work per image on Photoshop.

The scanner also has a hard time with Kodachrome slides. I've tried several and the scanner does a rather poor job and recreating the true colors of the image, especially in the shadows. Overall, it tends to severely darken these images in my experience. I'm still researching to see if there's a setting fix for this within the software.

This scanner will turn your 35mm camera into the equivalent of a 19+MP camera. The basic setting 8 bit depth scans are about 60MB (tiff, not jpeg) and almost 120MB when you go to 16 bit. This isn't that helpful to anyone who just wants an 8X10, but it's extremely important if you're trying to do commercial work. Online stock photo agencies, for example, want 50+MB files.

This scanner will allow you to keep using 35mm for now. If you can afford a Nikon D300 or better than definitely make that leap and never look back. But if you need this scanner anyway to upgrade your old negs and slides, this will allow you to use that older equipment for a bit longer. I know I have an old 35mm 1:1 macro lens that I still enjoy using and now I can with the help of this scanner.

The two other scanners I contemplated were the less expensive Nikon CoolScan V and Epson Perfection V700 and 750. I chose the 5000 over the V because it was faster - very important given how many scans I need to do. And the Epson became a non-choice after reading about how much trouble those models have with focusing. If you want to spend less and don't have many negs or slides to scan then get the Nikon V. The far more expensive Nikon 9000 is only worth it if you have medium format film. Otherwise there's no reason to pay more for that model.

An excellent scanner with lousy software...
I've been using this scanner for about a year to scan my slide collection. First thing I learned--don't even try to use it with the Nikon Software (I'm on a Mac). Use VueScan instead. It works great and handles individual scans and bulk scans with ease, automatically naming slides to fit into my file naming system.

The scanner works very well. I've had no problems. The bulk slide feeder and the individual slide feeder interchange well and work well. Quality of scans is excellent. ICE (Nikon's photoprocessing method to reduce noise from dust) is great! I very rarely retouch slides due to dust. In fact, film grain is more of a problem.

Recommended!

Very Good Scanner
I guess I should prefix this review with the caveat that I haven't had a lot of experience with photo or film scanners. However, I have to say I've been really happy with the quality of the scans I've gotten out of the CoolScan 5000. I've been using it to digitize family slides dating from the late 50's through to the mid 70's. I'm a bit of a neophyte, so I don't have much insight into how I should use the more advanced settings, but in general I've found that the scans seem to look better with digital ICE on. Digital ICE removes specks and spots with very little degradation that I can notice (that doesn't mean there isn't any, I'm sure there is, but I just haven't noticed it). You can't do ICE with post processing because it requires an infrared scan (there's a separate bulb for this in the scanner). I've also had a chance to scan a few relatively recent color negatives (from the 90's) and those look a bit better than the prints I have. So over all I've been very happy with this scanner, though I have to admit I haven't had experience with similar (and certainly cheaper) devices.

Nikon Disappoints Again
Until it arrived - and this device is hard to find even on Amazon - I didn't realize the Coolscan 5000 can only scan one slide. One slide! Even my much cheaper Konica-Minolta Dimage IV came with a four-slide adapter that fed the scanner. The 5000 comes with a 35mm film adapter, but that only accepts two to six-frame strips of film. It's a problem, but as usual Nikon as an expensive solution: the SF-210 that stacks up 50 slides to automatically feed the 5000. Amazon has a new SF-210 for $424.95 - or used for $399.95. Another annoyance that surprised me was this USB 2.0 scanner cannot be plugged into a USB hub, it must be plugged into the computer directly, and no other USB devices can be used while you are using the scanner. The manual says on page 22, "The scanner may not function as expected when used with other USB devices. Should the scanner not function as expected, use the scanner with all other USB devices disconnected." Speaking of owner's manual, the manual on the CD, when copied to my hard drive and opened, keeps referring to the paper manual with advice like "for details, see the owner's manual." What! What's the point of putting an owner's manual on a CD if it's not the same manual? Beware of the Nikon Coolscan 5000. You can scan those old slides a lot cheaper.

Great Scanner
I rented this scanner over the weekend to start scanning hundreds of slides. Included was the SF-210 automatic slide feeder. I had imagined putting 25-50 slides in the hopper and coming back periodically to change them.

As it turned out, the SF-210 was a miserable waste of time. See my review of this product.

I had scanned slides with several brands of scanners (Epson and Canon) and found that the result was marginal at best because of dust and dirt. Regardless of how I cleaned the slides and the scanner, the dust was always a problem.

This scanner has the wonderful ICE technology which almost completely eliminates the problem. The 4000 dpi resolution allows cropping.

The software that comes with the scanner, and the updated versions available from the Nikon web site are both clunky and have not kept up with the times. More than a year after Windows Vista was released and they do not have a version that will work with it! I have been a software engineer for decades and know a poor user interface when I see one (Nikon Scan 4.0). For instance, when you choose preferences, it asks you if you want to save them, load them, or use defaults. Not how to set them. Often the software's user feedback is erroneous or confusing. You click on the Scan button and find a minute later that nothing happened. If the scanner jams, it doesn't provide decent error recovery and recommends that you press a button that does not exist.

If you know how to do photo retouching with Photoshop, you will find a way to set up Nikon Scan and then be able to produce some eye-popping results.

It is really unfortunate that the only automatic slide feeder you can use with this product is so completely flawed.

After giving up on using the slide feeder, I was able to scan slides at a rate of one per 2 minutes.