Nikon LS-5000 poor performance

I recently bought a Nikon LS-5000 film scanner. I've tried it with
several packages including NikonScan, Vuescan and SilverFast but in all
cases the results are not good in the darker areas of the picture.

I tried looking at the raw data with a USB sniffer, and it looks like
the lower 8 bits of the pixel values are random. For example if I use
the multi-read option to read the CCD lines several times then the upper
byte is the same each time but the lower byte can vary between 0 and FF
on successive reads of the same pixel.

I've tried talking to Nikon support about this but they claim the
scanner is working normally.

Can someone with an LS-5000 confirm that the scanner should be better
than this please? I want to know whether to return the device and ask
for a replacement, or just ask for my money back.

John

It should do better than that.

Make sure the mirror is clean (Google will find you instructions).



"John" <"john at osmium dot plus dot net"> wrote in message news:46953cb7$0$1633$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
>I recently bought a Nikon LS-5000 film scanner. I've tried it with several packages including NikonScan, Vuescan and SilverFast but
>in all cases the results are not good in the darker areas of the picture.
>
> I tried looking at the raw data with a USB sniffer, and it looks like the lower 8 bits of the pixel values are random. For
> example if I use the multi-read option to read the CCD lines several times then the upper byte is the same each time but the lower
> byte can vary between 0 and FF on successive reads of the same pixel.
>
> I've tried talking to Nikon support about this but they claim the scanner is working normally.
>
> Can someone with an LS-5000 confirm that the scanner should be better than this please? I want to know whether to return the
> device and ask for a replacement, or just ask for my money back.
>
> John