Dave wrote:
>I don't see significant differences in grain at the print level
>between 100 speed negs and chromes, and print level is all I really
>care about.
Really??! In the scans I see a huge difference between say Superia 100
and Sensia II 100. There's a *much* bigger difference when you go to Provia
100F. There is no apparent grain with Provia 100F. Sensia II shows little
grain. Superia 100 or Reala shows a lot of ugly grain in highlights -
particularly
skies. I haven't done enough large prints to know for sure, but from the
evidence I have there's a big difference between the quality of prints from
slides compared to prints from negs.
*However* one thing I don't recall you mentioning was what program you're
using to scan with. Are you using Nikonscan? If so, I'm not suprised you
have less problems with grain in the sky. Vuescan seems to increase grain
in highlight areas of negs, and earlier versions put a distinct orange/brown
tint in the image compared to Nikonscan.
The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the LS30 since
it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing apparent
grain in the sky. Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I get
jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan. I may be able to "improve" things
a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want to
lose too much sky detail.
> I'm scanning a variety of films from my files etc, but
> these days I tend to shoot mostly Fuji Provia 100,
> Astia 100, 64T, NPS 160, and NHG 800. (I guess I like Fuji :)
I mostly use Fuji as well. The only non-fuji film I've used much in the
last ten years is Kodak T400CN. At the moment I generally use Superia 100
or Provia 100F.
>My judgement is completely subjective and therefore probably not worth
>too much. (Take with a large "grain" of halide :) I judged the
>distortion by comparing the grain on monitor at 100% to how I think it
>would look with no distortion, and to tonal areas in the same scan
>with less aliasing distortion.
Ah. I was wondering whether you were comparing it to grain in a photographic
10x8 print or something.
> My ideas about how grain looks are formed by seeing grain
> magnified in various ways over the years.
The joys of experience. :) I'm not so fortunate.
>Generally, the grain in least aliased areas of 800 speed neg film
>looks pretty close to no distortion with LS-30 scans, to my eye.
Meaning the grain is real? To me, Fuji 800 looks very grainy when scanned.
>I'm not sure how aliasing distortion could cause color shift, but
>since aliasing becomes greater at certain tonal transitions you may be
>seeing the additive effect of two problems overlapping. Does your
>printer profile posterize blues?
I'm not using the same printer anymore, but regardless - the colour shift
was in the scanned image. See my comments above about Vuescan and negs.
Vuescan does seem to highlight odd colours in blue skies for some reason
when scanning negs. This may be an old problem though - I'd have to try
scanning the same panoramic frame again with the current incarnation of
Vuescan.
Ed has made a LOT of changes to the colour transformations since I made
the original scan. Sky grain is still an issue though.
> Jon Cone suggests to avoid overemphasing grain when sharpening scans
> (I suppose equally true for aliasing distortion), never use a radius
> setting higher than 0.8.
This is interesting. I'll have to check my unsharp mask settings. Having
said that - I don't always sharpen scans prior to printing. I imagine
sharpening
would be more important when printing to larger sizes as you are. The largest
I can print at the moment is A3+, and I have yet to try it. I've only printed
to something a little smaller than A3.
>NikonScan 2.5, and it seems about right to me.
I guess this answers my question about what program you use. :)
Rob
Rob Geraghty harper@wordweb.com
