[filmscanners] RE: Grain aliasing: Thoughts, solutions?

["Laurie Solomon" <laurie@advancenet.net>]

Since T400CN is a chromogenic film, it technically does not have any grain
structure in terms of individual silver halide crystals but rather a dye
cloud.  While the constituent compnents of the dye cloud may appear as if it
were grain, the questions become (1) can one actually get grain alaising
with these films such that the methods for dealing with that problem will
work with those films and (2) does it act and respond to grain reduction
functions in scanning software in the same way as true grain.  Many methods
of reducing the grainy appearance also blur or reduce the detail as well
since they involve diffusion, blurring, defocusing, etc.

In the end, You will find that attempts to resolve this sort of problem in
any scan with any film often involve trade-offs in terms of loss of detail
and sharpness.


-----Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Peter Klein
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 8:05 PM
To: laurie@advancenet.net
Subject: [filmscanners] Grain aliasing: Thoughts, solutions?


I use a Nikon LS-2000 scanner. Even with T400CN, which is supposed to scan
well, I'm getting a lot of grain aliasing and/or noise in the dark parts of
pictures, particularly in my available light pictures.  I can see the grain
on the negs with a loupe, and it's quite a bit smaller than what I'm
getting in the scans.

I can use VueScan's grain reduction (Medium seems to be the sweet spot) to
reduce it somewhat. But there's a limit to how much this works before the
image degrades visibly.

What do you think would be the most effective thing(s) to do? Some thoughts
come to mind:

- Pick up a used SprintScan 4000 (no ICE/GEM, but affordable and less prone
to show dust, etc.)
- Get Neat Image.
- Blow big bucks on an LS-4000
- Learn how to slightly defocus the LS-2000. (I've heard this takes a long
time to accomplish).

Neat Image in particular intrigues me, if it's not too "fiddly" once set
up.  I'm also seriously thinking about getting an Sprintscan 4000.  Does it
do better in the shadows than the LS-2000?  Or are there less drastic
solutions that work nearly as well.

--Peter Klein
Seattle, WA

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