3200 scans have much more grain than prints?

Hello everyone,I am trying to scan some 3200 speed B&W prints and

they keep coming out far more grainer than the prints?I have tried

on several different DPI's 300,500,800 and it still has the same

effect,any suggestions?

B+W is really tough to scan. A wet scan might help.

 

What sort of scanner ??

yes scanning real BW film will produce a lot more "grain artifacts" than those that are really there

 

Do not use grain correction,ICE, or similar

 

scan as transparency and pray for the best

lol...Unfortunatly all I have to scan on at the moment is a HP psc 1210....not a good or fair scanner by any means.I am saving for a better scanner for the future.

I had an HP 4200 scanner, and it was pretty good except for b&w prints. The grain even on FP4+ prints would always come out exagerated and foul looking. Nothing I did with settings made much difference, and it didn't work properly when I switched to Win XP. Away it went, and I got an Epson 4490. The difference is amazing. Grain looks like grain and overall scan quality is excellent. The Epson software is also fantastic compared to the goofy and time wasting HP "intelligent scanning technology" nonsense.

Whatever scanner you have got, it will exaggerate the film grain. For high speed shots less grainy, you are probably better off with fuji 1600 colour print film. Generally the fine grained films like TMX scan the best.

Yep... One trick is to make sure the scanner software has any form of sharpening turned off.

It's not true that desktop scanners always exaggerate grain.

 

Nikon V doesn't exaggerate grain *at all* using Vuescan (and you can even reduce grain while keeping it sharp)...

 

My old Epson 3200 didn't exaggerate grain *at all* with Epson's scanning application or with the bundled version of Silverfast.

Funny thing about my High rez b&w scans. When I view them on Paint Shop Pro. They look nasty grainy. In Photoshop they look TONS better. This also happens with color, but not to the same extent. The Prints always look good.

I assume you're scanning the negative.

 

Try turning off any sharpening or grain reduction or any other automagic thingies.

 

Try scanning at the highest resolution (say around 2400 or above) and then scale the image down in your image editor.

 

I've not had much problem scanning a variety of B+W film, from ISO25 to ISO1600.

 

Paul

Interesting. Grain in my b&w negatives is always exaggerated by my film scanner, but I haven't noticed any particular problem with flatbed scans of my prints.

Are you sure it's not "grain aliasing" that you're seeing?

 

First, realize that the grain pattern you see is really grain clumping, not the actual silver halide grains. When a scanner is resolving significantly below being able to resolve the grain clumps, you may get a smooth, less "grainy" (and less sharp) image in which the scanner noise becomes the limiting factor. Sort of like using Microdol-X.

 

If the scanner resolution is well above the grain clumping, it clearly resolves it for what it is.

 

But when a scanner's resolution is right at the edge (or just below) of being able to resolve the grain clumps distinctly--kind of a resolution Twilight Zone--it produces an aliasing effect that exaggerates the grain appearance. It optically joins grain clumps to form larger clumps, not being able to resolve quite finely enough to distinguish them. The answer, then, is to either go to much higher scan resolution, or loser resolution.