Minolta Scan Dual IV - horrible grain

[ben_lazarus]

I just received my new Minolta DS IV, and I'm seeing some really

disappointing results. I've scanned about a half dozen E100VS and

Portra 400UC shots, all of which were taken with a Contax Zeiss 50mm

1.4. All the scans were at 3200ppi, and I've tried a variety of

options, including 8bit, 16bit, 16bit linear, with and without

multisampling, with and without "digital grain dissolver," with and

without "auto dust brush," and with and without "pixel polish." I've

also tried a couple of scans with Vuescan.

 

All the slides and negatives were processed at a pro lab, put into

archival pages immediately, and removed only long enough to scan them.

 

In all of them, I am seeing what looks like huge, prominent grain -

especially in smooth-toned areas like blue sky. Sizing down reduces

the effect of course, but it's still visible, even sizing down to 4x6"

300dpi. Did I get a lemon? Is it just a serious coating of dust? I

do not see this effect on the light table under my makeshift loupe (an

inverted Pentax 50mm). Am I doing something wrong? Expecting

something I shouldn't be expecting? This is my first film scanner, so

I have nothing to compare these results to, but they are not at all

what I was expecting. Any comments or suggestions will be really

appreciated.

 

I'm going to try to attach an example. It's E100VS, scanned at 16bit

with no scanner processing or multisampling at all enabled. It's been

cropped down to the film frame size, and I've manually removed dust

with Photoshop healing brush, but no other adjustments have been made,

save converting to 8bit, and making it into a photo.net-friendly jpeg.<div></div>

[wildwoodgallery]

Here's a scan with Velvia 100 with my Dual IV.

 

Rick

[wildwoodgallery]

Here's another scan with Velvia 100 and sky is grainy too.

 

Rick

[mendel_leisk]

Maybe it's just been a long week, and I'm grumpy, but:

 

First off, I can't see the horrible grain. Ok, it's a reduced jpeg, maybe it's there.

 

The answers you're going to get include, all of which I'm sure you could see for yourself:

 

1. Experiment with a different films.

 

2. Try a different scanner, one with GEM or grain diffuser.

 

3. Try Neat Image, Noise Ninja, etc.

 

4. Try de-focus slightly.

 

5. My favourite: Live with it. It's real grain.

[ben_lazarus]

Rick - I don't see the grain/noise/whatever-it-is in your images as I do in mine. I see some jpeg artifacts, but not big chunks of mottled ugliness like I see in mine. Am I being especially critical of my own images, or crazy, or uh.

 

Mendel - Thanks for the suggestions. Are you serious that you can't see the effect I'm trying to describe in the sky of my picture? It is very visible to me, even in the jpeg. I can see it in the jpeg when viewed on both my Trinitron CRT, as well as the dim old LCD on which I'm writing this. As to your favorite suggestion - do you really think this is film grain? I would not expect film grain from a modern ISO 100 slide film to be so strikingly resolved by a $250 3200dpi scanner.

 

As to your other suggestions:

 

1. Experiment with different film - I've used both an ISO 400 C41 film and an ISO 100 E6 film and see the same effect. Do you think I should try more?

 

2. Trying a different scanner - this isn't very easy for me to do, but I'll keep it in mind.

 

3. Trying noise filters - I went to their websites and looked around. Actually, this seems to make the most sense, in terms of what might be causing it. Again, I have no experience with film scanning, so I didn't consider that it might be digital noise, but THIS I might expect from a $250 3200dpi scanner. Thinking along those lines, I did another scan of a 400UC shot, but with the scanner moved far away from the monitor, and 16x multisampling. No change.

 

4. Backing the focus off - tried it; no change.

 

5. No, I can't get used to it :) As to whether it's film grain or noise, I'm attaching another picture, this is a crop at 100% of a 3200dpi scan, this time of 400UC. It's some twilight blue sky, and part of a pile of some type of crushed stone. Maybe someone with more experience than me can call this out for what it is.

 

Thanks again for the suggestions.

[greg_campbell1]

I know how you feel. When I fist got my Canon 4000, I thought it was broken....

 

The grain is unavoidable. It's on the film, and the scanner does it's best to resolve all the detail that it can. At higher resolutions, an effect called 'grain aliasing' also adds to the noise.

 

Try the Neatimage demo, it works well. If you like, e-mail me a full sized scan at high JPG quality. (Filesize<10MB) . I'll run it through NI and return it. ggeonerdd at yahoo dot com

 

-Greg

[oskar_ojala]

I can't say with 100% certainty if this is normal or not, but I can say that there are finer grain films than E100VS and 400UC. Yesterday, I tried a friend's new Dual IV and had some shots printed on his brand new printer. Prints about 9x6" showed no grain whatsoever (scanned from Velvia50 and Provia 100F) and sharpness was excellent.

[panos_voudouris]

When looking at some of my Velvia 50 slides with a 4x loupe, the grain is visible in blue skies (or other uniform colour areas) so that is only going to be amplified when scanned at high resolutions and displayed on a large monitor. Faster films will only make this worse and some films are more scanner friendly than others.

 

There is a limit at how high a resolution you can scan 35mm films, after that you just get more grain, and it seems to me that 3000dpi or more just gives me more grain. I have no grain visible when scanning at 1600dpi :-)

[armando_fraz_o]

I've been using an elite II for an year now and scanned from ISO800 to ISO100 films. Maybe I have a little less grain from my ISO400 negs (superia) or maybe it is just because I'm on 2820 dpis instead of 3200, I can't see much difference beetween your and my scans of ISO100 films.

I'd say it's just the normal film grain, nothing else. Provia or Velvia 100 or 50 have much smaller grain and it makes a difference on those scans. Even an ISO100 sensia show a little less grain. But it is always there.

What I do about it is using Neat Image on most of my files, but still I use it carefully and to a small amount of grain reduction. Amazingly I discovered that there's a lot of information and resolution in the grain and I really prefer a little grain and all the possible detail than perfectly smooth images with little detail (for instance use NI on an image of the wings of a butterfly shoot at 1:2 to 1:1 and the texture no longer looks like scales to be more like plastic).

I also find my 8x12 lab prints from my scanned files with a perfectly acceptable level of grain, it can be seen, but doesn't look that bad.

 

Grain is usually seen as pixels that vary on intensity but not color. Digital noise is when pixels are different from each other on both intensity and color.

[david_hansen7]

That stoneo1.jpg looks exactly like what I get from Porta 400. And I also get dismal results with the new Kodak reversal films. They scan with MUCH more grain that is really there. This is all on a Minolta 5400 using the included software. Which also gives E100G and E100VS a fantastically horrible pepper-grain effect.

 

I do however, get phenomenal results with Provia 100F.

 

I may consider trying 3rd party software and seeing if that does it.

[lyle_aldridge1]

My take -- There is probably nothing wrong with your scanner. It is just showing you what's really there on the film. I came to this realization soon after getting my first film scanner. Even though I was a prolific shooter (and former weekend pro) at least 98% of what I had shot on color film in my entire life had never been enlarged beyond 4x6. Suddenly, I was projecting the equivalent of 8x10 and 11x14 color enlargments on my monitor, and wow, there was a lot of grain!

[oskar_ojala]

Just took a look at some full-res Provia 100F and Velvia 50 pics scanned with a DS IV, the "grain" in skies is so small that one can't say what is noise and what is grain.

[jbq]

When I got my Dual IV I was surprised at how much grain it showed scans which looked perfectly smooth with my previous scanner (a flatbed). Checking the film with a powerful loupe it turns out that the grain is there, it's just that my previous scanner couldn't resolve it. Yes, even on slow slide films.

 

Get a more powerful loupe (at the very least 12x, 20x would be better) and you'll see the grain on film.

[catcher]

I bought my Dual IV about 2 months ago (give or take) and have scanned probably a hundred slides and twice as many negatives. I'm pretty sure what you're seeing is the grain that's on the film. I'm not at all happy with the grain now in 400 and 800 print film. I knew it was there and could see it in prints, but the scanner just does an amazing job resolving all that grain. However, when I Scan velvia 50 the grain is nearly invisible. So I'd try scanning some finer grained film (the E100VS according to Kodak website is rms 11, velvia 50 is rms 9 for granularity). I think you'll see the difference. In sum, it's the film, not the scanner.

[catcher]

Oh, and if you want to see grain scanned try scanning some Elite Chrome 400. Kodak info says it has an rms of 19! My first scan from a transparcy of EL400 cured me from ever shooting that film again. Now that's grainy film. And the scanner resolves every bit of it.

[chris_taylor4]

I have been using a 5400 for about 2 weeks now. The one thing I don't like about it is it shows all the mistakes I made in taking the photographs. I never fully apprecited how much difference there is between film. Like others said, most of my photos (with fuji superia or kodak gold) were looked at at 4x6 or 5x7, and looked fine. Now I see the grain. Still looking for the best way around it. I am going to try what panos said about scanning at a lower dpi.

[grizzlymarmot]

This is not really the film grain but scanner noise. Here is a nice explanation

<A href="http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Grain.htm">http://

www.photoscientia.co.uk/Grain.htm</A>

[mendel_leisk]

Ben, I'm a myopic old bat, and getting longsighted now, as well, so...

 

Anyway, I would see the grain as assurance that your focus is spot on. Bear in mind it will not be as apparent in a print.

[suman]

http://www.helicon.com.ua/pages/index.php?noisefilter I use Helicon Noise remover for the scans. Odd thing is it can only read Jpegs, no tiff. BTW, nice thread. I though I was the only person who feels sad with scans from a slide which shows prominent grains when viewd under actual pixel settings in PS. One good things is, they never show up in 8x10 or 4x6 prints.

[ben_lazarus]

Wow, thanks again for all the comments and suggestions. I guess I'm still dubious about it purely being the film grain itself. I happened to also just receive my new Epson R800, so I did some tests making prints. I can very clearly see (with the naked eye, held close to arm's-length) the grain/aliasing/noise/whatever-it-is effect in even a 4x6" print (with borders) from a E100VS scan. Again, it's most strikingly visible in the smooth-toned areas, but from zooming and paging around in Photoshop, I believe it's consistent across the entire image. The best way I can think of to describe what the effect looks like in print is if anyone remembers what looking through a Pentax K1000 viewfinder was like (probably other dark focus screens are similar, but this is what I'm familiar with) - the focus screen always added a consistent layer of dark 'grit' to the scene.

 

I just can't believe that what I'm seeing is FILM GRAIN, in a 4x6 bordered print held at arm's length, made from a 3200dpi scan of an ISO 100 slide film.

 

I also tried the Neat Image demo, as several suggested, with very good results. I had to bump the noise reduction to 100% in both channels to eliminate the effect, but it did eliminate it. I did an 8x10 print of the image filtered with Neat Image, and another of the unfiltered image, and I cannot discern any loss in sharpness or image quality in the filtered print, while it at the same time, it did completely remove the gritty/grainy effect I've been talking about.

 

So where does that leave me. I still do not really know what it is - if my scanner is slightly malfunctioning, if something else in my setup is contributing to the effect, if it's film grain, grain aliasing, or pure scanner noise. I am still within the return policy window the DS IV, and considering returning it for a Coolscan V. I know that I don't have any assurance that I wouldn't see the exact same effect with the Nikon, but maybe Digital-GEM is another solution to the problem. The price difference between the DS IV and the Coolscan V isn't as much once I've had to buy Neat Image Pro to be able to get satisfactory results from the DS IV. Also, on an unrelated note, I completely underestimated how much of a pain dust control would be. Even scanning these slides and negatives that I received from the pro lab the same day, tediously applying canned air and a camel's-hair brush, while wearing darkroom gloves, I still have a lot of work with healing brush waiting for me to eliminate all the dust. I think the rest of the difference in price may be worth it just for the Digital ICE.

 

I went with the DS-IV, because I was considering this to be a stop-gap solution for a year or two, which is when I expect to invest in a dSLR system, but if it's going to be this much of a pain, it seems almost worth it to spend the extra couple hundred for a Coolscan V (assuming I don't get the same results with that scanner), if not bite the bullet and jump to dSLR now.

 

Thanks once more for all the contributions.

[kkjuhy]

Ditto with my SDIII: quite a lot of scanner noise (with films like Astia 100F) in the shadows or in the sky. I use "oversampling", the SDIII does max 8x... takes a lot of time of course, but helps, followed by a Noise Ninja treatment.

[kkjuhy]

In response to your last message:

 

Don't know if the Nikons solve the scanner grain problem...

 

And the dust is a MAJOR problem indeed, so a GEM/FARE scanner may be worth it's price, but I expect even with the most expensive scanner scanning and cleaning up will remain a major job, only to be done on the very best shots, so an investment in a DSLR (dust on the sensor of course...) might be your best bet.

 

If I want to share images and view them on a screen I use a batch job with my DSDIII at half the resolution (solves some of the dust problem) and 8x multiscanning.

 

AND I start to like my "simple" Canon Powershot A80 more and more....(DSLR for you?, maybe something like a Dimage A2?)

 

IMO scanning is for exceptions only....unless you have a very high frustration tolerance level AND lots of time to invest (waste?).

[bakubo]

You should read this article about grain aliasing:

 

http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Grain.htm

 

I use Neat Image with my film scans and after you learn how to use it and don't overdo it the results are pretty good.

[jerry_cipriano2]

I also had a DS IV and found the grain noticeable with a variety of films, but prints to 8x10 were still acceptable. The biggest problem I had was that I underestimated the dust problem and found that many images required way too much clean-up time in Photoshop. I returned the DS IV and am now considering the Scan Elite 5400 or Coolscan V, both with ICE.

--Jerry Cipriano

[lrarphotographer]

Okay, put simply, the more grain you see, the grainier your film, or the higher resolution your scanner, or both. That such film grain shows up is great, because it means your scanner is good enough to get all possible detail from your film images. I mean, if it's actually scanning in the grain itself, that means you're getting all the detail your image can possibly contain. You don't get any finer than being able to see the grain. This is not a flaw with the scanner...it's a feature. :) If you don't want the grain, shoot with slower speed film, a different brand/type of film that's known for smaller grain at a certain ISO rating, or use some software that will reduce the appearance of grain patterns, though, no matter how great the software, you'll also lose image detail as a result. Complaining about film grain showing up in a scan is like complaining about the appearance of grain in a really big enlargement from film...it's just something that you have to live with in film photography. My advice? Either go digital, or shoot medium to large format and spend the tons of money it will take to buy a scanner that will accomodate such film formats.