Terrible grain scanning XP2

[phule]

<< I distinctly remember setting it to ISO400 after the camera automically read ISO25. >>

 

Why would your camera think XP2 was a ISO25 film?

[lex_jenkins]

The original Scan Dual is not a particularly good scanner by today's standards. I have one. I often have trouble with noise in shadow areas and generally poor scans. It has little tolerance for negatives that are too dense or underexposed.

 

Most of all, it desperately needs better prescan software. Vuescan at a minimum will greatly benefit most of your scans.

 

Try scanning slightly thinner negatives. Just a little less development, as you might for a condenser enlarger.

[frank.schifano]

Lex, these are C-41 negatives. I don't think he has much choice regarding development time.

[stephen sullivan]

Dan,

 

I re-read your first posting, "Shooting a friend's wedding... TMX or TX? 10/21/04"

 

You stated that you were going to shoot with your Minolta Maxxum 5 with a Vivitar 730AFM with a Bounce/Diffuser.

 

I have some thoughts on why your negs might be underexposed.

 

I shoot with a Canon EOS 1 and use a Canon 430EZ Flash. If I'm shooting with a 24~70 2.8L lens, the flash will automatically adjust to my lenses focal length. When I put a 70~200 2.8L on, my 430EZ will only adjust to 70mm and 80mm. Anything above that I have to make the adjustments.

 

1. Could the focal length of your lens exceed the capabilities of your flash? Or could the flash not of been communicating with the body and lens?

 

2. Your flash wasn't set to an auto setting.

 

3. Did you use your flash in the Bounce Mode? If so, were you in a building with high and/or angled ceilings?

 

If you used a flash, perhaps your problem lies there.

[dark_star1]

Hi, Dan.

 

As far as my experience is concerned B&W scans usually look much more grainy than the neg's are. If you want to be sure wether your problem is relevant to developing, exposure or neg's just try to make traditional "wet" prints. I bet they will be much better than you expect.

[gerald_widen]

I second the advise about wet printing the negtives.

[lachaine]

Look, I've already posted it above, and everyone seems to ignore what I post, but I'm telling you, that's what the "grain" in the shadows of XP2 looks like when the film is underexposed as opposed to being overexposed. First of all, it's not grain. It's dye clouds, and on XP2, it's particularly ugly when it's underexposed. You rated the film as ISO 400 for your camera's meter, and for whatever reason, the shadows were somewhat underexposed on top of already being slightly underexposed by virtue of using the film as an ISO 400. This is how XP2 behaves. It's not comparable to traditional B&W films. It has an extremely wide exposure range, but there's a price to pay when underexposing in the form of the ugly grain that you see in the shadows. This is why best results overall when you have enough light is to expose the film as if it's ISO 200. The extra stop of exposure makes a huge difference. I don't want to argue about it. Just experiment with it for yourself, and I guarantee you will see what I mean.

[scott_eaton]

<I>As far as my experience is concerned B&W scans usually look much more grainy than the neg's are</i><P>Then why do the other samples posted by other photographers look smooth? XP2, as per Pierre's good explanation, does not behave in the same way classic B/W films do when under exposed. Conventional B/W films do not 'grain up' when under exposed like C-41 print films do (XP2). If anything, they 'grain down'. Optical printing might help the images, but you'll likely be reaching for the 3 1/2 grade filter pack, which will make the grain look just as prominent.<P>Even though XP2 is capable of good results when shot at EI 400, it's not as good as when shot at EI 250 because it's an essence a portrait grade C-41 film, and we all know those benefit from 1/2 to a full stop of over-exposure. There's also the undeniable psychology of shooting in available light situations where we often claim we are shooting at a specific EI, but in reality making little tweaks and bias's to compensate for the low light that really means we're shooting closer to EI 640-800. Hey, I'm guilty of it too, and this is why I keep telling people if they need B/W 400+ speed under available light, and intend to scan, then to use Fuji Superia 800 or Portra UC 400. XP2 has virtually no under exposure lattitude at all, and it never has. The newer C-41 color film do.

[dano1]

Okay guys, I think I know what's up.

 

I've had a hard time believing this myself, but here goes.

 

When the last roll of film was rewound, it did not recognize that it was rewound. It read frame 0, and it blinked, but the film safety window was half red/half black instead of all black. Therefore, I had to manually release the film door with a pen.

 

I tried loading it with another roll of film. I wound it to frame 1, but again read it as frame 0. I am sure it took, because I rewound the roll, and it went back into the canister.

 

I woke up this morning and was thinking about all of this, and I now believe that my camera was really failing on me electronics wise.

 

The fact that it read Ilford XP2 at ISO 25 didn't make much sense to me at the time, because I trusted my camera, I guess a little too much. I thought that this was one of those odd films that doesn't have DX encoding. Now I believe that ISO 25 may have been the camera's funny way of saying "I have no idea what I'm doing anymore". ISO 25 may have actually have really been ISO 400 for all I know, though by looking at the negs that doesn't seem possible either, that would have been 4 stops under exposed, whould I even see the image so well in the negative?

 

One thing I've got to know is what an exposure of 4.0 means in Vuescan. Does this mean it's 4 stops underexposed, or 2 stops underexposed for a total of 1/4 the density?

 

I've got to find that out because my camera is already on it's way to Minolta, they need to fix everything, else I'll have to send it back again.

 

Thanks all of you. You guys were probably right, it wasn't shot at ISO 400, even though that is what I set it to.

 

Sorry if I've been so dificult, it's just that I really knew how I had set the camera, and I do know how to meter. I just didn't know that the camera was malfunctioning the whold time.

 

As for neat image, I must admit, I'm not very good with that software. Could you guys let me know the settings you used?

 

Thanks again,

Dan O.

[daniel_staver1]

I used these settings.

 

I used the rough noise analyzer on the shadow area above his head which I've marked in the image, then I just used auto fine-tune in addition to that.

 

To adjust the grain levels I would adjust the Y slider under Noise Reduction Amounts. Too much looks artificial, so you have to be careful. Even 40% is at the high end of what I would normally use. Often 20-30% is enough.

 

And remember you can save your profiles in neatimage. Once you've made a good profile you can just apply that to all your images from that film type.<div></div>

[daniel_staver1]

<p>And <a href="http://daniel.staver.no/img/xp2test.jpg">here's a test I did</a> exposing XP2 at different ISO's. Once you get to 400 you start getting really visible grain in the shadows. At 800 the whole image looks grainy.</p>

[kaiyen]

<p><i>You guys were probably right, it wasn't shot at ISO 400, even though that is what I set it to.</i>

 

<p>Dan,

 

<p>The film _was_ probably shot at 400. That's what you were _metering_ at. What everyone is saying is that the film _shouldn't_ be shot at 400. The film is rated at 400, based on some industry standards on how to measure film speed. However, you don't generally get good results from XP2 if shot at 400. You need to rate it at 200 or 250 to get the correct exposure. Underexposure will result in the grain you are seeing.

 

<p>allan

[dano1]

Allan, you haven't seen the rest of the scans. These first two were some of the best. About 1/2 to 3/4 came out worse, some of them far worse.

 

I know that I didn't underexpose the ones that came out worse, it's just that they have more shaddows.

 

I have seen plenty of scans of XP2 @ ISO 400 on www.photosig.com, and none of them looked as bad as mine.

 

Dan O.

[dano1]

Daniel, thank you very much for sharing your settings. I was beginning to think all was lost. You have saved the day, thank you!

 

Dan O.

[steve_muntz]

I'm not exactly sure if you were thinking this, but if you shot it at ISO25 it would be four stops over exposed, not under exposed. Over exposing film like this - especially in contrasty light like inside a church using available light - would be a good idea, but not that much. I'd go with maybe a stop, which would be ISO200. Something to keep in mind next time, that's all.

 

Try making some prints. In my experience they will look a lot better then the scans, especially wet prints if you have a good lab that can hand enlarge them. It won't be cheap, but pick a couple that are important and see what they can do for you. Even digital prints should smooth out the grain a little, but make sure to bring your black point up in the histogram - looks like it's set too far to the left on your images.

[dano1]

Steve,

 

The camera read ISO 25. I believe that was the camera's way of saying "I have no idea what I'm doing"

 

However, as soon as I saw ISO 25, I figured it lacked DX encoding, and overrode it, setting it to ISO 400.

 

This is why I'd like to figure out what an exposure in Vuescan of 4.0 means. Does this mean that my film was 4 stops underexposed, as it would be if ISO 25 was really ISO 400, or does it mean 2 stops, for a total of 1/4 the density?

 

I really think it's about 1 or 2 stops under, the film now that I've taken a good look at it is definitley underexposed, it's quite thin especially in the shaddows.

 

One good thing that I did following this whole fiasco is tell the person at the lab to push the Tri-X a stop. See, they only do BWs every so many days. So, knowing they had yet to develop my TX I had them push it.

 

Dan O.

[rich815]

Well, in general underexposing and overdeveloping traditional B&W film, which is in essence what is going to be the result of the Tri-X, is going to give you more contrast, more grain and less detailed shadows. I guess it will be better than thin negs if you develop the Tri-X normally but I would not have high hopes...

[steve_muntz]

Dan, can't help you on the Vuescan but one question on the camera. How good are the batteries? It might sound like a stupid question but I've had cameras and flashes do all kinds of wierd things when batteries go low.

 

As far as scanning goes (once again I don't use Vuescan) I've had better luck scanning a b&w neg as a color transparency (slide) then inverting in Photoshop. Adjusting your black point would darken the shadows which will take the grain out like in the above example - but can't do anything about lost detail. I've never used XP2 but had pretty good luck this way with T400CN.

[dano1]

Thanks guys. I don't belive it was a case of low batteries. I put some Duracels in there in early August, and I've only put about 8 rolls through it sence then. The generic batteries that came with the camera in May lasted about 10 rolls, however, I made about 5-10 30 second exposures, which I'm sure really killed the batteries as the batteries are supposed to last 40 rolls.

 

I'll have to try scanning it as slide film when I get my new scanner. The scanner I'm getting is the Nikon Coolscan V, which is a huge jump from my Minotla Scan Dual (the original). Perhaps the grain won't look as bad once I rescan them in the new scanner, as I will have 4000ppi resolution.

 

Thanks again,

Dan O.

[m_kevin_johnson]

If your negs are properly exposed then it is possible that the scanner settings are off. I ran into that same issue with a 35mm film scanner I bought. It will scan perfect in B&W till I preview the image. Then it changes everything (not supposed too) and the image looks like JUNK. Our large scanner for 10x10 film does great with B&W but best to use a film positive on it.

 

Consider printing direct from negs and seeing what you get. OR even making a film positiive from the roll. You can even enlarge it making the film positive. A neat thing to play with anyway. Printing from the original should bring in things that may have been lost scanning.

 

Kevin

www.AerialPhotoLab.com

[miguel_angel_p._prieto]

Dan, your film is obviously underexposed. I'd say that by 1 or even 2 stops. Maybe your meter was fooled by the lights

that there's in ceiling (in the case of the daddy with the videocam) or the lights in the background in the case of the

singer and musician. I think your meter was fooled by this lights and you get a metering that told you to close your

diafraghm excesivesly...

 

Next time you photograph under this situation, I recommend you to meter the subject's skin directly if you can, or your

own hand if you're in the same light as the subject, then open 1 stop from what the meter say.

 

best regards,

 

Miguel Angel