E6 vs. negative scans

[ernie_targonski]

Although I am a dedicated 35mm film user, I do enjoy the convenience

(and quality) of the digital darkroom. My question concerns scans

from E6 slides and color / B&W negatives. It seems for me, that E6

always scans "cleaner", I'm not talking about dust or scratches, but

the scan just looks so clear and true to the slide. Negeatives on the

other hand always seems to scan "grainy". Why is this if negative

films seem to have allot better diffuse RMS granularity? I use a

Minolta scan dual III (for quite awhile) and have tried tweeking

every driver adjustment there is, all with the same outcome: slides

scan superior to negatives for me. Thanks in advance.

[ilkka_nissila]

You can't compare RMS numbers between color negative and slide films. The lower contrast of the negative makes the RMS values low as far as I can understand. If you make a print which has the same contrast as the slide, the grain in the print from negative will be dramatically more obvious.

 

That said, iso 100 print film is quite sharp and you can get a nice print by applying light grain reduction in Vuescan with the scan. This produces a natural print. With slides, there is less grain but they're more difficult to work with if you want either low contrast or accurate colours.

 

In my experience negatives have a lot more dust and scratches than slides, also. This is because the minilab prints are made from low-res scans which don't show most of the scratches and so the end user may never notice them and complain. With slides, people view them directly and so the process has to be a lot cleaner as the typical customer is a lot more critical of the processing quality.

[Matthew Currie]

I notice the same thing often with my older Coolscan IV (2900DPI). There is some relief there with the "GEM" post processing. One other thing I've noticed when scanning truly grainy negatives (things like old Tri-X) is that a small change in scanning DPI can help more than expected, and I think it may depend a little on whether the grain and the DPI match too closely. I haven't experimented much with this, since my scanner does have the "GEM" software which works pretty well, and because I almost always scan slides or UC400, which for me produce no such problems, but you might experiment with different initial resolutions to see if you can find something that doesn't catch the grain quite the same.

[jtk]

I agree with Ilkka for the most part :-) ... but I don't think grain or "grain" notably increases with negs where saturation/contrast has been moderately increased in post processing...however, digging deep into shadows does seem to exaggerate grain both in color negs and slides... I don't think I've found that with silver negative film.

 

By default I use Vuescan with slight grain reduction on negative film. From careful testing, I don't believe it softens detail but it does prevent grain and dye blobs from growing beyond what I'd expect in a wet darkroom. I don't think Nikonscan is as competent as Vuescan in this respect, don't know about Minolta's app.

[larrydressler]

I use an epson Perfection 3170 photo flatbed and Scan directly into Paint Shop Pro9 and Elements 2.0. I find that It depends on the subjects but I do prefer scanning the slides over the negatives in 35mm but with my Medium format the C-41 is a snap in both. I though do just looking at the larger E-6 on a light box.But just like anything some things look better on paper but in real life it just won't work out.

The easyst film in 35 mm negative I found to scan on the flatbed is Agfa Vista but that is because I worked with it the most.

 

Larry<div></div>

[catcher]

My experience has been that it has to do with the amount of post-processing required to make a negative look like a positive. For instnce, scanning transparencies, usually the only thing required to get it to look like the slide is some minor levels/curves/hue and sat. adjustments.

 

But to get a printable image from a negative--you've got to get rid of the orange mask and stretch the histgram, plus any usual adjustments. As John has suggested, with a well exposed negative doing this shoulnd't increase grain too terribly compared to a slide (depending on film), but it will almost always show more grain than a slide of the same scene. At least that's been true in my experience.