Grain: B&W vs colour (negatives)

[john_simon5]

<p>I suspect this may boil down to an aesthetic question but it does have a direct link to the settings I choose for scanning on my Coolscan 5000 and wanted to hear some opinions to minimise the chances of me regretting my decisions later.<br>

I have a Coolscan 5000 and have been digitising old film. I started with my colour negatives from the 90s. On these the grain was objectionable to me and I set GEM to 4 in Nikon Scan. (The film was mostly Kodak Gold 400 and it just has a lot of grain.)<br>

I have now obtained B&W negatives my dad took in the 70s. I would say, as an objective matter, that the grain, at least in the first strip I scanned, was on a par with the Kodak Gold colour negative. However, I found the grain much less objectionable. I was inclined to use GEM 1 or even off.<br>

So my questions. Does my judgement here (tolerating more grain in B&W than colour) conform with anyone else's? Is my tolerance for grain in B&W just a reflection of being conditioned to believe that this is the way B&W should look based on exposure to lots of grainy B&W images? Any comments or suggestions? Ultimately I want to choose some settings to batch scan hundreds (thousands?) of B&W negatives for archival purposes and am in the experimentation phase.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>For starters, color film has three emulsion layers, each with its own grain. It's not like B&W grain in that it is composed of dye clouds rather than micron sized strings and clumps. Older 400 ISO films tended to be very grainy, as are newer consumer grade color negatives. I use Fuji NPH400, which seems to have well-controlled grain, comparable to Tri-X (and good color).</p>

<p>I have never used GEM. You take a big hit in sharpness and it takes a lot of processing time. Learn to love grain and live with it. If you want big enlargements, use a bigger camera.</p>