On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 21:28:46 -0600, William Robb wrote: > What I see in scanned negative to print vs optically printed negatives > is that the scanner seems to see film grain much better than photo paper.
I sure agree with that. A good part of my post processing time is trying to get the grain under control. To the extent that I've considered archiving 2k ppi scans instead of 4k ppi scans. > I suspect that it is because most scanners are point source, while > optical printers are mostly diffused source. I don't know enough about optical physics to be able to judge that. It does make some sense though, based on what I've read about light sources for optical enlargements and the differences they make to the final image. > My Epson 2450 shows less of this than my old HP S10 did, and the Epson > is a diffused source, the HP is a point source, so this seems to bear > out in the real world to some extent, anyway. Part of it seems to simply be resolution. I use a Canon CanoScan FS4000, and grain is much reduced at 2k ppi compared to 4k ppi. My suspicion is that grain size and pixel size are getting too close to each other at 4k ppi. > I don't know enough about the science of scanning to know if there > is a way around it or not. Well, if you're right about the light sources, changing scanners would seem to be the only option for people like me who are not equipped to change the light source in their scanner. I know experimentally that changing resolution can increase or reduce the amount of "grain" that ends up in the scanned image. > My way around it is to not scan my film, but I am in a somewhat > unique position. Well, even if I had access to the same range of equipment you do, I often don't have the extra time, and I surely don't have the experience you do. > Ultimately, I think going full digital is the answer, if you have to > print digitally. I'm not doing it totally to print digitally, but that is part of it. Part of what's getting in my way is that I want one digital master I can then manipulate as necessary for any particular applications. With film, the negative plays that role, and it could in a digital workflow, too. But the film is more fragile than a (properly backed up) digital file, so I'd prefer to have the file as my master. I don't know what the answer is, but until I personally go through the 6MP file to 16" x 20" enlargement process, I'm going to be suspicious of it. TTYL, DougF KG4LMZ
