Film scanner "noise"

[TJV]

I've been scanning positives and negatives for about four years and currently use a Canon FS4000US dedicated film scanner. I use Vuescan Professional to drive it and have calibrated input to output with IT8 charts and colour spyders. Until recently I've been pretty must using slide film only for colour and HP5 for black and white. Black and white grain never bothers me. There's more R. Frank in me than Ansel Adams... Scanning slides my setup produces absolutely beautiful results. I never use any grain reduction, sharpening or FARE during the scan. In photoshop I use a multi-pass noise reduction and sharpening work flow to get rid of any "digital-noise" introduced by the scanner. I then sharpen for output. Starting to shoot colour negs only recently, I've been very disappointed by my scanners performance. There seems to be a massive amount more "digital noise," kind of like a pepper grain colour noise, similar to high ISO digi cam captures. No amount of per-channel despeckle or traditional noise reduction seems to help. There also seems to be a lot of grain aisling, making the film look like it's 3 stops more grainy.

Does anyone else out there have any experience with scanning negs/slides and has seen this? Has anyone moved from a FS4000US or other unit to a unit like the Nikon 5000ED and noticed an improvement in this area? Are modern dedicated scanners producing less colour and luminance noise than older units - has the same progression that has helped the DSLR market been seen in scanners? The FS4000US doesn't strictly have a multi-pass scan option, instead it must rescan from start to finish before starting a second sample scan from the start. The process makes my scans look VERY soft, even on only four passes, although the "noise" seems to improve a little. How does multi-pass improve scans in other units?

In short: How are other peoples neg scans looking compared to slide scans?

Thanks guys!

[IK13]

You're obviously experienced.
Though the way you describe it...the first thing that comes to my mind is - underexposed negative (VueScan trying to pull details from the shadows).
In general the (shadow) grain is something that neg will have considerably more compared to slides.
What film were you using by the way (because it wouldn't be fair to compare a store brand 400 bad stuff to say Velvia 50/100 or Provia 100)?

[Pherdinand]

Make sure you have proper negs when "testing" this thing. Both their exposure + their processing AND their original quality (i also see big problems with out of date professional grade negatives sometimes, like fuji nps or npc in 6x6!) should be fine.
As said above... shadow grain shows up badly.
I have experience with this problem, but only when the negs are not-okay.

On the scanner noise... I guess the less transparent the material the more noise will be induced (for the same brigntness in the end result).

[Pherdinand]

By the way i use an epson v700, not a true film scanner.

The multi-pass softening comes from the inability to set the scanning window exactly to the same position. I wonder if it would not be better to scan it four times and combine them in photoshop instead of letting the scanner do the combination automatically. When you put them together you can judge better where they should overlap.

[Dektol Dan]

Most negative films have this noise problem. However, I have learned a few things. First, the higher the contrast your lens the more noise, second, the higher contrast your film the more noise, and third if you are using Vuescan and the target settings for your film it is possible to generate far more noise depending on the film.

My greatest success has been with an old Summitar and Kodak Porta 160. Lower contrast in both film and lens, that said; the desired contrast can be put back in with Photoshop. The information is there and can be extracted, unlike a high contrast shot where the information is beyond the reach of the scanner.

A caveat is what Vuescan wants to do. For example, the aforementioned Porta has Vuescan adjustments way off the chart to increase magenta. The generated curves will introduce a lot of noise.

While exposure may have some affect, lens choice and film are more of a consideration.

Compare these two, one is low contrast film and lens and the other the high contrast combination. Both are properly exposed and I don't practice the half stop over that many folks do.

[Rhoyle]

I used to have a Minolta Dimage Elite 2900. It did a wonderful job on chromes, but the color management on negs was not good. The sharpness was excellent, but I had to load it up with more red and yellow. I also noticed that there was considerably more noise of the type you describe in my scan using neg film. I have since gotten a Nikon V and all is much better now. I got the new scanner, because the Minolta had a SCSI interface and since getting two new comuters, everything is now firewire/USB.

[Gabriel M.A.]

I'll just add that on top of a film scanner being more "sensitive" to traditional film grain, there's digital noise from the scanner's sensor itself that comes into play, which accentuates the captured film grain.

Due to lots of technical details, that I won't go into now, some emulsions are more prone to this than others. Kodak's traditional emulsions being Exhibit A. There are newer emulsions, like the "HD" and C-41 B&W films that are now "optimized" for use with film scanners.

Go ahead, try shooting with Kodak HD400 and then with "Gold 400", and you'll see a huge amount of difference. Or Ilford XP2 (which I love) with Kodak's TN400 (or whatever their marketing interns this year may have changed its name to); you'll find Ilford's "grainier" than Kodak's, which breaks my heart, because I think Ilford's response curve and dynamic range far better.

[TJV]

Originally Posted by Gabriel M.A.

I'll just add that on top of a film scanner being more "sensitive" to traditional film grain, there's digital noise from the scanner's sensor itself that comes into play, which accentuates the captured film grain.

Due to lots of technical details, that I won't go into now, some emulsions are more prone to this than others. Kodak's traditional emulsions being Exhibit A. There are newer emulsions, like the "HD" and C-41 B&W films that are now "optimized" for use with film scanners.

This is the issue I'm talking about, it seems. It's like digital noise introduced by the scanner, which is a kind of consistent pattern like you'd get off a high iso digi cam, is mixing with the films actual grain. The end result is ultra grain!

I'm using only Fuji NPS (or whatever the new version is called) and over expose by a third of a stop.

Yes, there is grain in the shadow areas like I'd expect, but there seems to be more grain in the highlights. I suspect I don't notice it as much with trannies because of the higher contrast and deeper blacks.

To answer Nikonsweb's question, I'm shooting Negs again because I value the latitude. Although I'm used to using meterless cameras, New Zealand's sun is pretty intense and thus causes some problems, even at dusk. I would love to shoot 100% on Astia or Provia 400x but conditions just aren't ideal for it. Am archiving my last years work now and I must say Astia is my favourite film of all time, followed by 400x pushed.

I also have a V700 but because it doesn't auto-focus, it's next to useless on small negs/trannies.

As to another response, I'm wondering what effect my gear choise has on this process also. I'm using only Leica lenses, 35 Lux ASPH, 50 Cron (latest) and 28 Elmarit ASPH, so all are relatively contrast prone at the best of times.

For those of you with the new Nikon scanners, what did you come from? What are the advantages to your new setup?

Does anyone out there still use a Canon FS4000? What are you used to seeing?