why scanned negatives look so grainy?

[hansvons]

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40 minutes ago, Warton said:

This is the picture. Without any adjustment other than inverted with C1.

Looks quite good but could be sharper. Have you double-checked focus (grain must be as sharp as possible) and played with sharpening? The best is only to focus on the grain. Then the overall sharpness will be good.

It took me almost half a year to figure this out. The macro lens can't be good enough, and the light fixture behind the film must distribute the light as evenly as possible. From what I see, the latter is quite good, actually. 

Nice picture, BTW!

Edited August 17, 2023 by hansvons

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[Warton]

1 hour ago, hansvons said:

Looks quite good but could be sharper. Have you double-checked focus (grain must be as sharp as possible) and played with sharpening? The best is only to focus on the grain. Then the overall sharpness will be good.

It took me almost half a year to figure this out. The macro lens can't be good enough, and the light fixture behind the film must distribute the light as evenly as possible. From what I see, the latter is quite good, actually. 

Nice picture, BTW!

Thanks.

I also think the lighting source is quite good, it's even and bright enough. I may save myself from buying a new light box. The diffuser of ES2 helps a lot to even out the light.

The focus is another part I am struggling. The macro lens is very difficult to focus. I turn on the D810's live view to eyeball the sharpness, and first let the camera do the AF, and after that I micro-adjust the focus. But I still have no idea if the focus is perfect. I just played a bit with sharpening tool in C1 but I don't see any difference in grains at least to my eyes. So I have no way to know where the soft focus from either from the film itself or from scanning. 

[250swb]

2 hours ago, Warton said:

.

The focus is another part I am struggling. The macro lens is very difficult to focus. I turn on the D810's live view to eyeball the sharpness, and first let the camera do the AF, and after that I micro-adjust the focus. 

You are at a disadvantage because the D810 doesn't have focus peaking, but why don't you trust AF? 

[Warton]

8 minutes ago, 250swb said:

You are at a disadvantage because the D810 doesn't have focus peaking, but why don't you trust AF? 

Maybe I should trust AF? I just don’t feel comfortable to let AF do the job on negative

[250swb]

2 minutes ago, Warton said:

Maybe I should trust AF? I just don’t feel comfortable to let AF do the job on negative

It's either in focus or it isn't, trust yourself to decide on that.

[Steve Ricoh]

This is an interesting thread topic. I like grain very much, it often becomes the best part of my compositions, haha. Without grain analogue can easily be confused with digital.

So thanks to the OP, I can simply negate what’s been said here, sort of inversion as it were, to get my perfect negs. I believe under exposure coupled with hot development can work wonders. It’s trial and error whether the development time should increase too.

[charlesphoto99]

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21 hours ago, Warton said:

I just tried again this time let camera decide shutter

 

You need to learn not to rely on auto exposure. Find a consistent light source and stick with that, and then make manual adjustments to the shutter. After a while, you'll be able to just look at a neg first and know whether it will be 1/15, 1/30 or 1/60th (in my case). 

Regarding Cinestill, I would get one of the Negative Supply light panels. The Kaiser one was too dim for me, and the skier box all that was available when I needed a better source so I went with it. I do use the medium format holder that came with it. Note that it's important to put space between the neg/slide and the light. Don't sandwich directly on to the panel. 

[250swb]

On 8/18/2023 at 3:02 PM, charlesphoto99 said:

I would get one of the Negative Supply light panels. The Kaiser one was too dim for me, and the skier box all that was available when I needed a better source so I went with it. 

This would be comical if it weren't for the excruciating price Negative Supply are charging for their super bright light box. Yes the Kaiser may be less bright, but the logic is if you have a rigid setup to copy negatives to begin with it hardly matters if the exposure is one 1/8th second or 1/30th second. If you genuinely need ultra bright light to get faster shutter speeds to copy a negative you've essentially got a fundamental problem in your copy setup. But clearly Negative Supply have a good way with marketing words if not imbuing any meaning given all photographers 'should' know it's possible to get perfectly still images from much, much longer exposures.

[fotomas]

For best sharpness don't stop down to much. If you are at 1:1 the critical aperture is only around 5,6 to 6.3 for 35 mm full frame format. If you stop down further the picture becomes more and more unsharp because diffraction steps in.

[250swb]

8 minutes ago, fotomas said:

For best sharpness don't stop down to much. If you are at 1:1 the critical aperture is only around 5,6 to 6.3 for 35 mm full frame format. If you stop down further the picture becomes more and more unsharp because diffraction steps in.

I think you should stop down to and use DOF until any possibility of any tiny misalignment between the camera and negative is cancelled. Following a rule is pointless if you are constantly having soft edges or corners due to curly negatives or minor discrepancy in alignment. Besides which a macro lens, while not immune to the laws of optics, is very well corrected for close up photography and the use of smaller apertures.

[Ko.Fe.]

This is why I ditched scanning during my bw film years between 2010 and 2020.

If I see grain talk, film was scanned.

I went under enlarger after I saw test of different BW film prints. They all looked the same

Film is for prints, not for scans.

[fotomas]

vor 10 Stunden schrieb 250swb:

Following a rule is pointless if you are constantly having soft edges or corners due to curly negatives or minor discrepancy in alignment. Besides which a macro lens, while not immune to the laws of optics, is very well corrected for close up photography and the use of smaller apertures.

If you always have soft edges that you have to cure by stopping down this lens is probably not the best choice for this job. Then I would prefer a film scanner. Perfect alignment and flat films are of course essential. Not every lens where is written macro on is necessarily a good macro lens in reality. I did test with about six different macro lenses from Leica, Nikon Canon and Tamron. Turned out that the best one was my old Canon FD 50 mm Macro lens. Even slightly better than my Marco-Elmar M. But mostly the differences where tiny. The only one where edge sharpness was an greater issue not stopped down was the Tamron. But even with this an aperture of about 5.6 was enough and it didn't get much better if you go further.

Diffraction is reality and can easily be tested today during a test run. You can't get out of it due to a good lens correction. With f 16 at a scale off 1:1 your'e deep within diffraction.

[250swb]

1 hour ago, fotomas said:

If you always have soft edges that you have to cure by stopping down this lens is probably not the best choice for this job. Then I would prefer a film scanner. Perfect alignment and flat films are of course essential. Not every lens where is written macro on is necessarily a good macro lens in reality. I did test with about six different macro lenses from Leica, Nikon Canon and Tamron. Turned out that the best one was my old Canon FD 50 mm Macro lens. Even slightly better than my Marco-Elmar M. But mostly the differences where tiny. The only one where edge sharpness was an greater issue not stopped down was the Tamron. But even with this an aperture of about 5.6 was enough and it didn't get much better if you go further.

Diffraction is reality and can easily be tested today during a test run. You can't get out of it due to a good lens correction. With f 16 at a scale off 1:1 your'e deep within diffraction.

I'm just saying people shouldn't be a donkey about it. A film scanner still isn't going to beat a macro lens stopped down to f/8 on a high resolution camera so if a rule needs to be broken to solve a problem do it on the basis of visual literacy not dogma. I've never ever come across a photographic question or seen an answer provided that is solved by demanding adherence to immutable rules. Photography is always about compromises and in this case tomorrows camera will defeat yesterdays lenses and todays lenses will defeat yesterdays scanners (and which scanners aren't yesterdays technology?).  

Edited August 22, 2023 by 250swb

[monst67]

Pixels are much larger than grain so screens cannot show it well. If you print one from the scan it won't look any where near as grainy as on screen.

[BernardC]

19 minutes ago, monst67 said:

Pixels are much larger than grain so screens cannot show it well. If you print one from the scan it won't look any where near as grainy as on screen.

That's right, and it brings us back to grain aliasing, which was mentioned earlier. The problem is caused by interference between your film's grain pattern and you sensor's pixel grid, and it can be made worse by the optical path, especially the light source. Often, but not always, the grain interference can be minimized by varying your magnification or resolution.

I worked on a 16mm B&W art installation many years ago that ran into this issue. It was originally planned for a traditional optical finish, but by the time it was ready it made more sense to do a DI (digital intermediate) and finish digitally. We tested nearly every telecine (motion picture film scanner) in Toronto, and a few in Montreal, and they all looked completely different. Some had snowball-sized grain and others showed minimal grain. All of these expensive machines looked great with colour negative film, of course, but they had differing grain interference patterns with our specific film stock, gauge, and resolution (2K back then). The artist has since made 4K scans that look a lot better, and it also looked fine in SD. A different project that was shot on 35mm with the same stock looked perfect at 2K resolution.

Long story short: the way to fix this excessive grain issue is to try different equipment and settings. A higher or lower resolution might work, or a different lens, or a different light source. You need gigapixel resolution to accurately scan grain, and that's not an option yet. Short of that, a setup that provides the best theoretical resolution won't necessarily look better, and it could look much worse.

 

[Steve Ricoh]

You’re all spoil sports, grain is wonderful. 

[BernardC]

15 hours ago, Steve Ricoh said:

You’re all spoil sports, grain is wonderful. 

Grain is wonderful, but this isn't real grain. It's electronic noise.

[charlesphoto99]

On 8/21/2023 at 2:03 PM, fotomas said:

For best sharpness don't stop down to much. If you are at 1:1 the critical aperture is only around 5,6 to 6.3 for 35 mm full frame format. If you stop down further the picture becomes more and more unsharp because diffraction steps in.

Not true. Macro lenses are optimized to be stopped down, esp at close up (ups may not get best performance shooting a landscape). Just do some tests and find the sweet spot. For the highly rated Tokina lens I use (never thought I would own a Tokina lens!) I did some testing and f18 turned out to be the best for corner sharpness before diffraction started to set in. 

I'm with @250swb The so called 'rules' of photography are just guidelines, and not always correct or good ones at that. 

Here's my setup FWIW. I tried using my M10M vs the Nikon (with same lens w/adapter) but the results were pretty much identical, and the M a real hassle to use. With the Nikon, it stays put, so I don't have to realign it every time I go to scan. What I've found best is to use Live view for framing, and then focus manually with the magnifier. 

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[250swb]

A nice post @charlesphoto99, and spookily I also use my Nikon 60mm at f/18 which is for me just short of where the crossover between ultimate sharpness and diffraction  occurs. I can’t see any diffraction worth a damn up to that point, and sharpness across the frame is perfect. And good for medium format as well. Even though I use ANR glass to flatten my negs it’s flogging a dead horse to say negatives are ever going to be flat enough or square enough with the camera to use wide apertures. Which is where a good macro lens comes in.

[charlesphoto99]

I've been working almost exclusively with negs and slides that are 20-30 years old, so flatness has not been an issue. I can see how it would be more so with freshly souped film. That said, I do use the $$ Negative Supply 35mm film holder (pro version) and it works like a charm. Worth every penny for me considering the size of my archives. And cheaper than a lot of red dot accessories I have sitting in my camera drawer doing nothing, lol.