Nikon 4000ED and grain aliasing

[hlockwood]

I occasionally get some ugly "noise" in my scans on the Nikon 4000ED (always scanned at 4000 ppi). Multi-sampling, up to 16x, improves things a bit but doesn't come close to solving the problem.

I recently read an article at http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/ that discusses grain aliasing, the interaction between the film grain (dye or silver) and the scanner CCD receptor sites. I believe this is the answer to the "noise" problem that is apparent in some, but not all, of my frames from a given strip or roll.

I won't try even to summarize the article here, but I do regard it as required reading if you wish to get better scans, especially from fast (ISO>100) films.

With NikonScan, the trick is to use the GEM feature to drastically reduce pseudo noise without degrading the image otherwise. I witnessed steady improvement in going from GEM = 0, to GEM = 3, to GEM = 4. Quite a revelation.

Is this old news?

Harry

 

[Benjamin Marks]

I thought GEM didn't work with B&W film -- or are you only scanning color?

 

[sojournerphoto]

GEM works with balck and white - ICE doesn't.

I tried GEM and in the end stopped using it, but I suspect it depends what film and developer your using. FWIW, the 9000 seems to emphasize grain less. MF Ektar scans as grainless with lots of detail and acros has almost no grain unless you (very) aggressively sharpen the scan and increase contrast.

 

[Dwig]

...
I recently read an article at http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/ that discusses grain aliasing, the interaction between the film grain (dye or silver) and the scanner CCD receptor sites...

I've run into this a few times with my EPSON v700. For me, its usually been when I'm scanning old WWI vintage negatives. My solution has been to alter the scanning resolution. I usually overscan substantially (4800-6400ppi) and downsample in PS using Bicubic/Softer. Sometimes lowering the scanning resolution works well with the old negs were the image detail isn't really all that sharp.