What should scanned B&W grain look like? (Tri-X and Delta 3200 especially)

[Colin Corneau]

And cue the endless procession of low-res scans of peoples' snaps...which tells a person nothing about scanning, how to do it, or how film should look.

FWIW, I've also had great luck with Epson's v700 using just their scanner software; I end up with a great TIFF I work on in Photoshop -- natural looking grain (I've noticed the larger the neg the better the results with this scanner) and nice files.
I'd like to look into the Betterscanning anti-Newton glass holders, since 35mm often curls a bit and this certainly affects sharpness...although if a neg is laid flat the results are really impressive for an affordable, easy flatbed scanner.

I've also used a Canon DSLR (1DMk4) with a 100mm macro lens to photograph film (in my case, Kodachrome slides) and this worked surprisingly well -- especially in the realm of colour rendition, which is tricky with Kodachrome.

 

[shadowfox]

Tri-x developed with Clayton F76 developer (D76 clone).

 

[carlcox]

Delta 3200 and DDX always are problematic for me. I get better results with any 400 speed film.

 

[lynnb]

I've had no problem scanning 35mm & 6x6 negs down to the grain on my V700 as long as the negs are reasonably flat. I just use Epson's plastic holders. Noise in scanned images is only a problem if the neg was poorly exposed and I have to push/pull the scanned TIFF in software (LR4), or if I don't set the black/white/grey points well enough in EpsonScan when scanning, to get optimal tonal values in the scan.