I really don't know, but the thoughts this triggers with me is:
1: I'd expect the opposite, given the inherently somewhat vague (diffuse and sem-transparent) nature of dye clouds as opposed to silver grain.
2: In my scanning, I've always found B&W to resolve in a more crisp manner. But since I've mostly used a scanner that resolves maybe 3000dpi on a good day, I also realize that whatever I see is only an approximation of the real data in a negative.
C41 negatives do seem denser overall than B&W
There seems to be very well defined grain in the color crop.
I've seen this said elsewhere, but why is it the case? Isn't the scanner software de-saturating the raw file in exactly the same way as you would do later in post processing?Try scanning your B&W negative as an RGB file if you haven't already. Remove any colour cast from the emulsion in post processing, but RGB will ensure you are capturing every bit of information.
I've seen this said elsewhere, but why is it the case? Isn't the scanner software de-saturating the raw file in exactly the same way as you would do later in post processing?
Keep in mind you're using a consumer-grade piece of equipment of a couple of hundred eurodollarpounds to image down to a 5um resolution. If you think about it, it's a bit of a miracle this sort of works in the first place
no, auto focus, I have found, does not have any issues. I do use viewscan with 2 of my scannes and it lets me select the AF point. I just pick something with a high contrast edge.
Try scanning your B&W negative as an RGB file if you haven't already. Remove any colour cast from the emulsion in post processing, but RGB will ensure you are capturing every bit of information.
What I see in the color scan is a lot of digital noise. This makes sense since C41 negatives are low gamma so there will be a lot of analog and/or digital gain being applied to yield a normal (digital) contrast range. This translates into noise. This isn't helped of course by the fact that all three color channels are needed to create three distinct images, and there's no possibility for bunching the channels together into a single signal to cut down noise, which with B&W is possible. You can tell it's digital noise because there's no physical geometry about it except for distinct pixel-to-pixel variation.
And I haven't even touched on the issues of film flatness, limitations of optical/camera systems (alright, not so relevant when just looking at grain), film processing (which does influence granularity in several ways)...
So this is a very long way of saying that for many reasons, it's pretty much impossible to tell what in the heck we're looking at
something I've noticed upon scanning some more color C41 negatives, as opposed to the B&W film I develop and scan more regularly: C41 film seems to resolve better on the scanner, such that I see the grain structure much more clearly than with B&W. The latter often seems a bit murky when I look at the scans closely. I scan at 5000dpi and I display at a considerably smaller size so I haven't ever worried about this, but I was surprised at how comparatively good the C41 scans look at or near 100%.
no, auto focus, I have found, does not have any issues. I do use viewscan with 2 of my scannes and it lets me select the AF point. I just pick something with a high contrast edge.
check your developer, that can have a impact on scanning. a high sodium sulphite developer can result in mushy grain. I really doubt your scanner is resolving down to the grain level. maybe if you use a drum scanner. when you use interpolation resolution on scans, you will get digital artifacts which are yucky. figure out what you true resolution scan is and use that. Don't pixel peep! make a print and use that to decide your results. if you want really "sharp" grain you will need to sharpen in photoshop, make sure to not go over the top with sharpening, It can look fake if you take to to far.
I always scan B&W in 16 bit grey scale, using the green channel with 2 of my scanners, a Dimage 5400 I and a nikon CS9000. My flextight does not give the the color channel option, but I still scan with it in grey scale.
over the years, I have found that I need to develop negs that I plan to scan a little different than negs I plan to enlarge for a wet print. for scanning I want a slightly thinner neg that if wet printing. I also find a reduced agitation pyro developer gives me the easiest negs to scan. I have settled on pyro-m for all my negs.
john
Couple of quick questions (apologies if I've missed this).
1. Do you use the same camera/lens setup to shoot your B/W and C41 negatives?
(Assuming your film scanner's AF excursion is limited to a certain DOF beyond which it will give up):
2. Do you process both your B/W and C41 negatives yourself? If not, do you outsource your C41? In this case, is there significant systematic difference in flatness of the negatives across the two workflows?
How does your negative holder look like? In my Minolta, I have to trim any excess unexposed film around around the six frames in the strip, otherwise the strip will sit unevenly in the holder and the warp will lead to less than optimal sharpness. Could you load two sets of strips (one BW and one colour) and check if the holder is correctly clamping onto the negative?
I think what I was identifying was actually chroma noise form the scanner in the C41 images, rather than actual grain/silver level. So with that, I'm getting similar results from the two types of film. I think my scanner resolves somewhere in the middle of "clumps of" grain (the grain we normally see) and actual silver, such that when I look at the 100% image, it's mushy and weird because it is resolving past those clumps of grain, but not all the way to the finest level of silver, which I don't need it to do anyway.
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