How does scanning affect grain?

I develop my own B&W and scan it with a Canoscan 8600F. While I wish I could do my own prints (trying to convince my wife to let me make a darkroom) for the time being I can only scan them.

How does scanning negatives affect grain? Would a negative that yields a grainy print show up smooth as a .jpg or is there no correlation?

ILoveTLRs said:

I develop my own B&W and scan it with a Canoscan 8600F. While I wish I could do my own prints (trying to convince my wife to let me make a darkroom) for the time being I can only scan them.

How does scanning negatives affect grain? Would a negative that yields a grainy print show up smooth as a .jpg or is there no correlation?

Click to expand...

How does scanning affect grain? Very complicated issue. Instead of trying to answer the question, and then getting blasted by some opinionated blowhard , let me suggest that you get a copy of the books, Real Work Scanning and Halftones (Blatner,Chavez, Fleishman and Roth), and Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop CS2 by Bruce Fraser.

However, in answer to your second question, if there is increased grain from noise or grain aliasing you will see it on the file on screen, and it will print. And it will show up equally well in a .tiff or .jpeg file.

Sandy King

Most good quality film scanners will reveal the negatives grain in much the same way as an enlarger will reveal grain in a negative as it is magnified.
As you make a larger print from a good digital file the grain will show in the same way.

We are making very large prints enlarger and digitally from the same film originals . They both have the same grain structure at 30x40 print size.

The differences start occuring due to sharpening (over or under), PS adjustments(heavy handed) and any softening techniques used under the enlarger or in PS.

Thanks for the replies

If I do any adjusting it's levels, and only that. I just recently started using HC-110 and experimenting with Dektol in an effort to get more grain.

ILoveTLRs said:

Thanks for the replies

I just recently started using HC-110 and experimenting with Dektol in an effort to get more grain.

Click to expand...

That will yield ugly huge clumps. You want nice grainy photographs? Go for HP5 in Rodinal

My $0.02