Hi Bikerider, some ideas, based on conversations I had with Adrian, who often posts here, and other experienced practitioners:
1. Scan at the scanner's optical resolution. It may be 4000 dpi on that Nikon, but check.
2. No sharpening during the scan. Do that later, if you wish, with another software package.
3. If you want less grain, a modern T-grain film will probably be your best bet. Another option: Fuji Acros film.
4. If you use a traditional cubic grain film, you can use fine-grain developers (like the old Microdol-X), but you risk some loss of detail.
Final hint: accept the grain as being proof that you used film. Be one with the grain. Enjoy!
+1
Many photographers suffer from a sickness that they self induce by insisting on scanning at the highest resolution possible, then afterwards, zooming in and taking a position on scanning based on looking at the grain at a scale a multitude higher magnification than they’ll ever see it on a print. I call it the sickness of looking way too close. Yes, resolution and sharpness matters, but only to a point.
go ahead and scan it in at the highest resolution you have available to you. Don’t sharpen the original scan, as all you’ll be doing is sharpening the grain.
when you go to print it, make a copy of the original scan, crop it for the print, then resize it down to 240-300 pixels per inch you intend to print. Sharpen that scaled down version for the print, though if you’re scanning it in at 4000dpi, you’ll find that sharpening is usually not needed on a picture that is in focus. A 12x18 inch print of a 135 format frame needs 3600x5400 pixels, or about 3800 dpi if printed at 300 pixels per inch. The reality of the matter is, the bigger the print does not always equate to more resolution simply because you tend to see it from much further away. 8-10 megapixels looks just as good on a big 65 inch diagonal print hanging up on a wall as it does on an 8x10 that you can hold in your hand. Heck we all think 1080p on a 50 inch TV looks good and that’s only 2 MP. Imagine a print that size on your wall, but instead of 2MP, it’s 8-10MP.
also, how you post process the raw NEF file will effect the appearance of the grain. You can definitely make it worse depending on what you do after the fact.
as you’re probably discovering, scanning at high resolution usually results in far more grain than an optical print, and significantly more grain than what you’d see if you shot the same thing digitally. Many people call it grain aliasing. Even though that can happen (or it’s perceived to happen, but is actually usually caused by post processing problems), the reality is what they’re really seeing is significantly more resolution than what they’re used to seeing via whatever analog path they have access to, or they’re comparing it to whatever they see via shooting digitally, which tends to be pretty clean compared to even high resolution film.
the fact of the matter is if you can manage to maintain 50LP/Mm through your analog optical chain from camera to print you’re doing pretty good. 50LP/mm works out to ~2400dpi for a 135 format frame. Oddly, the same rough approximate resolution of most film scanners. Imagine that.