Scanning and noise

Hi all,

I've been trudging through a set of negs scanning them on my Nikon CS9000. It's my first real batch with this process and I'm wondering about the noise/grain I appear to be getting, where it's coming from and how I can improve the quality of my final image. I've attached a low res image as an example...

I appear to be getting a lot of noise/grain in the mid tones of my images. The shot I've uploaded is a good example as it has a good dynamic range. It's the areas in the middle that appear to show the grain a lot more than the highlight or shadow. I'm shooting Portra 400 at box speed. I'm wondering about the following:

• What produces the increased grain pattern? I know the ISO number gives the level of grain that'll be visible but is it my exposure / metering that's off or is it that I should have used a lower ISO film?
• Is it my scanner or scanning process that's bringing in a lot more digital noise? I appear to be able to remove the colour noise in PS quite easily but the grain in the middle of the image appears to be harder to bring down and I think it can look bad.
• Is this just part of the process of shooting film and I need to get used to having grain in my shots?

I'm a relative newbie to film so I apologise if my questions are silly!

Cheers,
Alan

This scan looks very good to me, I do not see any excessive grain here.
There is a softness to this image, but other than that I see nothing wrong.

P.S. Yes, film has grain, do not use noise reduction on it, simply enjoy it!

looks like you may be sharpening during the scan...

Alan_Silvester said:

• What produces the increased grain pattern? I know the ISO number gives the level of grain that'll be visible but is it my exposure / metering that's off or is it that I should have used a lower ISO film?

• Is it my scanner or scanning process that's bringing in a lot more digital noise? I appear to be able to remove the colour noise in PS quite easily but the grain in the middle of the image appears to be harder to bring down and I think it can look bad.

• Is this just part of the process of shooting film and I need to get used to having grain in my shots?

Click to expand...

The valley appears to have good color saturation while the hills and sky appear to be desaturated, did you expose for the valley?
Being you are using a Nikon scanner are you using Nikon Scan?
Are you as new to scanning as you are using film?
Downloading the sample image and checking its histogram in PS it looks good but I'm not convinced its the best scan from the negative that can be achieved.

shutterfinger said:

The valley appears to have good color saturation while the hills and sky appear to be desaturated, did you expose for the valley?
Being you are using a Nikon scanner are you using Nikon Scan?
Are you as new to scanning as you are using film?
Downloading the sample image and checking its histogram in PS it looks good but I'm not convinced its the best scan from the negative that can be achieved.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I can't remember how I metered the shot as it was taken some months back. I'm assuming I was exposing for the valley as opposed to the brighter hill area. I'm using Silverfast; first with a 64bit HDRi Raw scan (no sharpening) and then editing the image via HDR studio (adding in some sharpening) and Photoshop for further adjustments. It's a process I've picked up via Sebastian Schluter (Dead Link Removed).

I have added some colour adjustments and a bit of grading, masking to bring out the sun in the valley. I also had to remove a flare on the mountain which might have effected the colour. It's more of a practice image!!

I learned to scan on a Microtek 8700 Pro with Silverfast AI 6. I'm not that experienced with HDR scanning.
Try setting the Negafix to the film you are scanning, set the black and white points with all other controls at their neutral position, then make a standard test scan then make additional scans adjusting the exposure setting in 1/2 stop increments each side of the start point up to the point you get noticeable degradation in the image then compare the scans to see what gives you the best result.
It took me 18 hours to learn Silverfast spread out over 3 or 4 days. I started with a good negative, made a software auto base scan for reference, started adjusting one variable at a time making a scan for each adjustment until degradation showed then two variables at a time then three at a time until the limits of each individually and in conjunction with others was reached. I used a 1200 dpi resolution to limit scan time then checked the results in PS.
HDR scanning will require some work also to get the optimal results, online tutorial is a good start point.
You will find that most correctly exposed negatives scan well with one setting but an occasional one will require extra work.

I'm seeing atmospheric haze in the air. The valley has good exposure, saturation and contrast. Nice image.

The scene does not look real. Are you using HDR to get details out of the right side mountain - is that why it looks hazy? If that side is dark to begin with then trying to bring detail out of it is going to be a messy - definitely more grain then detail. For color negatives in general, it is best to expose for the shadows and it's very generous highlight tolerance of > 10 stops will allow you to work with the highlights.

This is the amount of overexposure tolerance of Kodak Portra 400 compared to Ektar 100 and some digis for reference.


Film scans using Nikon Coolscan 9000 and Nikonscan.
While digis will be completely unrecoverable - even in RAW, Kodak Portra just seems to go on forever.