C
Chris Birkett
About a month ago, I posted about Vuescan producing some really nasty noise
in dark areas of my scans (using a Scan Dual III). I got a few suggestions
about minimizing grain with Neat Image, changing settings, etc. and I
decided to play around with it some more. I've spend some time doing this
with multiple versions, and I still haven't managed to eliminate the
problem.
When I scan black and white negatives, I'm finding that anywhere the
negative gets thin (ie shadow areas), I get really awful grain or noise.
I'll include a link to some sample scans a bit later. Looking at the
clipping view in Vuescan, I see this noise is usually being abruptly clipped
to 100% black. No matter how much I change settings, I can't get rid of it.
Even with brightness set to max, I still get some pure black noise. I tried
scanning the same negative with Minolta's crappy software (sample included,
too), and I managed to make a scan with no clipped noise using a basic
exposure adjustment.
This is a real problem for me, because it shows up even in web-sized scans,
and is quite noticeable in some areas. It happens with pushed film, it
happens with normally exposed film, with overexposed film, with underexposed
film... pretty much any dark (thin) area of a negative. It's not even so
much the noise itself as the way it jumps to pure black.
Most of my scanning is done in black and white mode, at 1410dpi. I've tried
scanning as a colour slide, but that generally produces a scan so contrasty
that the noise is masked by large black areas. I've also tried scanning at
full resolution, with multiple passes (up to 8), different colour balance
and film settings, etc. Pretty much everything.
Some examples:
This gallery has a few random test scans I did earlier this evening. The
descriptions are at the top. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.
http://www.pbase.com/bob_mcbob/noiseproblem/
You can see it in the shadows of her arm in this image, though not quite as
clearly of course. This is an example of how it shows up even in resized
web scans. Check the detail in the other gallery.
http://www.pbase.com/image/25688002/
I don't know if there's something really obvious I'm missing here, but I've
tried everything I can think of to eliminate this problem, and I've come up
with nothing. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if this message
is a bit messy, it's rather late here
.
- Chris
in dark areas of my scans (using a Scan Dual III). I got a few suggestions
about minimizing grain with Neat Image, changing settings, etc. and I
decided to play around with it some more. I've spend some time doing this
with multiple versions, and I still haven't managed to eliminate the
problem.
When I scan black and white negatives, I'm finding that anywhere the
negative gets thin (ie shadow areas), I get really awful grain or noise.
I'll include a link to some sample scans a bit later. Looking at the
clipping view in Vuescan, I see this noise is usually being abruptly clipped
to 100% black. No matter how much I change settings, I can't get rid of it.
Even with brightness set to max, I still get some pure black noise. I tried
scanning the same negative with Minolta's crappy software (sample included,
too), and I managed to make a scan with no clipped noise using a basic
exposure adjustment.
This is a real problem for me, because it shows up even in web-sized scans,
and is quite noticeable in some areas. It happens with pushed film, it
happens with normally exposed film, with overexposed film, with underexposed
film... pretty much any dark (thin) area of a negative. It's not even so
much the noise itself as the way it jumps to pure black.
Most of my scanning is done in black and white mode, at 1410dpi. I've tried
scanning as a colour slide, but that generally produces a scan so contrasty
that the noise is masked by large black areas. I've also tried scanning at
full resolution, with multiple passes (up to 8), different colour balance
and film settings, etc. Pretty much everything.
Some examples:
This gallery has a few random test scans I did earlier this evening. The
descriptions are at the top. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.
http://www.pbase.com/bob_mcbob/noiseproblem/
You can see it in the shadows of her arm in this image, though not quite as
clearly of course. This is an example of how it shows up even in resized
web scans. Check the detail in the other gallery.
http://www.pbase.com/image/25688002/
I don't know if there's something really obvious I'm missing here, but I've
tried everything I can think of to eliminate this problem, and I've come up
with nothing. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if this message
is a bit messy, it's rather late here
.- Chris