Topic: Which film for scanning?

[Dave_M]

Howdy folks.

When I'm printing in the darkroom I love grainy film. However when I need to go down the digital route I find that grain and scanning are not a great mix. I've heard that Ilford XP2 scans well as it uses dyes (?) but was wondering if something like Efke25 (Adox at retrophotographic) would be better?

Does anyone have any experience scanning these?

Cheers,

Dave.

[david b]

Depends quite a lot on whether you're scanning with a flatbed or a film scanner.  And then what make of scanner you're using and what software - and also some technique issues (scanning b&w negatives as colour positives and then inverting reduces grain considerably).  There are quite a few variables!

[Dave_M]

Thanks David. I'll be using an Imacon Flextight and the scans are RGB rather than greyscale (16 bit Tiff). I've already had FP4 + Delta100 done this way and although it resolves a hell of a lot of detail it also resolves a lot of grain.

I'll grab a roll of each to test - just curious if there any Xp2/Efke25 scanning evangelists in the forum 

[david b]

I've used a Flextight 646 a bit and not had many problems with grain, but I do use Xtol which is quite a fine grain developer.  My main film these days is Acros, which is pretty much devoid of any grain, but I'd imagine you'll do well with Efke 25 as I used to shoot quite a lot of the old Agfa films - which I believe share some similarities - and they scan beautifully.

I wasn't clear from your reply whether you've tried scanning as a positive and then inverting in Photoshop - but that's the single thing that's made the most difference in my film scans. Although I have no rational explanation for the difference!

[Dave_M]

Cheers David

I think I'll order a few rolls of Efke25 for my first test. I'll not be doing the scanning myself but will be using http://www.blueskyimages.co.uk/ - I could ask the chap to do them as positives and then invert them.

[Pete_R]

I use XP2 and have had no problems scanning either as colour or black and white. One of the reasons for choosing XP2 was because it scans well. No experience of the Efke though. I did try other films with varying success and it doesn't always follow that a fine grain film scans well. I found Acros to be particularly bad. PanF was OK. Delta 100 OK but Delta 400 too grainy for me.

It does depend on the scanner though so others may get completely different results.

[david b]

Yes, there are too many factors - personally I would have said that Acros is one of the better films for scanning.  Never used to have these problems in the darkroom... although, had plenty of other problems there!

[Francois]

On a CCD based scanner, you always get increased grain (the reason would be too long to explain here)...

A dye based film gets smaller grain when scanned.

[seekingfocus]

Another thing you could try is multi pass scanning... most scaners are capable of doing this and it reduces grain and digital noise considerably.

Also, you can scan at twice the resolution of the final desired size and scale down... again, most scanner software is capable of applying the sale ration automatically.

-Jason