Digital BW, The Print

Peter, you might want to get a "second opinion" by taking the film to 
someone you know with a different film scanner and attempting a scan 
there for comparison.  I had a bit of a time with one or two earlier 
scanners when working with T400CN (among other film types) a while 
back; I'm curretnly working with a Minolta 5400 which seems to work 
well with almost any film type I throw at it (including T400CN, 
although I've mostly been using Ilford XP2 Super regularly for the 
past few years).  All film scanners aren't alike, even at the upper 
end.

- Barrett

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Peter A. Klein" 
<pklein@2...> wrote:
> Mike:  Thanks. I was afraid it was something like that.  The film 
is 
> T400CN, which is supposed to scan better than traditional silver 
> films. But its weakness is that the darker things get, the grainier 
> it gets.
> 
> Since I posted the problem, I even tried scanning as a color slide, 
> then inverting the image and desaturating through various color 
> filters.  I got a slightly better initial image that was easier to 
> tweak into the right tonal range.  But the problem remained--the 
> images were virtually identical once I matched the first scan's 
> curves.
> 
> Multiple-pass scanning did not help, either, so I guess it's just 
> interaction between whatever's on the film and the scanner.
> 
> --Peter