Digital BW, The Print

Harvey,
 
> Color negative film should actually have less inherent grain than color
> transparency film.  So...It is definitely something odd in the algorithms
that is causing scanners
> to show more grain in color neg. film as compared to color transparency
film.
 
Agreed.
 
> Also, the neg. film should have a much longer tonal range (more
information)
> than reversal film.

It does, but it also has a lower DMax: this means that it can capture a
wider range of tones in a scene, but they are compressed in a narrower
density range on the film. So it is easier to scan, because it rarely pushes
a scanner to its DMax limits, but also forces you (or the scanner software)
to heavier tweaking afterwards, to bring lower tones to black and higher to
white, and this is what I think makes grain more apparent, because it
increases the contrast (you can see this when you have a dull grey sky and
try to make it more "dramatic").
I think that a fair test would be to compare the grain in the raw scan of a
slide and a negative, i.e. without any software intervention. What I expect
to see is that the histogram of the slide is wider, and the grain no less
than on the negative.
I think I have, somewhere, a slide and a color negative of the same scene
(when I was testing what film was better for my Nikon LS-30), so I can try
and see...
 
Alessandro
 


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