Digital BW, The Print

c Pardi wrote:

>  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

Alessandro,

I think that would be a very interesting test!  I look forward to hearing the
results.

Harvey Ferdschneider
partner, SKID Photography, NYC




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