Digital BW, The Print

I have an increasingly annoying problem in that what appears to be grain in
my scans is worse at higher dpi's than it is in the quicky 500 dpi 8 bit
scans I do as proofs. This is for traditional, 35mm, bw film coming out of
my darkroom.

From what I've been able to read on the net, this may be due to aliasing &
not the actual grain in the film (It's much worse than I'd see in a
traditional, gs print.). Contrary to what I've read, however, it is not a
matter of threshold iso/grain size issues, rather it's a continuum, getting
progressively worse as iso/grain increases. It may not be readily noticeable
at lower iso's, but close inspection reveals it to be there.

Here are what I believe to be the pertinent the settings I use in Vuescan
for my, hopefully, best scans:

Media: B/W negative
Bits/pixel 16 bit gray
Resolution: 4000 dpi
Number of samples: 8
Fine mode: Yes (checked)
Multi Exposure: Yes (checked)

I've been playing, unsuccessfully, with checking/unchecking, no of samples
etc... Medium size jpg's seem to produce better scans than the maxed out
settings above, but of course, they won't work for larger prints going
forward.


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