Epson V500 grain/noise control

[Moon Baby]

Hey there! I recently bought an Epson V500 and a few days ago, UPS delivered my Canon A1. I used cheapo Fuji Film Superia 400 film and got them processed at Wal-Mart...

I scanned a couple of frames and I noticed a lot of noise in my pictures. A lot of which were taken in low light or indoors. The ones during the day were fine.

I'm trying to figure out the best scan settings for my film so I don't get too much digital noise and enhance grain on the film as well.
I scan at 48bit/2400dpi/Professional mode and DigitalICE for the occasional dust/dirt...Everything else is off.

If I can get slightly cleaner pictures, I'll be super stoked. Thanks!
I'll post up some photos as soon as I get home from work.

 

[Dwig]

I've never encountered any digital noise using my v700 with the same EPSON Scan software. Is is possible you are seeing film grain and mistaking it for digital noise. Color negative film has rather variable grain size. When heavily exposed (normal to overexposed) the grain if significantly finer than when underexposed. If you indoor pictures are even slightly underexposed you will see more grain in those images than in the outdoor images even when they are on the same roll.

I am careful to make proper exposure adjustment in the scanning software to avoid having the actual image data compressed in only a small portion of the scanner's dynamic range. If your scans need any significant exposure/contrast adjustment in an image editor after scanning you may be failing to make proper adjustments in EPSON Scan. EPSON Scan's auto expsure adjustments are pretty good, but only when the scanned area does not include any blank film outside of the actual image area.

There is another issue with scanning where grain can be poorly imaged leaving a blotched look that doesn't look like grain but isn't digital noise either. Its an effect related to moire patterns. When the grain size gets too close to the scanning frequency (pixel size) you can get a clumped look that doesn't look like grain but isn't digital noise either. If you double the scanning frequency (e.g. to 4800 in this case) or halve it (e.g. 1200ppi) this type of clumping will go away and you should get a better resolution of the film's grain. If raising the scanning frequency helps the images then this, and not digital noise, is the problem. The more regular the grain the more likely this will happen at some resolution. I first encounted this when scanning some WWI vintage B&W negs and it took me awhile to puzzle out the cause.