Scanned images - grain, sharpness, noise

[Gardyloo]

I've been scanning many many old slides and have some images that I like to make as presentable as possible, but I'm encountering a number of issues that I could use some help addressing.

I'm using a 6 or 7 year old Wolverine scanner that has some limitations - some unwanted cropping and vignetting, but most of these can be handled in post. More annoying is a persistent tendency to red-shift shadows and neutrals, made worse because some of the slides need shadow details enhanced (I use PS Elements and Paintshop Pro for the most part) and when I do the shadow color cast becomes a big issue.

But the issue I want to talk about here is grain/noise/sharpness. I keep trying to make these scanned images look as sharp as those coming from my digital cameras, but while this is probably not achievable I'd like to get as close as possible.

Here are two versions of a scanned slide. Both are cropped quite severely from the original, and have had things like the horizon straightened, some dust and crud on the slide cloned out, etc.

Slide details: Kodachrome 64, image taken in 1977 near Anchorage, Alaska, using a Nikkormat SLR with (I think) a Nikkor 43-86mm macro zoom lens. No idea of the shutter or aperture settings.

Version 1 - sharpness and saturation slightly increased over base scan.

Version 2 - Saturation slightly dialed back, added "soft focus" filter (Paintshop Pro.)

They're both still pretty grainy/noisy, but any further reduction in sharpness sort of takes away the point of the exercise in my view. (The lake's name is "Mirror Lake" after all.)

So suggestions on how to optimize these images (or something altogether different?)

Thanks so much.

 

[weepete]

Sometimes there's only so much you can do. I know there's other photographers who swear by different packages for noise reduction but I guess it depends on how much you want to spend on software trying to achieve that.

Looking at these it seems to me that there's so much detail loss that realistcally there's not all that much that can be done. If you are slides are better, but it's the scanner that causing the issue then maybe a better scanner is required to get a cleaner initial file, but I don't have any experience scanning slides I'm afraid.

 

[Ysarex]

I've been scanning many many old slides and have some images that I like to make as presentable as possible, but I'm encountering a number of issues that I could use some help addressing.

I'm using a 6 or 7 year old Wolverine scanner that has some limitations - some unwanted cropping and vignetting, but most of these can be handled in post. More annoying is a persistent tendency to red-shift shadows and neutrals, made worse because some of the slides need shadow details enhanced (I use PS Elements and Paintshop Pro for the most part) and when I do the shadow color cast becomes a big issue.

But the issue I want to talk about here is grain/noise/sharpness. I keep trying to make these scanned images look as sharp as those coming from my digital cameras, but while this is probably not achievable I'd like to get as close as possible.

If you have a modern digital camera it is not achievable. 35mm films contain about 15 megabytes of data. The rule of thumb is that a 2400 PPI scan will record the grain in the film, return as much data as the film can provide, and is in fact overkill. This gets complicated by the range in resolution over the wide variety of films and so 15 megabytes is a pretty crude stab at an average. Assuming a very high-res fine grain film think as much as 20 megabytes of data and a low-res high speed film as little as 12 megabytes.

In any case my lowest-res digital camera is considerably better.

Here are two versions of a scanned slide. Both are cropped quite severely from the original, and have had things like the horizon straightened, some dust and crud on the slide cloned out, etc.

Slide details: Kodachrome 64, image taken in 1977 near Anchorage, Alaska, using a Nikkormat SLR with (I think) a Nikkor 43-86mm macro zoom lens. No idea of the shutter or aperture settings.

Version 1 - sharpness and saturation slightly increased over base scan.

View attachment 195468

Version 2 - Saturation slightly dialed back, added "soft focus" filter (Paintshop Pro.)

View attachment 195469

They're both still pretty grainy/noisy, but any further reduction in sharpness sort of takes away the point of the exercise in my view. (The lake's name is "Mirror Lake" after all.)

So suggestions on how to optimize these images (or something altogether different?)

Thanks so much.

I have no hands on experience with the scanner you're using and only recognize it by name. But I suspect it is not giving you good results. What I can do is show you a sample scan from a different scanner.

The film is Fuji RPD 100 slide film. The camera was a Nikkormat and the lens a Nikon 55mm f/3.5 Micro. The scanner is a Nikon Coolscan LS-5000 (antique).

The original scan was done at 4000 PPI. There can be slight advantages to over-scanning and then sampling down as you can control sharpening in stages with down-sampling. The only thing I've done to the original is spot it (film was pretty dirty) and save it as a JPEG.

Original scan: Dropbox - nikon_scan.jpg - Simplify your life

This next image is the down-sampled version to 2400 PPI with the only addition that the image was sharpened. Still to do then is color and tone corrections.

2400 PPI down-sample: Dropbox - nikon_scan_2400.jpg - Simplify your life

Good luck,
Joe

 

[AlanKlein]

Kodachrome scanned with an Epson 600.
Family - 35mm Kodachrome

 

[Derrel]

Slide holder, macro lens, light source, extension tube, snap photos of the slides with a 24 to 47MP camera. Less grain, less dust, fewer scratches, 7 to 15 times faster than old style film scanners.

 

[Derrel]

Nikon LS-5000

Original scan: Dropbox - nikon_scan.jpg - Simplify your life

This next image is the down-sampled version to 2400 PPI with the only addition that the image was sharpened. Still to do then is color and tone corrections.

2400 PPI down-sample: Dropbox - nikon_scan_2400.jpg - Simplify your life

Good luck,
Joe

GOOD SCAN AND WEB-REDUCTION