So I just started scanning my own film...

[deckcadet]

I just took delivery of my very own Nikon Super Coolscan 4000ED. Not the latest and greatest (that would be the 5000 or 9000) but it still has 4000 DPI, decent scan speeds, 16x multi-scanning, and so on.

I only have one roll of developed film up here at college with me (left most of my developed shots in Miami, since that's where I have them done) so my testing has been somewhat limited. I'm using Nikon Scan 4 and the latest version of VueScan. VueScan is faster, but I like the results a bit better out of Nikon Scan... it's easier to use.

The only problem I'm having is that compared to the sample scans I've seen in reviews and the like, I seem to have a lot of color noise in my scans even when I don't apply any analog gain or major adjustments. It even happens when I do a 16x multi-pass scan. It could be software related though. It cleans up so-so. I can get rid of most of the color noise, though I get some pretty noticeable softening. A bit of unsharp mask helps after that, and with a 20.6mp scan with 35mm color negative film, it's not like I need to be afraid of downsizing it a bit.

Any tips? :idea:

[gahspidy]

For a few years I had been scanning 35mm film with a coolscan V. Very high resolution, but the problem was noise and grain as you discovered. In the shadow areas, there would sometimes be colored noise as you describe and is very time consuming and difficult to rid of entirely. The good thing is that it is not all that evident in medium size prints such as 12x18 or smaller. Use the finest grain film available. Using slide film such as Provia or Velvia will allow very good clean scans and allow for very large prints but the downside is that there is vey little latitude for adjustment and exposure correction with slide films and so the images need to be pretty much perfect right out of the camera.
The use of noise reduction software on scans from film offer little help and usually will soften the details of the images as well. The noise and grain are not consistent in scanned film and so the profiles that are made for the software is hit and miss at best.