Anton Shepelev wrote:

Thanks to everybody for their replies. I got another proof of Jeremy's
suggestion: setting a wrong focus on the scanner blurrs away the image
together with the 'noise', which turns to be how grain looks to the scanner.

Good thought, I didn't even think of that.

Now another question:
On optical prints, even at big scales (like 1 x 1 m from 60 x 60 mm film)
there's no such noise visible. Does is mean they are printed with sifted
focus, or is it the natural blurring in the enlarger? One way to check it
would be to get my grainy scan printed in a fotolab without preprocessing.

Scanning seems to accentuate grain. I gather it has to do with the light
source being harder.

It's worth noting that almost all labs now do prints by scanning the
negatives.

I am not even sure this grain noise needs to be cleaned up before printing...

Are you printing optically or from the scan? If you're printing from the
scan, the "noise" is really quite small. But like I said, you can eliminate
it with one slider in Lightroom. If you're ultimately printing optically
then it's probably irrelevant.

--
Jeremy Nixon | http://www.defocus.net
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