Transparency Scans are extremely grainy in dark areas

[MOZZ]

Hi

I was wondering if anyone could help. I am Using Silverfast 5.5.2.r22 for my Umax 1120 scanner but have had little sucess in doing good quality negative and transparency scans. Dark areas of the scans become very grainy (dots) whilst the light areas remain fine. I have callibrated the scanner using the two IT8 calibration target sheets numerous times (T020730 for transparencies, R020702 for Reflective). These calibrations are active and I have also tried scanning with them inactive as well. I have reinstalled my sytem software from scratch (originally Mac OS 8.6, now OS9.1) but still get the same results. I have tried to install the latest version of Silverfast 5.5.3r20 but it wouldn't accept my serial number.

The Scanners bundled software, MagicScan, doesn't produce these results but I would rather be using the superior colour correcting capabilities of Silverfast, especially as it cost quite a bit extra.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Many Thanks,

Christian

[President_LSI]

Graininess in dark areas of scan

Graininess in dark areas comes either from the actual grain in the film or it comes from the noise produced by the CCD and the AD-converters of the scanner.
In order to avoid the increase of existing scanner noise, you can use the expert dialog of SilverFast's USM to sharpen only up to a certain density and then apply some smoothening to the dark areas to reduce the noise effect.
SilverFast 6 latest version in addition has the new GANE function (Grain and Noise Elimination) to reduce grain effects.

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[MOZZ]

Thank you for your reply. I will try your advice when I'm back at work on Monday.