Well, in order to avoid grain aliasing, which is what you are most
probably seeing in 2800 DPI scans, you would have to sample at a
higher DPI. That said, I have seen grain aliasing at 4000 DPI with
most films, which is the highest I have scanned a neg :-( Even though
about all the film detail might be resolved in the 4000 DPI scan, the
grain is still in the way because of it aliasing with the CCD, as far
as I understand it.
Please show me what you interpret as grain aliasing. I've been
scanning everything from Tech pan to Tri-X pushed to ISO 1600 for
many years. What I interpret as grain aliasing with grainy films (>
ASA 100) is non-existent at 4000 ppi, I see no grain aliasing with
ASA 25-100 films.
...
Last time I checked, the photograph is built by small bits of grain.
No photograph without grain. Better grain quality equals better
photograph quality.
There comes a point when increasing scan resolution that image
quality does not improve but the grain becomes more apparent. Keeping
scan resolution just under that point is my goal, because otherwise
the grain's appearance starts to predominate in my perception of the
print rather than the image I was trying to capture.
That's the point I was trying to get across. This is why I have not
upgraded my film scanner to a greater than 3000ppi model for my usual
11x17 to 13x19 max print size from 35mm. My experiments in that
direction with borrowed ones have satisfied me that it is not a great
advantage.
Godfrey
