Michael Reichmann's website, www.luminous-landscape.com has just published an article by Nick Rains entitled "Fuji 'Pepper Grain', The Mystery Resolved". Mr. Rains describes the "pepper-grain" effect evident when Fuji transparencies are scanned at high resolution for large prints. Evidently, according to Mr. Rains, Fuji assigns the effect to scans picking up the film base. Affected Fuji transparency films apparently include Velvia, Provia 100F, and Astia.

Kodok 100VS does not appear to demonstrate this challenge.

For details refer to:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/fuji-pepper.htm

-- Berle Stratton (berle.stratton@attbi.com), March 25, 2002

Answers

Actually I just noticed something like this for the first time last night in a 2700dpi scan from Velvia - hadn't had time to get worried about it - and now I won't.

I WAS intrigued by this part of Fuji's explanation as to why no one had seen the artifacts before:

"...traditional darkroom prints are inherently soft compared to digital ones, so the problem is masked in any case."

So much for 'traditional' images being sharper. ...or not?

As to Kodak 100VS - sure it doesn't 'demonstrate this challenge' - it's sandpaper grain shows up long before any defects as fine and subtle as these.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), March 25, 2002.

"darkroom prints are inherently soft compared to digital one"

What do they mean? This sounds like marketing babble. The only reason I can see that they might say this is if you have used a drum scan to get the digitsal file, otherwise I think it is probably not true. Digital sharpening can improve apparent sharpness, but that is not necessarily the same thing.

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), March 26, 2002.