Problem with sharpening/laser output on Frontier?

[XXLtdLab]

I have been having some issues with the Frontier I use to scan my customer and personal film with.  The thing makes decent 8x10" prints, even bigger on Lustre paper, but looking at the scans on the screen, or output to glossy, they just don't look "filmic".  There isn't grain I'm seeing, it's noise.

I have a feeling it is probably the sharpening/aliasing software for the scan lines as the imager moves across the film.  Granted this is far better than say an analog wire photo scanner from the '60s, but it just doesn't look as good as optical.

I want our film scans to look as close as possible to a well-focused, properly stopped-down optical print.

Any advice on how to calibrate, set the sharpening to get the utmost out of the Fuji Frontier?  I don't expect it to compete with our HR-500, but it should be more than adequate for quick proof jobs, and I don't find it so seeing the two different scanners' files compared side-by-side.

Thanks

~KB

XXLtdLab

[ghn5ue]

It is artifacts from the auto-sharpening in the Frontier software. I set up custom functions that have the sharpening turned off , and we use those when scanning high res images.  Those scans can then be sharpened in Photoshop with much better results.  I regularly do 20 by 30 inch prints off scans from our LP2000 and customers are very happy with the results.

[XXLtdLab]

Maybe I'd beter post a photo before you go blaming auto sharpening.  Although that could certainly be it, there are what five different factors, hardware AND software that can conceivably cause this problem.

IDK the model number OTOH, but we have the ProLab version of he scanner, only thing missing on it out of all the bells and whistles is digital ice.

Scans every format up to 4x5.

With the HR 500 you can actually go in and adjust PIXEL oFFSET, sharpening and interpolation between scan lines.  Is such precision control possible with a lower-end Frontier scanner (not that there is anythign wrong with a Froniter) I I've seen beautiful prints made by another lab here that run s with one from scanned film).

I like to do everything the old-fashioned way:  Zero out the B+_F on the densitometer, plug in a RGB value, and then color correct from there, not have the scanner do auto everything.  Is there anything you can tell me about those controls, where to find them?

Am so busy with production (IDK where our manual is either, sorry!  :-( ) that I can't sit down with the thing and get to work on it getting all the crap and "idiot proofing" turned off!  I want to take advantage of the ability a skilled human operator has every day of the week and twice on Sunday over even the best software.