Sorry, I've had a monstrous week but I'm finally able to reply. Thanks for your input! I always use the same film: Kodak Tri-X, pushed to 1600 and developed in HC-110. The grain is very familiar to me and is what I like.

As for scanning, I used to have super sharp results, but they're not anymore unless I scan at a lower resolution. This also applies to photos that I scanned before at 5300spi and now have to scan at 4000spi to get sharp results.

Furthermore, the examples I attached are from the same photo and scanned in the same session, only changing the scanning resolution, so I didn't change the selection area, I didn't move it and I kept the scanner lid closed.

And I may be nagging, but the difference in sharpness between the scans is very apparent in my opinion. I used to have much sharper results before so I don't understand why this is happening.

I can try wet-mounting, I have Mylar sheets and mounting liquid that I got with the scanner but haven't used that up to now because the results were so sharp already when I dry-mounted.