What is the grainiest bw film and developer?

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

PT. 1:
HP5, Rodinal 1:6, 1 min, 45 s. 68ºF, Petri 7s

(The perils of shooting at f 1.8...)^

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Pt. 2:
there were two 1:6 frames with some sort of weirdness:

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Hp5, Rodinal 1:3, 1 min, 68º F, Petri 7s.

 

[loccdor]

Rodinal 1:3! That's nuts. Great pictures.

 

[thinkbrown]

Hp5, Rodinal 1:3, 1 min, 68º F, Petri 7s.

I got the notification for this, misread it, and thought you developed for 7 seconds

 

[Quiver2]

Strange that no one has mentioned caffenol as a developer. Use the formula for slow films on a high speed film e.g. 400 or greater. The Arista/Fomapan films work for this.



Edit note: Curse you autocorrect!

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Hp5, Rodinal 1:1, 36s, 68ºf. Petri 7s

Next low dilution cycle- Ultrafine Finesse 400/ ORWO N74

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Strange that no one has mentioned caffenol as a developer. Use the formula for slow films on a high speed film e.g. 400 or greater. The Arista/Fomapan films work for this.



Edit note: Curse you autocorrect!

I've used caffenol for developing expired Kodachrome, but not much else. might be worth trying down the line

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

assumed 20(ish) years expired Tri-X in Rodinal 1:25. this convinced me I should be considering this film for high grain.

 

[koraks]

A good deal of fog helps; you end up with a muted negative that needs a lot of contrast boosting to normalize contrast, and that will boost the grain along with it.

Another thing that you could try is to use a red filter; not orange, yellow etc, but red. The red-sensitive part of a panchromatic emulsion tends to be on the grainy side. Of course, you get the particular color response for free to go with it...

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

I know I've got some red filters somewhere- but all these were shot unfiltered

 

[pentaxuser]

Rodinal 1:3! That's nuts. Great pictures.

Well it certainly is to a Scotsman like me Actually if the same size prints looked similar on a darkroom print I'd say that Rodinal 1+3 looks OK but I do wonder what, if any, improvement there is on 1+25/50

pentaxuser

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Ultrafine Finesse 400 (aka, I'm pretty sure it's ORWO n74), Rodinal 1:12, 4 min 68ºF.
Argus C Forty Four

 

[tezzasmall]

I'm loving the grain that you are getting with STRONG Rodinal dilutions, GasMaskMan.

I have a nearly full bottle of Rodinal that I didn't really get on with at it's usual dilutions, so I might just use it up on one or two 35mm films at your low dilutions.

Interestingly, to try and get some grain before, I tried a roll of HP5+ in Ilford MG developer, at 1+9 (= usual paper strength), and developed for two minutes, and I was quite impressed with how good the negatives came out. They were totally useable for printing with no extra grain. I've kept this in mind for when I need to d+p a film in the minimum time. But your tests have shown me an even faster way!

Terry S
UK

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

I'm loving the grain that you are getting with STRONG Rodinal dilutions, GasMaskMan.

I have a nearly full bottle of Rodinal that I didn't really get on with at it's usual dilutions, so I might just use it up on one or two 35mm films at your low dilutions.

Interestingly, to try and get some grain before, I tried a roll of HP5+ in Ilford MG developer, at 1+9 (= usual paper strength), and developed for two minutes, and I was quite impressed with how good the negatives came out. They were totally useable for printing with no extra grain. I've kept this in mind for when I need to d+p a film in the minimum time. But your tests have shown me an even faster way!

Terry S
UK

Always happy to inspire. the big tradeoff is these high dilutions absolutely will drain a 500ml bottle, especially if you try 1:3 and 1:1.
and yes, throughout the year, there will be more low dilution rodinal tests with more films.

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Low dilution Rodinal Ultrafine Finesse 400 (aka N74) Pt. 2:
1:6, 2 min, 68ºF, Argus C Forty-Four.

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

FP4 in Rodinal 1:25.
I've used expired MF FP4 in the past, but never fresh 35mm. Not as grainy as UN54, but still a beautiful film; kind of a more subdued HP5

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Ultrafine Finesse 400/ ORWO N74, Rodinal 1:3.
1.5 min, 68º F, Argus C-Forty Four

 

[thinkbrown]

Kodak SO-078 developed in Kalogen 1+50 for 12 minutes.


This isn't quite to the level of some of the photos here, but it's pretty chunky. Definitely seems like a high speed film in Kalogen could be a good candidate. I think I've got a bit of orwo n75 left in the fridge somewhere so maybe I'll give that a try

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Ultrafine Finess/N74 Rodinal 1:1
42s, 68ºF, Argus C Forty Four

 

[Crimeo]

Reticulation gives what appears to be coarse grain. I never had it happen to me but have seen some examples.

Also shooting half-frame gets you more grain.

The most grain I’ve ever had was Super-XX expired from the forties, exposed as low as the meter can go EI 2-4.

There’s a thread where I showed some of these examples.

Formats in themselves have no graininess or lack of graininess inherently. If shooting the equivalent photo as in another format, it doesn't appear any more or less grainy ("Equivalent" = multiply focal length and aperture by crop factor, and divide ISO by the square of the crop factor: the grains will be as much smaller as the amount of enlargement is bigger and it cancels out, while everything else looks identical, framing, DOF, motion blur, etc)

It allows you to get more grain for the same image, but you'd have to use an ND filter to do so without changing anything else. Which you could also do (indefinitely) for larger formats too, except that commercial availability of faster films runs out (not a matter of physics, but of marketing)

 

[dynachrome]

Years ago if I wanted a lot of grain, I would use Kodak 2475 Recording Film and develop it in not very dilute Dektol. I also sometimes used 2484. These films remained in production for longer than I thought. They were probably used for surveillance. For regular pictorial purposes, TMAX 3200 has much finer and tighter grain but I had some fun with 2475.

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

I just bought myself a roll of 1970 expired 2475- which I'm planning on shooting soon and developing in Rodinal. I've also got some Tmax and Delta 3200 Rodinal images on previous pages.

 

[John Wiegerink]

View attachment 422759
Kodak SO-078 developed in Kalogen 1+50 for 12 minutes.


This isn't quite to the level of some of the photos here, but it's pretty chunky. Definitely seems like a high speed film in Kalogen could be a good candidate. I think I've got a bit of orwo n75 left in the fridge somewhere so maybe I'll give that a try

Frame no.2&3 Coopersville-Marne Railroad. My wife is from Marne and I'm from Coopersville. Marne used to be called Berlin, but they thought it might be a good idea to change the name from Berlin to Marne during the war.
Frame 8&9 are Eastmanville Bayou and 68th Ave. bridge over the Grand River in Eastmanville. I fished the river and the bayou ever since I was a little kid. All the bayous along the Grand River used to be excellent fishing. A very nice area to live and visit.
I use Kalogen developer for both film and paper on occasion and find it to be a good developer and very long lasting. It doesn't seem to be a very good solvent developer, but it works fine for films like Tmax 100 and even Tmy2.

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Frame no.2&3 Coopersville-Marne Railroad. My wife is from Marne and I'm from Coopersville. Marne used to be called Berlin, but they thought it might be a good idea to change the name from Berlin to Marne during the war.
Frame 8&9 are Eastmanville Bayou and 68th Ave. bridge over the Grand River in Eastmanville. I fished the river and the bayou ever since I was a little kid. All the bayous along the Grand River used to be excellent fishing. A very nice area to live and visit.
I use Kalogen developer for both film and paper on occasion and find it to be a good developer and very long lasting. It doesn't seem to be a very good solvent developer, but it works fine for films like Tmax 100 and even Tmy2.

Coopersville is only about a 10-20 minute drive from where I'm at right now. Interestingly Eastman Bayou is the one place for this experiment that I had my films break in my camera: The RPX 400 from last summer, and the N74/ Ultrafine 1:3.