35mm Print Quality, Etc.

I've just added a new fave to my list of 35mm films: Fuji's (relatively) new Provia 400X...wow. I have never seen such good color saturation in a 400 ISO slide film before, they absolutely leap out at you. And the grain is now so small that it's about in the territory that 100 speed film was twenty years ago. I can't wait to see what this stuff looks like when it's cross-processed.

35mm Sharpness

This post raises some questions that I have been curious about. Most of my B&W work is with 2-1/4 square medium format. I much prefer the larger negative for simple ease in printing. I feel the tonality is marginally better, but more importantly, I feel I get sharper prints with 2-1/4. This may be due to the extra care when shooting, don't know for sure. I usually use a tripod when shooting medium format with Mamiya C330 or Rolleicord IV.

Recently I reprinted the attached 35mm photo taken 25 years ago with a Nikon F2 and 35mm F2.0 lens. The film was Tri-X shot probably at F5.6. The edge sharpness on this print is not good. I do not believe it shows up well in the scan, but is very evident on the print. Left of the G in High and right of the window frame is quite soft on the print. The bottom row of block is getting soft, but the I beam is very clear in the center section of the print, but fades on the left side and right side.

I feel that I would get these results consistently with 35mm, but not with the 2-1/4 square negatives. Does anyone else out there get similar results with 35mm?

Loren, what you're describing sounds to me like an issue of the lens you used. As a Nikon shooter (when I do 35mm stuff), my own opinion is that the Nikon 35s are the least impressive lenses in their lineup- far inferior to the 50s, for example. The new Zeiss 35/2 ZF for Nikon mount is substantially superior to the Nikon 35s and should not show that edge weakness.

http://www.photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/zeiss_zf_35_2/index.htm

Anyway, I don't understand this whole question of whether MF is better than 35mm, or LF is better than MF, or whatever. Every format has strengths and weaknesses. In the hands of a competent photographer, the weaknesses very rarely matter.

Loren Sattler said:

This post raises some questions that I have been curious about. Most of my B&W work is with 2-1/4 square medium format. I much prefer the larger negative for simple ease in printing. I feel the tonality is marginally better, but more importantly, I feel I get sharper prints with 2-1/4. This may be due to the extra care when shooting, don't know for sure. I usually use a tripod when shooting medium format with Mamiya C330 or Rolleicord IV.

Recently I reprinted the attached 35mm photo taken 25 years ago with a Nikon F2 and 35mm F2.0 lens. The film was Tri-X shot probably at F5.6. The edge sharpness on this print is not good. I do not believe it shows up well in the scan, but is very evident on the print. Left of the G in High and right of the window frame is quite soft on the print. The bottom row of block is getting soft, but the I beam is very clear in the center section of the print, but fades on the left side and right side.

I feel that I would get these results consistently with 35mm, but not with the 2-1/4 square negatives. Does anyone else out there get similar results with 35mm?

Click to expand...

This softness is not a result of the format. It is a camera/lens/focus, or enlarger/lens/focus thing.

After looking at Loren's scan I agree with Jason and would just add it could also caused by lack of neg flatness in the enlarger, it's highly unlikely that softness in the corners is caused by the taking lens.

Ian

Here is a comparison I did to 645 and 67 with my 35mm. Has fairly extensive examples.

Forgot link...
http://www.nealcurrie.com/t-comp0.html

JBrunner said:

This softness is not a result of the format. It is a camera/lens/focus, or enlarger/lens/focus thing.

Click to expand...

How about enlarger alignment?

I think it's entirely possible to make prints of good quality from a 35mm negative. When I used 35mm a lot, (and I stopped because I'm trigger happy, not because I disliked the quality; I needed to slow down), I regularly printed on 12x16 paper and got tight grain. I used mainly Ilford FP4+ and Pyrocat-HD for developer. In some of the prints it was actually difficult to see the grain, but that's when I got the exposure and film development spot on.
My conclusion is that you can print very nice prints up to 16x20 if you try really hard. But it's a pain in the rear and much easier to do the same from a medium format (or larger) negative.

In response to 'enlarger alignment'. Wouldn't that cause a problem in any format?

I agree with Jason that it becomes easier to print from larger negatives if you master 35mm first. My reference for 35mm work was always Cartier-Bresson and whomever printed his work. Every time I just cannot believe the quality. I also believe that C-B would not have gotten those shots with a larger camera than his Leica. I think it's about compromise what you do. Find the tool you need and make the most of it.

- Thomas

I agree. The key for me is to get the grain really sharp.

Cartier Bresson's print are amazing. Does anybody know anything about his printer(s)?

Les McLean said:

How about enlarger alignment?

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I agree. I just condensed, because it could be a number of things, film flatness in the camera, neg flatness in the carrier, enlarger alignment, etc. The thing to keep in mind is that the problem shown here is mechanical/optical, and not related to the gauge of film.

telkwa said:

Here is a comparison I did to 645 and 67 with my 35mm. Has fairly extensive examples.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. I found that very informative. It seems that as long as you can obtain ISO25 film and make exposures on a tripod then unless you exceed 11x14 the jump to MF purely on quality grounds is debatable.

The problem with 135 comes with situations where handholding is unavoidable and/or exposures with ISO25 film are too long to avoid camera shake where MF and ISO 100 can overcome the problem.

However outdoors,with a 28mm lens for large depth of field, reasonably bright available light and ISO25 a lot of shots would be possible at handheld speeds even in those parts of the world such as the UK where "sunny f11" is probably more applicable than "sunny f16"

pentaxuser

I've done a fair bit of experimenting over the past four years and I have more or less accepted that I cannot obtain a "true" 11x14 print that I am truly pleased with from 135. That has proven true regardless of the lens, film, developer, or enlarger setup used. Moreover, having examined prints of that size from others using 135 negs, I do not feel this is due to a difference in processing technique or equipment.

I have a couple 11x14 prints that are really 9x12 with borders, that I am reasonably happy with - but I stick to 8x10.

Most of my photos are taken in very contrasty light (21st century Boston, it seems, has either blazing sunlight or biblical rainstorms and little else). As a result of that lighting, texture in the high values becomes fairly important in my prints and 135 just can't deliver the goods once I'm beyond about 8x in my enlargements. I've tried TMX and Efke 25 processed in everything from straight Microdol-X to Pyrocat-MC. It just never quite comes off...it isn't a sharpness or grain issue - the highlights just go dead.

Perhaps those shooting in flatter (and more forgiving) light fare better.

On the other hand, I've found that almost any ISO 400 or lower film and developer combo can deliver a very good to excellent 8x10 with careful processing. Given that, I'm quite content to print 135 at this size and smaller.

Now I will "out" me. Around 20 years before in the time when I was studying photoengineering in Cologne, I was the printer for Mr. Wilde, the owner of Renger-Patzsch and Blossfeldt-Archive. Now Mr Moersch is doing this job. I for myself had used lf-cameras up to german format 40x50 centimeter and I have a collection of around 300 lf-optics in the history of photo-optic - mostly lf-optics. I love lf, but getting older you cannot carry so much. Thats the way, the Gigabitfilm came up.

One client from me, a long experiend professional photographer, Mr Boehme, had made once time - just for fun - two photos from the same object - one in 35mm on my film, the other on 18x24 centimeter (little less than 8x10") T-Max 100. And the T-Max negative is absolutely correct and also absolutely correct printed. The one picture he enlarged on 24x30 centimeter, the other on 30x40 centimeter. When I was on the forums for fine-print here in Germany all the years, I showed these examples to the leading experts in middle-europe. Only one -ONE- of them, Mr. Weidner, was able to say after 30 seconds looking on these photographies, which could be 35mm and what was lf. All - I mean really ALL!! - other experts were always showing on the 35mm photo saying thriumphantly: "This is largeformat!" You can find this example on my website.

To get this quality, a lot of high tec knowledge must be there, and a lot of "wrong" thinking in bw-photography must change. The list is long with all the mistakes, but since 2000 it is possible to get this quality. And I knew people in USA, who say, that they are doing their job with middleformat or more, but the reality is more little.

Resummee for your question: with the new generation of my films it is possible to get in 35mm the quality of minimum 6x7cm/4x5", depending on optic-stop and structure of the motive up to just 8x10". You need not always a tripod as with the once TechnicalPan, this has to do with blurr and too strong edge-effects. With 4x5" Gigabitfilm-negative you can get the quality of perhaps 11x14" or bigger, but high-tec precision in lf-camera will be a problem - the parallelity-problem for infinity as an example. Clients of mine, asking for Gigabitfilm 4x5", I always ask, what cameras they have. If only optical bench camera, I say: No sense, planparallelity is too low. This Gigabitfilm makes only sense 1. in cameras like Technika-Style, 2. in landscape where the motive is in infinity, 3. stopping down not over 1:16 or lower, than you can get -in summary- a resolution and grayscale - on the limits of optical physics. And your enlarger must be absolutely correct in parallelity, and a lot of the older enlarger are not, you must corrigate this. And 25 ISO make not so much fun, but works in sunny areas.

So Gigabitfilm, now we al know which film to use.… But could you explain in more detail why the late Kodak Technical Pan, which in a way belongs to the group of high definition films, though not achieving the resolution of your films, is more prone to blurr effects due to camera shake or object movement than his successors?

And what does "depending...of the structure of the motive" refer to?

f64, and be there.

AgX, please go to
http://www.gigabitfilm.de/html/english/information/4x5/examples/examples.php?Layout=normal
and see the text.

JBrunner and Agx with your question "depending...of the structure of the motive" you are right, with stop 64 (and its more diffraction of light and the resulting dramatic lower resolution) even a 10x12" TMax100 could be compared with 35mm. In my life I had done three shots with 40x50cm (around 12x15"), to get a minimum of depth of focus I need stop 64, and a pray that the wind will not blow in this moment.

To explain the blur and the negative effect of edge-effects:
You photograph with a tripod a circle, the edge effect enhance the sharpness. Is the enhancing too strong, it looks not real - today in digital time you knew this from "oversharping". When you photograp without tripod, the circle will be oval by shacking, the circle gets bigger. This "bigger" detail will -seen in statistic- be more enhanced like the normal little circle without blur. Now you will ask yourself, the edge effect will reduce any blur, NO - the opposite will happen - it ENHANCE your blur.

This had been with the old TechnicalPan and preferable with the in German common Neofin-Doku from Tetenal. When I was a student, it was difficult to get a real sharp picture. Often it is diffucult, to disavoid edge effects in a chemistry. As more you will have resolution, as more this effects occur. This happens not with Gigabitfilm, thats why I use for myself no more tripods (as example: only under 1/10 sec and 50mm). Of course, when I have some motion in my negative, the full sharpness is not there, but the negative looks like a normal negative with normal unsharpness, and not with unnormal enhanced blur.

In literature like Anchell-Troop -The film developing cook book- you find on page 3 the sentence: "... the high micro-contrast of smaller negatives can give the impression o biting clarity to a negative. But this impression is achieved at the expense of smooth gradation in small areas."

Without any edge effects all Gigabitfilm will this show not - the opposite is true - the gradation even in extrem small areas are more smooth than in larger negatives. In emulsions with mix dispersed grains, only the sum of all grains will enable a gray tone. This leads to a lot of problems for a stable gray tone in small areas. In Gigabitfilm every grain of the monodispersed film will give the full gray scale information.

gigabitfilm --

your story reminds me of something a photochemist once told me.
first, he was one of the people who did all the testing for the darkroom data guides
( wish i could remember the name! ) that came out every year for a long long time.
he had notes on all sorts of developers and films and all that fun stuff.
he used to invent developers, and one in particular a monobath
developer he liked very much. it was high def ...
and he processed submini film in it.
one day he took his film, and enlarged it BIG, and it was beautiful.
ansel adams himself was there ( they knew eachohter and all ) ...
and thought the images on the wall were all done with a large format camera ...
but like in your story, the film was much smaller

john

Thanks jnanian, these are the little historian anekdotes, I am collecting for my history of high resolution photography. Please, sniff a little bit at on your fixingbath , perhaps you will remember more.

Indeed I have a collection for that, starting with Stereoslides in 9x18 cm from Ferrier et Soulier, Paris, made from collodion negatives copied on ultrahigh resolution AgHal, in literature only these from that company are described as Niepcotypien, from 1855 up to 1870. By some opportunities I showed them to the emulsion-making people, asking them - "What have you done your whole life here in emulsion-making?" Once in 1996 a professional photographer (master examples for several photokina for Agfa) said to me: "Thank you, that I am allowed to see that quality. I cannot do a job like this quality, because I have not the film material for that." Some remarks to these glas slides - the silver is perfect, but the transport of the thin glas is critical, because very old glas can gets fragil. The same fragil problem I saw in Meydenbauer-Archiv in Berlin (inventor of photogrammetry with glasplates up to 40x40 cm - Preussische Messbildanstalt - prussian photogrammetie-institut), when I wanted to see the originals from 1890. The emulsion was good, but the plan-polished glas gets brittle. Meydenbauer used in his time a Pantoscop from Busch for his photogrammetrie and sometimes the Goerz-Hypergon. He used stop 64 - I saw in the original negativplates a resolution not over 8 linepairs/millimeter. Today I would get a better quality, when I use instead that f/64 in 40x40cm a 35mm camera. This was done in 1994-98 with a little project called Low Cost Aerial Mapping with Contax RTS III Metrica, I was engaged for that camera as adviser and for the film etc.

Some technical informations: At the moment, you use high resolution, you must use another kind of densitometer. In science people know that, but not in common practise. The same had been in collodium time 1850-1880 - a correct negative looks thin, like dust. At the moment, gelatinesilver appear in 1880-90, grain got very clumpsy (until today) and you grow up until today with the measuring tools for that grain structure.

Ian Grant said:

After looking at Loren's scan I agree with Jason and would just add it could also caused by lack of neg flatness in the enlarger, it's highly unlikely that softness in the corners is caused by the taking lens.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

Loren, why not scan that negative and then you'll probably find that enlarger alignment is the main culprit.

[however, I stand by my assertion that the Nikkor 35s are not a fine example of what 35mm can do!]

Not to hi-jack the thread, but Gigabitfilm: Where can we get this amazing emulsion in the U.S.?
Reading this is getting me salivating to do some testing myself!
Sincerely,
Jed

Mr. Smith, until now I have no reseller in US. Once I had have a company JandC as a distributor, but I canceled him, because they were making google-advertising with my name for low-level plagiat-products, but do not offer my films at this time. I am not interest in downtown business methods.

Regardless of the film format, I believe that a fine print is the product of thoughtful consideration and understanding of materials, chemicals, and of course technique tailored to the materials, chemicals, and the intended result. I know through experience that the same combination of materials, chemicals, and technique does not necessarily produce the intended result with all formats. I work in all formats, and have produced equally fine and equally bad prints in each format.