A question about grain

[Shanshan]

Hello,
I'm back to film photography. I am more used to digital since years, but there is something with the practice of film photo that makes me willing to improve my skills in that.
I bought a old Nikon SLR, and tried it at my place. I have been lazy to get out yesterday. Film has been developed by a very random laboratory.

I will try it outside tomorrow with a fuji xtra film, 400 ISO.

I used a very random film, Kodak Gold 200 ISO. I am very astonished by the grain and I wanted your opinion about it. Is it because my place is a bit dark ? Is the film quality low ? Is there a problem with the camera (not clean lense, etc) ? 200 ISO should produce very low grain. I dont think this grain is due to my movements during the shoot, i was quite steady, and I can see the difference.

I put here a scan of 5 pics i took with that film. It is scanned in 1200dpi quality. it's on wetransfer because the pic is 10Mb: https://we.tl/MKY1G6uMKO

Any opinion ? Is it normal ? Is there something wrong ?

thank you !
best

 

[flavio81]

For what it's worth, Kodak Gold 200 is not the most fine grained of films, not even in the ISO 200 category.

If you are concerned by grain, try Ektar 100 or Potra 160.

 

[Shanshan]

I have a fuji i'll try tomorrow. The fact is that i randomly bought the Kodak Gold. Kodad Gold is i believe the film i used to use from 1995 to 2006 when i was shooting with a small film camera with no specific interest in photography. And the grain was wayyy lower

 

[pdeeh]

Were you scanning it in 1995?

 

[Shanshan]

no no. And the pic i sent is just a scan of the pic developed by the photographer. its similar to what i have on the paper

 

[MattKing]

First, welcome to APUG.
I can't access the link without registering, which I prefer not to do.
And the downloaded set of pictures is too small to see the grain.
But one of the realities of using scans to evaluate film is that if you aren't careful the scanning process can add artifacts that are grain like, but are not a true representation of the film's grain.
Especially if your film is under-exposed.
Gold 200 isn't particularly fine grained, but it isn't particularly grainy either.

 

[Shanshan]

thank you !
I think that the problem comes from the under exposition of the pics. maybe results would have been better with ISO 400.
The scanning is only to show you, but the grain i see on my pics is not due to the scanning.
How can i send you a sample of my pic ?

 

[flavio81]

If you are underexposing then grain will be very big. Expose properly and if in doubt, overexpose.

As mentioned, poor quality scanners can emphasize grain. Or, even worse, introduce chromatic aberration on high contrast edges, and/or general fuzziness that is then counteracted in software by incrrasing sharpness, which will make grain look worse. Example: Epson flatbed scanners.

 

[Shanshan]

I see. So from now i'll shoot with films, 4OO, and maybe tell to the camera that the ISO is 200, so it will expose more.

Also, I do not know how that lab works. They use machines and printers, maybe they scan the negatives and print them, so it increases the grain ?

All these film photograhy thing is very interesting but I still lack knowledge to understand exactly what is going on and resolve my problems.