acutance vs grain, I don't understand

Rob has by far the best advice in this thread.

Stop worrying about the grain so much. Small grain / large grain or low / high acutance is not going to make or break a good photograph. Just pick a film - I promise you that you can get outstanding results with damned near any combination of film and developer out there. If you learn how to use it.

Just buy a load of film and a bottle of developer, and start shooting with it. I have prints from ISO 100 film that appear grainier than some from ISO 400 film - just because of how I shot and processed the film - in the same developer.

Use the film / developer you buy in your first batch, try different things with overexposing the film, underexposing it, and see what the effect is. Make one change at a time. Then you can start experimenting with development times, let the film stay in longer, shorter, see what happens. Learn how to find the combination of shooting the film and developing it that works for you.
But above all - print them, and print them often. There is no telling by looking at the negative how good the print will look. Print, print, print. It's not until you print a lot that the whole process will come full circle.
I can tell you from experience that I farted around with different films and developers for years, only to become hung up on it and not growing my photography one single iota.
I stopped, and settled down for one film with one single developer, learned those products well, and I printed them as often as I could. First then did I truly start seeing in my photography. Please learn from my mistakes. Don't worry so much about the grain and acutance. Just get out there and explore lighting, composition, rain, fog, texture, color. Those aspects are so much more important.

With the best wishes,

- Thomas

rob champagne said:

All film has microscopic grain. It is the speed of the film combined with the developer which affects how the actual grain forms into grain clumps and it is the grain clumps that you see, not the grain. Slow film films tend not to clump so much. Faster films clump more. Fine grain developers tend not to clump grain so much. High activity developers clump grain more.
Some people make the big mistake of judging how the print will look by looking at the grain in the negative. They tend to like to see an etched look in their negatives. Personally I think that makes the print look too harsh. But that is a subjective consideration so is infact a control for you to use.
Acutance is the way in which the grain forms the transition from light to dark or dark to light areas. Some film developer combinations make this more pronounced than others. Again this a control for you to use. People worry that a print must have fine grain and good acutance for it to be a good print. But that means they are dictating what defines a good print which is pure nonsense. If you want a print with large grain and poor acutance because it suits your aesthetic, then who is to say that you are wrong.
People get way to hung up on grain and acutance, especially when they are starting out. Just go with one film and a standard developer and learn it. Then later when you are proficient, experiment with same film and different developers, and then different film and original developer and then other developers. That way you get to learn the different look of the actual print and don't worry about how the neg looks. Follow your instincts and not other peoples and that way you won't turn out to be a clone.

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Sino said:

Gainer,

I didn't quite understand what you mean, could you please explain what you wrote? Cheers,

-Sino.

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An edge on a 35 mm negative will have a Mackie line of about the same width as one on 8x10 film. The line on an 8x10 enlargement of the 35 will be much wider than the line on the 8x10 contact print.

dpurdy said:

There is another aspect of accutance developers to consider. To work it has to be a very dilute yet active developer so that it exhausts rapidly. An accutance developer doesn't develop the whole emulsion it developes just the top of it so that sharpness is increased just by the fact that light passing through it goes through a shallower layer of grain. And by agitating less combined with the exhaustion of the developer you get slight more density where areas of more exposure lie next to areas of less exposure and this is accentuated by adding potassium iodide to the developer. The edge affect causes the print to look sharper though in reality it doesn't actually have greater resolution. The dilute nature of an accutance developer causes it to be somewhat compensating.
http://www.pbase.com/dpurdy/rollei_xenotar__pentax_67
Every image on this page is processed in Beutlers mostly on Acros but some on Tmax 100

Dennis

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These photos pack a wallop of emotion...

Paul Howell said:

For side by side comparsions you may want to read Thortons' Edge of Darkness. I just bought a copy, and although not my style, a very good read with examples. I tired Dixactol which is based on his formula but found it to have too much gain for my tast. The only developers that I know that has both very fine grain and sharpness are Edwal 12 and 20. Edwal 20 has been off the market for many years and I have not found an exact formula.

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Will read!

Gadget Gainer makes a very important point, namely, the magnification factor for negative to print is very important! What looks good at one size may look less desirable at a different one. So when Mary says, I love Super Y film in Realitol Developer, there is a lot if info left out! Mary may be making 5x7 enlargements from 35mm, whereas Phil might be interested in making 11x14's from 35mm, and so even if he matches Mary's negative densities and development method, he can get significantly different looking prints. In my experience, high adjacency effects images are more sensitive to magnification changes than low adjacency negatives.

Tom Hoskinson said:

According to Michael Briggs, Here is the formula for Edwal-20
1 liter distilled water
Gradol 5 grams derivative of para aminophenol
Sodium Sulfite 90 grams anhydrous [sodium sulfite]
Diamine-P 10 grams paraphenylenediamine
Monazol 5 grams photographic glycin

Source: http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0065dl

For the Gradol you probably could substitute Rodinal (or 5 grams of p-aminophenol base)

The only differance between Edwal 12 an 20 is that in Edwal 20 P-aminophenol replaces methol. I tired replaceing the methol for 5 grams of P aminophenol but my attempt did not seem to match the film speed of Edwal 20 which is about 70% of box rated. My attempt seemed to be about 40% of box speed.

It appears that Edwal-20 is very heavily loaded with sulfite. D-23 should give a similar look to your negs.

Edwal 12 and 20 are much differnt, sharper, it is the parphenylondeiamine. Edwal 12 is high contrast, Edwal 20 is more compensating, at least from I recall when it was still on the market. I have been using Edwal 12 for several years, works well for low contast sitiutations such as shooting in the Desert, although bright the desert is often very low contrast due to all of the reflected light.

I suggest using Crawley’s FX-2 instead

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I will try Crawley FX-2 and Edwal FG 7 as well, or I may just get more 777.

Indeed - I only use pcat on LF format and reserve roll film to XTOL type developers - The accutance works real well on LF negs but on MF and smaller, it limits how much you can enlarge a negative.

Peter De Smidt said:

Gadget Gainer makes a very important point, namely, the magnification factor for negative to print is very important! What looks good at one size may look less desirable at a different one. So when Mary says, I love Super Y film in Realitol Developer, there is a lot if info left out! Mary may be making 5x7 enlargements from 35mm, whereas Phil might be interested in making 11x14's from 35mm, and so even if he matches Mary's negative densities and development method, he can get significantly different looking prints. In my experience, high adjacency effects images are more sensitive to magnification changes than low adjacency negatives.

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Thomas Bertilsson said:

Don't worry so much about the grain and acutance. Just get out there and explore lighting, composition, rain, fog, texture, color. Those aspects are so much more important.

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I agree. It's too easy to get caught up in thinking there's some magic bullet that will turn me into the photographer I wish to be. The only magic is in photographing more and improving one's awareness of the photographic possibilities.

Years ago I took my first step to quality when I standardised upon one developer and one film based on the realization that the weak link was me. I suspect that at some point, given enough improvement in my abilities, it would make sense to seek films and developers to attain the last 2% of quality. My strategy is that I need to have that other 98% in place first.

C

Most of the conversation concerning acutance concerns the use of 35mm and smaller formats. It is true that acutance developers have enjoyed new popularity because of fine grain films like TMX, Delta 100 and ACROS. If you use these films in the 35mm format and make large prints you will see some of the edge effect. The problem for me is that the acutance developers also increase grain. Some of the acutance developers which have become popular or popular again are Paterson FX-39 (available again), Neofin Blau, Rodinal/R09/F09 etc., dilute FG-7 and ethol TEC (if that is still available). When I use ACROS in 35mm size I prefer to use the opposite strategy. I use Fuji Microfine. This gives grain which is equal to or better than what I can get with TMX. The edge effect is different because rather than getting a sharp looking edge with more grain I get an edge with no visible grain but which still has excellent sharpness. I do not like the look of TMX or ACROS in Rodinal or Rodinal-like developers. This doesn't mean you can't do nice work with those combinations. I just don't see the advantage of using a fine grain film with a developer which makes the grain more pronounced.

In the early days of 35mm b&w photography many techniques were employed to help the smaller format more competitive with the larger formats for certain applications. One of my favorite film and developer combinations years ago was Panatomic-X at 64 with Edwal FG-7 at 1:15 with plain water. Grain, sharpness and tonality were all very good. I did not find TMX a good replacement for Panatomic-X and I still don't. Panatomic-X was easier to use and gave consistently good results. The speed of 32 did not bother me. Many people who use TMX don't rate the film much higher than 32 anyway. Today we still have Ilford Pan F+. It isn't exactly like Panatomic-X but it has very fine grain. It as even finer grain than Delta 100. Other indices of perceived sharpness cause some people to think that Delta 100 is a sharper film but its grain still isn't as fine as that of Pan F+.

There is another way to get fine grain and sharpness without new technology flms or exotic developers. Just use a larger format. If I put FP4+ or Plus-X into my Bronica GS-1 and use D-76 I will get an 11X14 print which will be very hard to match by using TMX or ACROS or Delta 100 in 35mm size with an acutance developer. The prints from 35mm film can be quite good but they will not be as good ss the print from the 6X7 negative.

rob champagne said:

WRONG!!!

No photograph is literal. All photographs are interpretations and its upto you how you interpret the subject and render it.
You can spend all year talking about grain and acutance if you want, but you won't understand them until you have learnt to control them. And the only way you will do that is by going out and doing some photography and printing it and thereby discovering it for yourself.

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I think for his needs, his understanding is correct. It's functional.

dynachrome said:

This doesn't mean you can't do nice work with those combinations. I just don't see the advantage of using a fine grain film with a developer which makes the grain more pronounced.

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And here I am, the exact opposite. I don't see a point in using fine-grain films and then using sharpness-robbing fine grain developers to make the grain even finer when the grain is already plenty fine enough.

If you make the image sharp, you make the grain sharp. Grain is, after all, detail on the negative (albeit not image detail). You can't tell developers to soften the grain but leave the image sharp. They go together, whichever direction you decide to go.

Besides, my experience has been that an image with bitingly sharp grain and an image that is just as sharp looks sharper than an image where the grain is fuzzy. Sharp grain adds to a lot of photographs' moods.

If I really want to avoid graininess and I still want excellent sharpness, I step up in format. Using a larger negative is the best way to avoid graininess, and then I can use developers that accentuate sharpness without getting any deleterious effects of grain (if one deems them such, and in some images, such as those with a lot of sky, it can be distracting, to be sure).

I can use a sharpness-enhancing developer like PMK on films as fast as ISO 125 (FP-4 Plus) and get prints up to 11x14" with very fine grain with a 35mm negative, so I don't think I am losing much by embracing the grain.

dynachrome said:

.....The prints from 35mm film can be quite good but they will not be as good ss the print from the 6X7 negative.

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Now that's a revelation!

Today's 35mm films...

....are essentially grain free up to 8x10 with native ISO's of 400 or less.

CBG said:

Years ago I took my first step to quality when I standardised upon one developer and one film based on the realization that the weak link was me. I suspect that at some point, given enough improvement in my abilities, it would make sense to seek films and developers to attain the last 2% of quality. My strategy is that I need to have that other 98% in place first.

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I agree (well, about my own photography---I don't know about yours. Hardly anybody is so good at both the art and the craft of photography that their materials are the limiting factor, and I'm *very* sure I'm not!

That said, I haven't standardised and have no particular plans to, but it's not because I think a different film or developer is going to make me a better photographer, it's because I'm an engineer and playing with every toy in sight makes me happy.

-NT

Paul Verizzo said:

....are essentially grain free up to 8x10 with native ISO's of 400 or less.

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Although, in defense of the larger formats, there is more to an image than grain and sharpness. The larger formats tend to have better gradation.

Of course, schlepping around a 4x5 is not always practical.