Excessive grain in Delta 3200

Thomas Bertilsson · Mar 16, 2014

chriscrawfordphoto said:
To me, it looks like the film was underexposed. Notice the dark tones that have no detail in them, even though they're not dark black...the scanner lightened the image to compensate, but since there's no detail, all you get is empty dark tones full of grain.

+1 on underexposed. But I would add that it also looks under-developed. Delta 3200 is a strange critter. I usually shoot at 1600 and develop 50% longer than Ilford recommends at that EI. This is something I do for this film only.

The fern is scanned 120 D3200, shot and processed as above, and the 'ice feather' is a scanned 9x12" print from 35mm D3200, actually a cropped negative.

StoneNYC · Mar 16, 2014

Just as a second comment, in the future, many I've seen have suggested that for D3200, you should develop at one stop higher than the recommended time for your EI.

So if you shoot at 3200, develop for 6400 times.

This is just a suggestion, I've been meaning to try this, but haven't yet.

If the scene calls for 3200 or less, I actually prefer HP5+ pushed to 3200, but anything higher and I'll use 3200 film.

That is all personal choice. YMMV as they say...

StoneNYC · Mar 16, 2014

Thomas Bertilsson said:
+1 on underexposed. But I would add that it also looks under-developed. Delta 3200 is a strange critter. I usually shoot at 1600 and develop 50% longer than Ilford recommends at that EI. This is something I do for this film only.

The fern is scanned 120 D3200, shot and processed as above, and the 'ice feather' is a scanned 9x12" print from 35mm D3200, actually a cropped negative.

Beautiful greyscale, and 50% is almost more than I would think and might blow out the highlights, but obviously for you this didn't happen, might partially be the grade of paper you choose? But I'm not as familiar with all of that, but starting to learn it slowly as an abstract concept since I don't yet do it myself.

Thanks for sharing.

pentaxuser · Mar 16, 2014

Cybertrash said:
Stone mentioned an out-of-focus scan, the negatives were very curled (currently flattening them), could that have made the problem worse?

Nonetheless, I'll try to find the time to make some silver prints from the negatives and report back.

I think you are the second person recently to mention D3200 curling or was it you in another thread? I wonder what is going on with D3200? I have never experienced any issue with curling and D3200. Is it simply very low humidity which we in the U.K. do not suffer from? What's normal humidity where you are?

pentaxuser

Roger Cole · Mar 16, 2014

Thomas Bertilsson said:
+1 on underexposed. But I would add that it also looks under-developed. Delta 3200 is a strange critter. I usually shoot at 1600 and develop 50% longer than Ilford recommends at that EI. This is something I do for this film only.

The fern is scanned 120 D3200, shot and processed as above, and the 'ice feather' is a scanned 9x12" print from 35mm D3200, actually a cropped negative.

Underexposed and underdeveloped, while normally rather distinct, get a bit murky when talking about pushing and, especially, pushing D3200 (or TMZ.) This film is deliberately optimized for pushing meaning it has low contrast unpushed. (I know you know this Thomas, for those who don't...) Increasing development does pick up some shadow detail in my experience, and the contrast build is more gradual so you get good midtone separation without blown out highlights. If it was shot at 3200 I would say to first try increasing development (as well as optical printing or at least scanning with a different black level or whatever it's called.)

Everyone I've ever heard from who likes and uses this film (and I have several rolls in the fridge to be developed soon) prefers more development than Ilford lists for a given speed.

Thomas Bertilsson · Mar 16, 2014

Roger Cole said:
Underexposed and underdeveloped, while normally rather distinct, get a bit murky when talking about pushing and, especially, pushing D3200 (or TMZ.) This film is deliberately optimized for pushing meaning it has low contrast unpushed. Increasing development does pick up some shadow detail in my experience, and the contrast build is more gradual so you get good midtone separation without blown out highlights. If it was shot at 3200 I would say to first try increasing development (as well as optical printing or at least scanning with a different black level or whatever it's called.)

Everyone I've ever heard from who likes and uses this film (and I have several rolls in the fridge to be developed soon) prefers more development than Ilford lists for a given speed.

It depends on how much shadow detail you want, I guess. I wish to remain objective, and judge the posted pictures as 'technically good' negatives, and those shadows have very little in them.
I find it isn't until D3200 has been properly exposed and processed that you get away from a very grainy result. But you get tremendously rewarded when you hit it just right. That's my experience anyway, and is based on shooting no more than 50 or 100 rolls of the stuff over the years.

To get it right, however, just get in there and see how far you can push you processing before the highlights block up. I know you'll find that you have to go really far before that happens.

Roger Cole · Mar 16, 2014

Totally agree.

Xmas · Mar 16, 2014

pentaxuser said:
I think you are the second person recently to mention D3200 curling or was it you in another thread? I wonder what is going on with D3200? I have never experienced any issue with curling and D3200. Is it simply very low humidity which we in the U.K. do not suffer from? What's normal humidity where you are?

pentaxuser

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Cybertrash · Mar 16, 2014

pentaxuser said:
I think you are the second person recently to mention D3200 curling or was it you in another thread? I wonder what is going on with D3200? I have never experienced any issue with curling and D3200. Is it simply very low humidity which we in the U.K. do not suffer from? What's normal humidity where you are?

pentaxuser

I saw the thread, but I didn't write in it. It's strange, I rarely have curling problems with other films (except Tri-X), and I didn't use to have issues with D3200.

StoneNYC · Mar 16, 2014

pentaxuser said:
I think you are the second person recently to mention D3200 curling or was it you in another thread? I wonder what is going on with D3200? I have never experienced any issue with curling and D3200. Is it simply very low humidity which we in the U.K. do not suffer from? What's normal humidity where you are?

pentaxuser

I have very high humidity in Connecticut, USA and I have excessive curling with D3200 as well. Hmmm ... interesting. Perhaps its just the type of water or something.

StoneNYC · Mar 16, 2014

One of my favorite sets of images was shot on D3200 and developed for D3200 but it wasn't quite as contrasty of a scene as you have, but the grain and look is excellent. It's an Americana Series...

I've also shot outside with good grain results, although again this was daytime but just very low light, or long exposures on a tripod in dim light... as the last one following...

Dusk 1(ish) minute exposure...

Truzi · Mar 16, 2014

Stone, those are nice; and I'm not used to seeing that kind of contrast posted by you

StoneNYC · Mar 16, 2014

Truzi said:
Stone, those are nice; and I'm not used to seeing that kind of contrast posted by you

Thanks, all depends on what I want from a scene.

Sometimes I actually like low contrast... Sometimes

Arctic amateur · Mar 16, 2014

My guess is underexposure and scanning issues. The scanner software has set the black point to clip the lowest level pixels (of the inverted image), and that combined with noise can sometimes make the shadows contain completely black pixels like those you see. I see them often enough in my own scans of underexposed negatives.

Here are some examples where I did a level adjustment in Gimp. I only moved the center point, not the cutoffs. This is roughly equivalent to raising/lowering the middle of the tonal curve.

First, your picture:

Then, the middle level pushed to the left, which leaves the completely black pixels unmoved but brightens the almost-black:

Then, I pushed the middle level towards the highlights, and suddenly the tones looked good on my terrible laptop screen:

You might be able to get a better digitalization by setting the scanner software to not clip either end of the histogram, and do the tonal adjustment in post.

pentaxuser · Mar 16, 2014

Stone, I agree with Truzi. If the negs from your scans are as good as your scans then D3200 exposed at 3200 and developed in DDX looks excellent and indicates that the OP may have problems unconnected to the film and his development process even accepting that his developer was Microphen.

pentaxuser

rubyfalls · Mar 16, 2014

Yup - I'm the curly d3200 chick. About to test out my new darkroom humidifier to see if that solves it.

OP - I've been working on d3200 for a few months now. I kinda take Stone's approach -- I shoot at ISO 1600 but give it an ever-so-slightly longer developer time; not quite a half-stop. I use DDX only on my d3200 and I fix for at least 8 minutes (ilford rapid fixer).

Here is one of mine, FYI:

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

StoneNYC · Mar 16, 2014

pentaxuser said:
Stone, I agree with Truzi. If the negs from your scans are as good as your scans then D3200 exposed at 3200 and developed in DDX looks excellent and indicates that the OP may have problems unconnected to the film and his development process even accepting that his developer was Microphen.

pentaxuser

Thanks.

Based on what the previous user posted (using GIMP a free type photoshop program) I'm now convinced it must mostly be a scanner issue.

I truly try to get decent values from my negatives with good exposure and development.

I don't know what a "good" negative looks like for printing, but I assume that if I can see information on the entire negative, and nothing is ultra black, and nothing is totally see through, then my negative would have a lot of tonality and tons of greyscale with a traditional print, and someday I hope to find out. I also have worked on my high contrast negatives and low contrast negatives, I find that I prefer more contrast in most circumstances, but that's preference.

That said... I don't often have issues with my blacks, because I pre-visualize what I want from a scene and pick my exposure based on that idea, and 9 times out of 10 I don't actually have to adjust anything in the scanner settings, because the exposure and development came to the right points on their own. And usually when I do have to adjust, I obviously messed something up and I can see it in the negative... (One of these is not like the others...)

StoneNYC · Mar 16, 2014

rubyfalls said:
Yup - I'm the curly d3200 chick. About to test out my new darkroom humidifier to see if that solves it.

OP - I've been working on d3200 for a few months now. I kinda take Stone's approach -- I shoot at ISO 1600 but give it an ever-so-slightly longer developer time; not quite a half-stop. I use DDX only on my d3200 and I fix for at least 8 minutes (ilford rapid fixer).

Here is one of mine, FYI:

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Lovely tones, terrible tripod!

One thing to mention... I've recently switched to rotary processing, and I'm finding it much more difficult to get down the proper times as they have changed and the grain seems often higher, I've yet to shoot and develop D3200 or HP5+(pushed) so I may be starting from scratch all over again... :/

It's certainly more difficult to get the right density with rotary, but I think once I've got it down, I'll be able to truly be consistent about it.

Anyway, let's hope the OP can figure it out.

rubyfalls · Mar 16, 2014

StoneNYC said:
Lovely tones, terrible tripod!

Ha ha ha - thanks. And not my tripod! I've got a mammoth old manfrotto that requires its own carriage for transport. Hence it stays in the make-shift studio.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

hgraf · Mar 17, 2014

StoneNYC said:
Just as a second comment, in the future, many I've seen have suggested that for D3200, you should develop at one stop higher than the recommended time for your EI.

So if you shoot at 3200, develop for 6400 times.

This is just a suggestion, I've been meaning to try this, but haven't yet.

FWIW I haven't found that to be necessary for Ilfosol 3. I expose at 3200 and develop for 3200 and get results I'd expect.

TTYL

Cybertrash · Mar 19, 2014

Here's a silver print (10x10cm) scanned. It was definitely underexposed, this is 14s @ f/32 and Grade 4 filter. I think I might reprint it a little darker and with slightly higher contrast (4½ or 5).

markbarendt · Mar 19, 2014

Looks better!

Thomas Bertilsson · Mar 19, 2014

For what it's worth, here's a quick and dirty neg scan from my first test roll using Delta 3200 in 120, exposed at 1600 and processed in straight D76 for 11 minutes. Next roll will get 13 minutes as contrast is a bit low still.

Xmas · Mar 20, 2014

pentaxuser said:
Stone, I agree with Truzi. If the negs from your scans are as good as your scans then D3200 exposed at 3200 and developed in DDX looks excellent and indicates that the OP may have problems unconnected to the film and his development process even accepting that his developer was Microphen.

pentaxuser

Microphen is as fine grained as D76 or not much different it was Ilfords best PQ derivative of ID11 it does have reduced sulphite but that was to optimise grain and speed.

So Id recommend to use Microphen as a standard developer indeed I do use...

pentaxuser · Mar 20, 2014

There's good news and bad news. The good news is that everyone else's scans of D3200 negs, including Thomas Bertilsson's suggests strongly that the problem lies with the scan and not the film or processing. The bad news is that unless he can change his scanner or settings then what he sees from the scan may not get any better.

It's a pity that he is deprived of seeing the full quality of D3200

pentaxuser

Excessive grain in Delta 3200

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