Excessive grain in Delta 3200

Thomas Bertilsson · Mar 20, 2014

pentaxuser said:
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

I get much better quality from Delta 3200 when I print it. With that said, the quality of my scan above would have been higher if I had gotten the contrast right in the film to begin with.

I opine it is not all in the scan, but film exposure and processing is going to be equally important to the outcome. Once I have a print of the negative above I will scan it and post it to this thread.

StoneNYC · Mar 20, 2014

Thomas Bertilsson said:
I get much better quality from Delta 3200 when I print it. With that said, the quality of my scan above would have been higher if I had gotten the contrast right in the film to begin with.

I opine it is not all in the scan, but film exposure and processing is going to be equally important to the outcome. Once I have a print of the negative above I will scan it and post it to this thread.

I honestly don't see what's "bad" about the image anyway... Lol

Thomas Bertilsson · Mar 20, 2014

StoneNYC said:
I honestly don't see what's "bad" about the image anyway... Lol

Thanks, Stone. But I know it will get better once I print it. I hope to get some time to do just that this evening.

DREW WILEY · Mar 20, 2014

It's a very fast film and is inherently quite grainy. I shoot this film when I want both qualities (speed and grain). The character of the grain can
be quite lovely when the film is properly developed and printed. I've never scanned it, nor do I ever intend to, so cannot comment on that
particular variable.

Thomas Bertilsson · Mar 20, 2014

DREW WILEY said:
It's a very fast film and is inherently quite grainy. I shoot this film when I want both qualities (speed and grain). The character of the grain can
be quite lovely when the film is properly developed and printed. I've never scanned it, nor do I ever intend to, so cannot comment on that
particular variable.

It's a pain in the rear to scan... I admire your dedication to darkroom printing. It's how I prefer to work too, but life gets between the darkroom and I way too often. Takes me an hour to set up my darkroom and 30 minutes to clean up, and 30-45 minutes to get a decent print. Scanning a neg takes about 5 minutes with another 10-15 minutes in post production.

Black Dog · Mar 20, 2014

Microphen gives you wings

Xmas said:
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...

I'd second that-shame it doesn't come in bigger packs though. If you use D3200 a lot, DDX is as good as anything.

StoneNYC · Mar 20, 2014

Thomas Bertilsson said:
It's a pain in the rear to scan... I admire your dedication to darkroom printing. It's how I prefer to work too, but life gets between the darkroom and I way too often. Takes me an hour to set up my darkroom and 30 minutes to clean up, and 30-45 minutes to get a decent print. Scanning a neg takes about 5 minutes with another 10-15 minutes in post production.

I dont find D3200 to be hard to scan, what is it that's a pain?

Thomas Bertilsson · Mar 20, 2014

StoneNYC said:
I dont find D3200 to be hard to scan, what is it that's a pain?

I'm used to seeing the film printed, Stone. The grain is sharper when I print, but it is also not as ugly. When I scan I try to make it look like a print, because that's how I want it to look. But it takes a lot of effort to even get close.

Other films, like HP5+, where the grain is finer, it's much easier to scan and make it look decent in the small samples we see here, mainly because the grain is barely visible.

Excessive grain in Delta 3200

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