Extreme grain on purpose.

locutus said:

Thank you guys for all the very helpfull posts, man do i have some reading to do on developing.

I oogled a bit around on flickr, and what i want to archieve is something like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ozekki/2845480055/

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This look is not difficult at all. You can underexpose and push, correct exposure after the fact, use non fine-grain developers and/or higher dilution solvent developers, crop and enlarge (easiest), etc. The key is to not approach it technically.

Heavy pushing (APX400@6400)

Push + Crop (APX400@3200)

HC110 or Rodinal: both can be grainy and sharp with any film. The more you dilute them, the more grain they produce. The more you agitate, the more grain you get too. For HC110 the minimum syrup for 135/24 or 120 is 4ml (in fact, it uses only 2ml of these, but you cannot get results without the other 2). As for the developing time, it has a linear variation, so easy to calculate.

clayne said:

Wait.. overexposure yields more grain? I think you have it backwards.

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Nope. He's got it forwards all right.

2F/2F said:

Nope. He's got it forwards all right.

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Are you telling me that my 400tx EI250 exposures are grainier than comparative EI400?

Regardless of what the theory says - after correcting for under-exposure via printing or post, real world use says otherwise.

clayne said:

Are you telling me that my 400tx EI250 exposures are grainier than comparative EI400?

Regardless of what the theory says - after correcting for under-exposure via printing or post, real world use says otherwise.

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Not at all. Where did I say that? I am saying that an EI 200 or 100 (or lower) exposure would be more grainy than an EI 400 exposure or an EI 1280 exposure. It is the overdevelopment that is adding the grain for you, not the underexposure. If you really want to have some horrid grain, overexpose and overdevelop.

When I want serious grain as a goal (heavier than the relatively mild grain in the two pix you posted - I really like the second one, BTW), I overexpose by four or five stops, develop in a strong developer like Dektol or D-19, then bleach back the negs to print. Adding a stop or two only makes it a tiny bit more grainy. Also, this method has the effect of opening up the shadows, which you may or may not want.

P.S. What the @$#% is "post"?

To tell you the truth 2F, I haven't really found that to be true either. I recently had a roll of APX400, shot at EI200, then mistakenly re-exposed at EI1600, and dev'd the whole thing for EI1600 times in D-76 1+0 and ended up with something like this:

Sure the whole thing was entirely unplanned and the APX had the highlights pounded, but I don't consider it grainy at all. Fairly normal (except for the tonality going off the map, of course).