General Developing Questions - Fill in the Blanks

rbultman · Mar 17, 2015

markbarendt said:
The following concept is a huge simplification that leaves out many variables that affect real world results, but the basic principle is true.
...
(This is one of the reasons that many B&W shooters are passionate about minimizing exposure)
...

I don't understand this. I thought many B&W shooters typically rate their film at 1/2 box speed. This translates into more exposure than is called for by box speed. Can you clarify please?

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markbarendt · Mar 17, 2015

rbultman said:
I don't understand this. I thought many B&W shooters typically rate their film at 1/2 box speed. This translates into more exposure than is called for by box speed. Can you clarify please?

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It's a matter of competing priorities.

Shooting at 1/2 box speed is done for a different reason, they are making darn sure they get all the shadow detail they expect (and probably a little extra just to make sure) on to the negative.

Getting all the detail you want onto the film is much more important than minimizing grain. If you don't get the detail you want the graininess doesn't matter.

Minimizing exposure to minimize grain becomes a priority once the base exposure threshold is reached. So a stereotypical "Zoner" will work hard to shoot at exactly half of box speed but no more than that.

Lamar · Mar 17, 2015

Less exposure = more apparent grain. Light is an electromagnetic wave that can interact with a film grain. Film grain is fixed in size for a specific emulsion. Apparent grain is the aggregate appearance of "bunches" of those fixed grains. At a lower flux fewer photons per unit area will interact with film grains and result in a less accurate visual response. This results in more grainy looking pictures as exposure deceases. I just did a Google search and found this article that helps explain.

http://phototechmag.com/grain-clumping-fact-or-fable/

markbarendt said:
The following concept is a huge simplification that leaves out many variables that affect real world results, but the basic principle is true.

Film grain is essentially just a pattern or texture that the silver creates as it develops.

Less silver = less film grain, more silver = more film grain. (This is one of the reasons that many B&W shooters are passionate about minimizing exposure)

Digital noise is essentially just a pattern or texture a digital system creates when it has very little info to work with. (This is one reason why digital shooters avoid underexposure)

Very little silver = very little info for the digital system to make a positive with.

The light areas of a negative have very little silver, that's why they are light, therefore they typically show very little film grain when printed and that also means that light areas on the negative have very little silver to make a "film grain" pattern for the digital system to even see.

Conversely the darker areas of a negative have much more silver in the light path. More silver typically means more visible grain but also plenty of info for the digital system to work with so very little digital noise.

markbarendt · Mar 17, 2015

It's not about whether there is clumping or not or the pattern itself.

It's about clear and opaque. Light areas on the negative hold little silver, they are nearer to the clear end so there's not much in the way to change how light falls on the paper, so the pattern made by the silver just isn't there or it is very light, too light to be easily seen.

Bill Burk · Mar 17, 2015

rbultman said:
I don't understand this. I thought many B&W shooters typically rate their film at 1/2 box speed. This translates into more exposure than is called for by box speed. Can you clarify please?

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Hi rbultman,

As Mark Barendt said, it's a matter of competing priorities.

35mm shooters seeking to minimize grain will seek thin, nearly underexposed negatives.

4x5 Zone System shooters will seek full shadow detail first and will consider a "staining" developer like Pyro to gain some effective "negative density" that has no grain.

APUG proscribes discussions about scanning because it introduces another competing priority. It might be part of the optical path, for example anti-newton-ring glass. Consider at least that if the negative were printed in the darkroom, the grain would be "different."

Blacks especially are rich and deep on "silver gelatin" prints. Usually, I see no grain in my deep dark shadows.

Lamar · Mar 17, 2015

Dr. Grainlove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grain........ Someone needs to make the movie.... probably wouldn't do too well at the box office though.

pentaxuser · Mar 17, 2015

Lamar said:
Dr. Grainlove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grain........ Someone needs to make the movie....

I don't think the combination of George C Scott, Sterling Hayden, Peter Sellers and Slim Pickens can ever be beaten

It ought to be part of every school's study of the "Cold War"

pentaxuser

Gerald C Koch · Mar 17, 2015

What always amuses me when someone looks at a print and starts fussing about too much grain is that they are not seeing grain but the spaces between grains. They fail to remember that in a print things are reversed. In order to see true grain one needs to look at negatives using a microscope.

rbultman · Mar 17, 2015

Thanks Mark and Bill for the clarifications.

Bill Burk said:
Hi rbultman,

As Mark Barendt said, it's a matter of competing priorities.

35mm shooters seeking to minimize grain will seek thin, nearly underexposed negatives.

4x5 Zone System shooters will seek full shadow detail first and will consider a "staining" developer like Pyro to gain some effective "negative density" that has no grain.

APUG proscribes discussions about scanning because it introduces another competing priority. It might be part of the optical path, for example anti-newton-ring glass. Consider at least that if the negative were printed in the darkroom, the grain would be "different."

Blacks especially are rich and deep on "silver gelatin" prints. Usually, I see no grain in my deep dark shadows.

Which prompts another question...

For darkroom prints, is it the dense area of the negative (e.g. bright sky) that is subject to graininess in the print or is it less dense areas (shadows) that are subject to graininess? Given your final sentence I have to guess sky as you get no grain in dark shadows.

I know, in the end, I have to do the work to learn this stuff. Just looking for some signposts here. My self education will continue on Thursday evening when my bathroom transforms into a darkroom.

Thanks again and regards,
Rob

markbarendt · Mar 17, 2015

rbultman said:
Thanks Mark and Bill for the clarifications.

Which prompts another question...

For darkroom prints, is it the dense area of the negative (e.g. bright sky) that is subject to graininess in the print or is it less dense areas (shadows) that are subject to graininess? Given your final sentence I have to guess sky as you get no grain in dark shadows.

I know, in the end, I have to do the work to learn this stuff. Just looking for some signposts here. My self education will continue on Thursday evening when my bathroom transforms into a darkroom.

Thanks again and regards,
Rob

More density, more visible grain.

Skies are normally prime candidates for visible grain.

Whether the grain adds our subtracts from the look of the photo ...... ?

Bill Burk · Mar 17, 2015

Skies get a lot of blame but if they're white then there won't be grain.

It's the smooth tones near middle gray where I've found grain is most prominent.

Here's a close-up of a successful experiment I performed where I was aiming for maximum grain.

I did everything I could think of (except reticulation) to accentuate the grain.

From post 27 of the thread (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Original is a dirty border print on 11x14 with about 1 inch borders. Negative is 35mm half-frame, 400TX exp. 12/2014 batch 1781. (Exposed at EI 200 in an auto-everything Samurai - I scratched and taped the DX code to say 200).

Film Developed in Dektol 1:9 68-degrees F for 5 minutes.

This crop is about 2 1/2 inches by 4 1/2 inches (Roughly 1/4 inch by 1/2 inch measured on actual negative). In this image, JPG artifacts are smaller than the grain, this is a reasonable approximation of the actual print.

markbarendt · Mar 18, 2015

Thanks Bill and Michael,

I can see I have a bit of refinement to do on my thought and explanation. My simplified answers left out too much.

The visibility of film grain should it seems be most pronounced when printing from the mid tones of the negative density scale. Both ends of the density scale end up reducing grain.

The other wild card that seems so obvious now, that I was leaving out, is that in any particular positive we may be making, the info we are using from the negative isn't necessarily "tied to the toe".

Still and yet the print density must be considered too.

Ugh...

General Developing Questions - Fill in the Blanks

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