Grain Screen

Hello!

Back in the hayday of film photography Paterson used to sell grain screens. They do popup at eBay quite often. Most of the times with a heavy price tag. Now I was wondering ... with a photo printer it should be possible to print your own. I would like to create a digital negative to use as an overlay to enhance or simulate film grain. Has anybody ever done this before? Or does anybody know a web resource as a starting point?

Thanks!

Marcel

Could you just make one by exposing a few frames of film to something completely featureless (a cloudless sky or something)? If you underexposed a bit you could get quite a thin negative. If these are expensive then even experimenting with a whole roll of film could be cheaper. Or you could take a few frames just as you routinely use films with different grain structure or are using different developers.

Somewhere I have a set of these that came in a job lot quite a few years ago. You won't be able to make one by printing that way. You need to photograph an even subject like a piece of card (keep it out of focus) with Tr-X, HP5 or Delta 3200, push process, you'll need to try various exposures erring twoards under exposure..

Ian