HP-5 grain size

[amatukhin]

Hello,

In several HP-5 35mm rolls I developed recently in XTOL 1+2 I started noticing quite a large grain. Could someone having more experience than I do please take a look at a couple of examples below and let me know if this grain is acceptable or if it's too big and it would probably mean there is something wrong in what I'm doing?

My development procedure:

XTOL 1+2 @22 degrees for 10 min. First minute constant agitation then five inversions at the top of every minute. Stop with water, fix and wash. During the processing the temperature of all the solutions (including water) is at the same 22 degrees. In the last wash with tap water the temperature variation is between 21 and 23 degrees Celsius.

Examples:

Example 1

Example 2

Thanks,
Alexander

 

[koraks]

Welcome aboard @amatukhin!

Right off the bat I see nothing odd with your images, bearing in mind that how the grain appears in a scanned and inverted image depends a lot on how the images were exposed in the first place, and how they were scanned and post-processed. The image of the lady on the steps exhibits a very strong pattern of jpeg compression artifacts that interacts with the grain as scanned, which makes it appear more grainy than the image probably really is. The image of the market stall looks underexposed to me; if you boost contrast to get a pleasing tonal scale, the grain will be emphasized quite strongly.

Insofar as your processing is described it looks OK. Did you fix the film sufficiently?

 

[retina_restoration]

Welcome aboard @amatukhin!

Right off the bat I see nothing odd with your images, bearing in mind that how the grain appears in a scanned and inverted image depends a lot on how the images were exposed in the first place, and how they were scanned and post-processed. The image of the lady on the steps exhibits a very strong pattern of jpeg compression artifacts that interacts with the grain as scanned, which makes it appear more grainy than the image probably really is. The image of the market stall looks underexposed to me; if you boost contrast to get a pleasing tonal scale, the grain will be emphasized quite strongly.

Insofar as your processing is described it looks OK. Did you fix the film sufficiently?

I concur: underexposed film leads to poor quality scans which exaggerate grain in order to appear usable. Give your HP5 exposures another stop of light.
Also worth considering — the more you dilute a developer (beyond 1:1), the sharper the images will be, but grain also becomes more conspicuous (larger), so you need to decide what your priorities are. I avoid diluting Xtol when working with 35mm film.

 

[loccdor]

I have a hunch the perceived higher graininess would be improved by adding about a stop of extra exposure. I don't know how you're metering but the shots look slightly underexposed.

retina_restoration beat me to it!

 

[Ian Grant]

I have a hunch the perceived higher graininess would be improved by adding about a stop of extra exposure. I don't know how you're metering but the shots look slightly underexposed.

retina_restoration beat me to it!

I was about to post the same, I think the negatives are underexposed by around a stop.

Ian

 

[snusmumriken]

Exactly what @koraks says. I'm willing to bet that in a darkroom print from those negatives the graininess would be much less noticeable. Additionally, although it is best to apply sharpening once the image is the required size (in terms of pixels), sharpening after saving it as jpeg will emphasise the compression artefacts he refers to (the sort of optical camouflage effect you see on the lady's blouse and the stallholder's nose). Best to make 'export to jpeg' the final action.

 

[amatukhin]

Welcome aboard @amatukhin!

Right off the bat I see nothing odd with your images, bearing in mind that how the grain appears in a scanned and inverted image depends a lot on how the images were exposed in the first place, and how they were scanned and post-processed. The image of the lady on the steps exhibits a very strong pattern of jpeg compression artifacts that interacts with the grain as scanned, which makes it appear more grainy than the image probably really is. The image of the market stall looks underexposed to me; if you boost contrast to get a pleasing tonal scale, the grain will be emphasized quite strongly.

Insofar as your processing is described it looks OK. Did you fix the film sufficiently?

Thanks for your reply and suggestions.
I fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer at 22C for 4 minutes constant agitation. My fixer never has more than 12 rolls go through it.

You mentioned a very strong pattern of jpeg compression artifacts that interacts with the grain as scanned. How could I scan it to judge the actual grain of the image and eliminate jpeg compression artifacts?

Thanks,
Alexander

 

[amatukhin]

I concur: underexposed film leads to poor quality scans which exaggerate grain in order to appear usable. Give your HP5 exposures another stop of light.
Also worth considering — the more you dilute a developer (beyond 1:1), the sharper the images will be, but grain also becomes more conspicuous (larger), so you need to decide what your priorities are. I avoid diluting Xtol when working with 35mm film.

Thanks for your reply and suggestion.

I would like to try to dilute Xtol 1+1 instead of my usual 1+2 and see how much I would lose in sharpness and how much I would gain in getting smaller grain and then decide which dilution would work better for me. When changing from 1+2 to 1+1 should I adjust development time and if yes, then by how much? With 1+2 dilution I develop for 10 min @22C.

When you are saying "I avoid diluting Xtol when working with 35mm film" do you mean you use stock solution or 1+1 dilution?

Thanks,
Alexander

 

[koraks]

I fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer at 22C for 4 minutes constant agitation.

That is probably OK at 1+4 film dilution at least for fresh fixer.
I ask because insufficient fixing increases overall density and this tends to end up making the result look more grainy. I personally generally fix longer.

How could I scan it to judge the actual grain of the image and eliminate jpeg compression artifacts?

Scanning to a different format would be the obvious solution (TIFF or PNG). Alternatively, when scanning to JPG, ensure that you have the highest quality / lowest compression level set.
Judging 'actual grain' is a bit of a philosophical question although at first glance it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask. Ultimately, what you see is not so much the grain proper, but the grain as it's imaged through the process that makes a viewable image from a film negative. It turns out that several aspects of that process can quite significantly affect the look of the micro-structure of the final image (which we colloquially call the grain). It can make a massive difference for instance with what kind of setup the image is scanned; e.g. my Minolta film scanner produces much more 'grainy' scans than my Epson flatbed, for the simple reason that the flatbed tends to de-emphasize grain as it outputs a fairly diffuse, somewhat fuzzy image. Which shows the 'actual' grain the best? Ultimately that's an unanswerable question. What does matter, of course, is what you're after and how to get that result. To that end you've received some useful hints in this thread to put you on the right track.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

The more you dilute XTol, the grain can become more noticeable. What EI are you using for the film? Developing for 10 minutes at 22C, makes me ask...

 

[amatukhin]

The more you dilute XTol, the grain can become more noticeable. What EI are you using for the film? Developing for 10 minutes at 22C, makes me ask...

EI 400

 

[Ian Grant]

The more you dilute XTol, the grain can become more noticeable. What EI are you using for the film? Developing for 10 minutes at 22C, makes me ask...

Well, this is the same with ID-11/D76, or Perceptol. However, 1+1 and 1+2 shouldn't be very significantly graineier than FS, 1+3 will be as the level of Sulphite has dropped quite low in the dilute developer.

A side effect of dilution is increased compensation, so slightly more forgiving of exposure variations, and a slight speed increase, which reinforces under exposure being the problem.

Ian

 

[MattKing]

May we see backlit digital photos of the negatives themselves, with film edge and space between the frames visible?
Like these:, found here: https://www.photrio.com/forum/resou...nsparencies-for-troubleshooting-purposes.461/

 

[retina_restoration]

EI 400

You're underexposing the film — adjust your meter to 200 ASA and have another go.

 

[amatukhin]

Hello,

Thanks everybody for your replies and very useful information.

Following @koraks comments regarding scanning I decided to rescan negatives carefully.

My fault - the negatives were scanned badly initially and after rescanning them carefully I see quite a different picture.

The new scans are linked below as well as backlit digital photos of the negatives themselves.

Looking at the negatives (and the new scans) they don't look to me underexposed. I see plenty of details in the shadows. Although the image of the market stall seems to be very flat.

So I probably created for myself a problem that doesn't really exist by scanning the negatives badly and jumping to a conclusion, looking at these scans, that there is bigger than usual grain.

What do you think now looking at the digital photos of the negatives themselves and the new scans? Do you think there is still too much grain or they look ok to you? Do you still think they are underexposed?

Here is the new scans:

Example 1 - 2nd scan

Example 2 - 2nd scan


Here is the backlit digital photos of the negatives themselves:

Example 1 - negative

Example 2 - negative

Thanks again for your help.

Much appreciated.

Alexander

 

[MattKing]

Backlit images of the negatives embedded for you.
The exposure looks better than we thought initially, although the second example could probably benefit with a bit more..

 

[koraks]

What do you think now looking at the digital photos of the negatives themselves and the new scans? Do you think there is still too much grain or they look ok to you? Do you still think they are underexposed?

They look fine. And surprisingly, the market stall image looks anything but underexposed. In fact, it's quite dense. And what confused me a little is better visible in this new scan - there's just some flare due to the lighting and the lens catching some of the direct light hitting it over the top of the stall/umbrella. This reduces contrast - and boosting that back up in digital editing will emphasize grain. So yes, that negative is quite flat, but it's not a problem with the film or processing. If you want to avoid this, use a lens shade, a more modern lens that's less prone to flare, and/or point the lens away from light sources.

Everything looks pretty normal to me; I think you're doing just fine!

 

[snusmumriken]

The first shot is lovely - very natural, beautiful light. Exposure, development and scan right on the nail, to my eyes. The apparent graininess is now more or less what I'd expect for a scan from HP5+ in 35mm, but will certainly be less in a darkroom print.

A problem for the second shot is that under that canopy the light is highly diffused, and as a result the focal area is low in contrast anyway, even without the effect of the flare. Actually rather difficult conditions.

 

[amatukhin]

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and kind words. It's very reassuring.

As to the second shot I always use lens shade, but the lens I used this time is from the 1980 so it's probably more prone to flare than modern lenses.

 

[Ron789]

XTOL is a great developer, but not for HP5 (and Tri-X).
Take a look at https://fotoimport.no/filmHP5 and compare the results with XTOL and other developers; you'll see that XTOL gives very grainy results, Adox Atomal the least grainy results. D76 or HC110 works also quite well

 

[DREW WILEY]

HP5 is inherently a large grained film. That's why I never shoot it in anything smaller than 8x10 film, and only develop it in PMK pyro. But that's for sake of an immaculately detailed, almost etched look
in prints up to 20X24 inches. Whole different ballgame than more spontaneous 35mm photography.

And grain isn't necessarily a bad thing is small format photography. I sometimes use an even grainier film by Ilford, namely, Delta 3200, in small cameras like 6X7 and 35mm for the look. Depends not only on your particular developer, but the subject matter itself, and how big you intend to enlarge it.

There are no "bad guys" in terms of film selection, but just different options, each of which needs to be handled in its own manner, to its own best advantage, according to your own taste. But it can take some time and experimenting to figure out where that "sweet spot" actually is. Merely scanning film won't tell you that; you need actual print results if you hope to accelerate your learning curve.

 

[Craig]

Typically HC110 is a grainer developer than Xtol, it also doesn't render the same emulsion speed ( it's slower), as those curves show. D76 is closer to full speed, but still slower than Xtol.

 

[amatukhin]

XTOL is a great developer, but not for HP5 (and Tri-X).
Take a look at https://fotoimport.no/filmHP5 and compare the results with XTOL and other developers; you'll see that XTOL gives very grainy results, Adox Atomal the least grainy results. D76 or HC110 works also quite well

From my experience HC110 dilution B gives much bigger grain than XTOL.

 

[nostalgix]

From my experience HC110 dilution B gives much bigger grain than XTOL.

I use Xtol for almost everything and I like my results with TriX (1+1). But I didn't like the results of the HP5 I got.

 

[loccdor]

From my experience HC110 dilution B gives much bigger grain than XTOL.

Speaking of this, I just now used HC-110 dilution B on Tri-X for the 400 time, forgetting I exposed for 1600 and meant to soup it in Diafine. Not great! But from past experience, the pictures will at least be good enough to digitize, if not so good for a darkroom print. I actually did the 400 time for Neopan 400 exposed at 3200 once, and though you could barely see the framelines with your eye, I got usable scans!

For 35mm, anything besides Rodinal looks fine enough for Tri-X or HP5 to me. And Rodinal looks good in medium format. But that's up to each photographer to judge.