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