Is it possible to reduce grain in shots?

[Thomas Keidan]

Hi All,

I recently shot a roll of Kodak Portra 400 for the first time in a new point and shoot camera i've acquired. I was a bit surprised by the amount of grain in most of the shots and wonder if this is natural for a 400 ISO film or if this is my fault. Any advice/help would be much appreciated!

I've attached links to this thread as I can't work out how to upload images properly but if someone would let me know then I will happily rectify this.

Thanks

https://www.flickr.com/photos/141308401@N06/26376939688/in/dateposted-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/141308401@N06/26376960868/in/dateposted-public/

 

[E. von Hoegh]

Grain is determined primarily by the type of film, and how it is proccessed, secondarily by exposure.
Portra 400 is pretty fine grained for that speed of film, could you have underexposed it?

 

[pentaxuser]

Are you basing grain on your scans resulting from scanning the negatives? If so, I suspect it is a scanning problem. Portra 400 shows very little in terms of grain. Get the processor of your film to make a print of one of the negatives and then judge the grain. Strictly speaking grain is an artefact of trad B&W film. C41 films do not have grain as such although not all colour neg films have the same "smoothness" for want of a better word but Portra is particularly smooth.

I think this is a problem that can be better answered on the Hybrid section in terms of a solution.

pentaxuser

 

[MattKing]

That looks more like scanning artifacts, which may be accentuated by under-exposure of the film.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I agree, scanning artifacts.

 

[alanrockwood]

The grain doesn't look that bad to me.

 

[pentaxuser]

Further to alanrockwood's point, it may help us if you say exactly what it is in the photo that illustrates the grain and which you'd prefer wasn't there

pentaxuser

 

[ced]

Judging by the images on your flickr page. It is due to the scanner trying to lighten the image plus over sharpening in my opinion.
Get the scanner to scan without lightening maybe scanning in a higher bit rate and manipulate post scanning to your satisfaction.
Some scanners can scan with the original neg or trannie mounted in a fluid that helps massively in reducing grain artefacts...

 

[mnemosyne]

Agree this looks like scanner noise in the shadow areas. First image has a wide brightness range with a bright light source in the center that possibly fooled the in camera light meter and led to underexposure of shadow areas.This will result in this kind of scanner noise. The more you raise the brightness level in the shadows to compensate for underexposure, the more the noise will stand out. Second image is better exposed and shows less noise. The grain that can be seen in the brighter areas looks normal for a ISO400 color film, always depending a bit on the light source used (led vs diffuse) and the post processing (sharpening).

The answer to your question (what you could do to reduce grain) would be to make sure the camera does not underexpose in this kind of lighting (contre jour). Unfortunately this can be difficult to put into practice with simple point & shoot cameras that do not allow for manual override.

 

[Pioneer]

I agree with pentaxuser here. Have the negatives optically printed, not scanned, and then look at the results of those photos where the grain is bothering you.

Another option that sometimes works for me, though certainly not as definitive as actual optical printing, is to scan as a negative without allowing the scanner to make adjustments. Then transfer to photoshop and invert the negative back to positive. This can sometimes eliminate some of these scanner artifacts that show up as noise, which a more accurate description of what you are referring to as grain.