Link: Cross tests of grain in 17 films 120 / 6 developers

[sterioma]

I have found this web page very interesting. It's not new, but from a quick search, it doesn't appear to have been shared here previously.

https://www.denisolivier.com/cross-tests-17-films-120-with-6-developers

17 photographic films in 120 format were tested with 6 common developers on the market. The negatives were photographed with a microscope in order to very finely perceive the appearance of the grain.

 

[K-G]

I have found this web page very interesting. It's not new, but from a quick search, it doesn't appear to have been shared here previously.

https://www.denisolivier.com/cross-tests-17-films-120-with-6-developers

Thank you for the link. Very interesting.

Karl-Gustaf

 

[koraks]

Thanks for posting! I've added a small clarification to the thread title that this is specifically about the grain in the developed film.

 

[Alan Townsend]

The Foma films grain looks terrible compared with all the others is my takeaway. What in the world is going on there?

 

[JensH]

The Foma films grain looks terrible compared with all the others is my takeaway. What in the world is going on there?

Looks like a moving sample slide while taking the microscope photos to me.
Same with Rollei RPX 25 and Superpan 200...

 

[john_s]

Looks like a moving sample slide while taking the microscope photos to me.
Same with Rollei RPX 25 and Superpan 200...

It does look like something like that has occurred in the photographing. The look of the photos is quite different.

 

[albireo]

That DSLR+microscope rig looks somewhat top-heavy.

Might explain what looks like strong motion blur for some of the samples?

Poor Foma. Would have taken a minute to repeat the capture.

 

[sterioma]

I believe the author @Denis OLIVIER is a member of this community, so he may be able to chime in.

I am not entirely sure about the "camera shake" explanation; there seems to be a 100% correlation between that kind of look and some films, but not others. That the issue never occurred with some films and always occurred with others would be extremely unlikely from a statistical standpoint.
Also, if you click on any thumbnail, you can see that some of the samples show what look like drying marks or film defects, and they are perfectly shaped.

 

[koraks]

I am not entirely sure about the "camera shake" explanation

Neither am I. For the reason you say, but also because someone who would make these micro-photographs would surely notice that the photo didn't show what they saw through the microscope, so they'd logically give it another go until the outcome was acceptable.

Regardless, something's amiss with those particular photos; maybe there's some optical issue that makes it hard to focus on the actual image-forming layer with these films and thus obtain accurate photos of the grains. Presently these photos look like more or less amorphous blobs of density with some kind of odd striation/linear pattern overlayed on top of it. In reality, I would expect a faithful photo of the grain in these films to be very comparable to the other ones, esp. the classic cubic grain films.

There must be a methodological issue at work here that makes those sets of photos incomparable to the other ones.

 

[Ardpatrick]

It would appear that Denis Olivier didn't do the tests, but rather published tests made by another. From the opening text:

"This project was initially published in 2017 by Jean-Baptiste MERILLOT, who unfortunately left us in 2021 following a long illness.
Thanks to Nicolas BEJEAN, we can find this analysis and these results back online now."

I can imagine a scenario where films were scanned in batches according to type, and there was a fault in doing the particular film batches in question. That seems a far more logical explanation than that certain film stocks have 'motion blur' style grain. That would be a whole new category to sit alongside "T-Grain" (I'm joking of course!) The fact that the original author has sadly deceased within a few years and after 'a long illness' of the original work might also point to a non-final draft of results, the process sadly abbreviated. We are nevertheless indebted.

Elsewhere on Denis Olivier's site he has a very good article on DSLR scanning. Its very thorough and I concur with everything he says, except he makes an interesting suggestion to scan film, emulsion side facing the camera. I can see the logic, especially considering the original taking lens, and indeed the enlarger lens also face the emulsion side of the film. I've somehow been doing the opposite until now - using (like he does) an enlarger carrier with anti-newton glass - on a copy stand, except of course with Dslr scanning, the lens is not below the carrier, but above it. Super advice that I will employ.