My 35mm shots always seem to be grainy?

[Ian Grant]

When the first digital minilabs went into use their was excessive grain with some films, this was due to surface artefacts of the top gelatin layer of the Kodak films. Kodak did a lot of work to eliminate the problem using new hardeners in the emulsions, they measured actual grain size of the films and and perchieved graininess in prints.

However certain emulsions can still be affected by some developers and if you want to soften and remove emulsion Hydroxide is ideal, Rodinal/R09 contains hydroxide, enough to soften the emulsion slightly more than other developers and poor temperature control cuases micro reticulation, also called surface defects of the gelatin. This causes apparent graininess in prints and is worse with scans.

The effect has been known since the late 1920's the best way around it is to sandwich the emulsion side of film to glass with a liquid, as is done with drum scanning, Ctein wet mounts his negatives for optical printing.

Ian

 

[pdeeh]

Scan with unsharp mask clicked off and you will not get this issue.
Sharpening is an exacting skill set that takes time to understand.

I am becoming convinced this is the reason for so much of the preoccupation with graininess.

Many if not most of my scans appear "grainy" .. the moment I get the negatives into the enlarger, it magically disappears ...

Please don't make assumptions about my process without evidence to support them.

I am aware how to produce scans.

As it happens I scan without any sharpening or contrast adjustments whatsoever ("raw") and I almost never sharpen in post-processing.

However as this subject is off limits here, and not germane to the current topic, I'll leave it there.

 

[Darkroom317]

I've used Tmax with Rodinal once. It looked worse to me than Tri-X with Rodinal

 

[Bob Carnie]

Take a chill pill dude , I could care less (how aware) you are to produce scans, I am making no assumptions. Its a known fact that sharpening at time of scan can produce artifacts and accent grain.
You need to have a cup of tea or something or grow a thicker skin.

Please don't make assumptions about my process without evidence to support them.

I am aware how to produce scans.

As it happens I scan without any sharpening or contrast adjustments whatsoever ("raw") and I almost never sharpen in post-processing.

However as this subject is off limits here, and not germane to the current topic, I'll leave it there.

 

[Bill Burk]

I thought I found a nice combination for MAXIMUM grain. But this thread challenges my conclusion.

Is it scanning? In which case I will ignore the results as irrelevant.

Or is Rodinal and TMY-2 going to give me a grainier optical print than I get with my current candidate of Tri-X and Dektol?

 

[Ian Grant]

Rodinal shouldn't give more grain than Dektol but with poor temperature control and a few degrees change in between stages your likely to see this excessive graininess even with optical prints. It does need a films thats affected by the hydroxide though Tmax 400 and Neopan are the only two I know where it happens.

Ian

 

[lxdude]

I'm not saying scanning did not exacerbate the grainy look, it most likely did.

I don't see any grainy look, except at a distance. Close-up, it's not at all a grainy look.

But only because of the other factors creating the stronger likelihood that it would do so. Scanning does not automatically mean excessive grain. Just like a sharp lens does not give people more prominent skin pores.

True, but grain aliasing can make scans look grainier than they are. At any rate, to me any grain present is obfuscated by the pattern caused by reticulation or scanning.

 

[pentaxuser]

Well, stradibarrius seems to have been satisfied with the answers he got as far back as page 1 and here we are on page 4 in danger of falling out with one another.

Isn't the key to all of this an attempt by the OP to print a neg optically. That should at least show if this is a scanning issue.

I know as much about scanning as I know about the manufacture of a H bomb but it seems to me that in the several years I have been on APUG we are, in recent times, getting more and more photographic problems that are or at least may be connected to a Hybrid process and whose solution may lie in a DPUG area

pentaxuser

 

[lxdude]

Which is why I think this is next logical step.

Look at the negative under a loupe. That will tell you if it's reticulation or from scanning.

 

[Ian Grant]

I strongly suspect this has entirely to do with scaning, but it still looks like I might have to do yet another controlled pressure test for TMY micro-reticulation, this time with Rodinal. Not again!!!

Hydroxide is the reason Rodinal is grainy with either exact temperatures or +/- 1C. I know Ian and I will never agree on that but the relationship between a high pH and granularity is more complicated than just softening of the gelatin (which I doubt is happening with well hardened TMax anyway).

Michael as you know from previous posts I can only go by actual experience. Many people claim Rodinal causes grainier negatives, I can show negatives that refute that with superb fine grain, but then I can also show a film with excessive grain from a film batch I had no problems with processed with my equipment and chemistry by someone else.

Some of the highest quality 35mm prints I've seen were processed in Rodinal, but then the photographer had worked (& assisted) a master of control - Minor White.

Agfa's APX100 processed in Rodinal was probably the best film/developer combination after APX25 was dropped but Rodinal and Tmax100 was comparable although Tmax 100's true speed is EI50 a stop slower.

The bottom line is good tight processing technique leadds to very much higher quality negatives.

Ian

 

[hacked - sepiareverb]

That's because the negatives are really small with 35mm.

 

[clayne]

I have TMZ negatives with less grain that this. Standard stuff here: switch to a baseline developer: D-76 1+1 and validate grain does or doesn't exist with a loupe on a lightbox.