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What is 'grainy' to you?


Thomas, I agree with your concept of balancing resolution, sharpness and grain. I'm trying hard to better understand that relationship, but still haven't got it down. I've moved away from the preconception that grain ruins tonality and resolution. I think it's a question of balancing each. I've moved away from singular use of Acros/Xtol and now also use FP4 and/or rodinal when I think it makes sense. The next step is developing the commonsense that 2F/2F often talks about in knowing when to use combinations and how. I think understanding materials means knowing how to use all available options, even if you don't use some options often.

Leo
 
i can relate to this question thomas.
there are people that want photographs to mirror reality,
after all a photograph is the memory, the reflected light on the film
of an instance --- and grain wasn't there when they saw the image
so why should it be there when they present the final print. if we
saw through "grainy vision" i am sure our eye doctors would make sure
we had that checked out ...

but .. on the other hand .. grain adds texture and dimensionality to an image.
to me it is like the brush stroke a painter might use. i like grain,
and don't mind it at all. unfortunately people view photographs from
an ultra close viewing distance to "examine" the image and
notice that the grain is there rather than a crystal clear image.
if they were viewing a painting i am not sure they would look so close
since from a few steps back so the grain becomes part of the whole
just like brush strokes become part of the whole ...
 

When I was first learning to print I mostly evaluated a film by how the grain looked. I surmise this was because I wasn't too adept at printing to really see the tonality available.

I dismissed anything that had mushy grain but still favored traditional grain structures like Plus X.

Now that I have more experience with both development and printing I am rethinking some of my earlier conclusions.
 
mark said:
So my question to you is, what does having the grain present add to the image?
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Nothing at all. And the absence or presence of grain neither breaks or makes the picture. To me, other factors of the print carry significantly more importance.
 
MaximusM3 said:
Grain is your friend, long live grain! In fact, just developed a roll of Tri-X @ 200ISO and fried it in Rodinal 1:25 for 11 minutes. Love it, always!

Here is a quick scan:
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I'm spending my 10,000th post on your photo, buddy. That is a beautiful portrait! And that grain adds some nice texture!
 

Thanks, John. I appreciate knowing your view. There is no right and wrong in photography, but I always wondered if those that scan a print to see if they can spot any grain are really seeing the picture.

What is the reason you would put any photograph in front of another person to view? Because you think you have something interesting to show! And if all you get is a slap on the wrist, along with the words that it's too grainy, do they really care about the photograph, its content, and what the photographer is trying to say or show? I guess that's the bottomest line of my inquiry.

And, once again, I am not pointing my finger at any particular behavior, I am merely showing that I, Thomas Bertilsson, don't understand why grain matters so much.
 

Bananas ain't oranges, are they? I respect your choices and if you're happy with the choices you make, then nobody is happier than I. As long as you get what you want, that's all that matters. Thanks for sharing.
 

Leo, you make some valid points for sure, and you apply a lot more care than I do in getting exactly the correct appearance of grain to get a balance. More power to you.

Personally, if a print is sharp, usually the grain is too, and that's all I need to be happy. Sharp grain means I can get into the subject matter of the picture easier than if the grain is dull. But, I would like to emphasize that I still find other aspects of the picture more important, almost all of them in fact. Grain falls so low on my rostrum of print qualities, and that's why I raised the question to begin with.
 
Salgado, HCB, Tim Rudman and other photographers use grain as part of the message they are trying to convey and do it effectively. If an image effectively connects to the viewer, I don't particularly care if the is detail in the shadows, square or rectangular, grainy, toned, or just about anything else. All of these devices should just be tools in our toolbox to make the kinds of images you like. One of my most popular images is a 35mm Tri-x image printed as lith on Slavich and it is about as grainy as you can get. Recently, I've printed more from 120 traditionally just because that is the look I've been looking for.

Sorry, back to the question, grainy to me is pretty much any 35mm 400 speed film printed at 8x10......and then it is really only very apparent in out of focus area to me (like the background of the rabbit image)
 
Thomas Bertilsson said:
That's a 100% fair reply, Austin. Thank you for chiming in.

If you don't mind, let me ask you the following: What is it about grain that you don't think works with your pictures? How does it get in the way? Is it subject matter related?
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Hmm... well basically in my eyes, with my own work, for some reason i find the tonal separation to be... well, inconsistent and blotchy. I like a smooth transition between tones. To me, a beautiful print is about it being smooth, even, with nice tone, and a nice changing of tone. With grain in my own prints, i just feel un excited, and kind of a little taken back. However i only feel this with my own work, perhaps because when judging my own work, i have a much more specific view on things, and i have an image in my head that i'm trying to replicate. I will admit that with other people's work, i do get more wowed with less grain generally. But grain can often be very pretty. I guess it comes down to how i imagine my images. I'm what you call a romanticist, and as such, i tend to try to have a "dreamy" look to my prints, This is why i tend to use sloppy borders, and satin finish papers, when i have that available. For me, grain does not fit in with my view of "dreamy". Now that's not to say that i don't think that other people will consider grain as being dreamy, but for me, it does not fit in. This opinion only affects my own work, and i'm not totally sure why this is, but i believe it has something to do with the fact that i am super meticulous about my work, and when looking at others work, i am more interested in seeing what they think is beauty, what they see in their head, what they decide is what represents them. For me, grain does not represent me, or my personality, so i don't think it has a place in my work. I don't know if this covers what you were asking well enough or not. Let me know if it doesn't, and i will further articulate
 
Thomas Bertilsson said:
Nothing at all. And the absence or presence of grain neither breaks or makes the picture. To me, other factors of the print carry significantly more importance.
Click to expand...

I agree that it won't make or break a picture, but I believe that the absence or presence of grain can definitely add to (or detract from, theoretically) the quality of a photograph. Perhaps it's because grainy photos tended to be the ones where quality was sacrificed in order to at least capture a shot; a moment on film being better than one that was never recorded.

I developed some HP5+ for a friend I'm trying to convert to shooting film. I told him that it could be shot at 3200. He did so, and also ignored all low-light warnings to boot. The result is a very thin negative at 3200, with the film scans looking like a high-contrast 12,800. He loves the grittiness that these frames exhibit.

As a final note, the lack of grain was one of the reasons I abandoned digital photography. Everything looked too plastic, sterile, and inorganic.
 
"Originally posted by Thomas Bertilsson:

Nothing at all. And the absence or presence of grain neither breaks or makes the picture. To me, other factors of the print carry significantly more importance.

Everything looked too plastic, sterile, and inorganic."

This has a lot to do with my direction right now. I started tunnel-visioning on sharp, grain-free, high accutance. There's definitely a place for that (I still lean that way for landscapes printed large), but there's a ton of character to be had going in other directions. Sometimes I see alt soft-focus portraits and think to myself, that's so far from where I've been going but still such a cool place to be.
 
Grain is beautfiul...and I don't dismiss a photograph in any way because of it.

What happened to that great grain comment that used to be at the top of the APUG masthead?

(Something like, "That's called grain...it's supposed to be there.")
 
Grain makes the image a photograph. Grain is better than pixelation any day in my thinking. Pixelation is not pleasing; grain quite often is.
 
Grain can make an image.....it is a great tool. Here is the image I mentioned above. If the image was a high resolution, grainfree image, it would be a completely different feel.
 
PVia said:
Grain is beautfiul...and I don't dismiss a photograph in any way because of it.

What happened to that great grain comment that used to be at the top of the APUG masthead?

(Something like, "That's called grain...it's supposed to be there.")
Click to expand...

Ah, yes. It used to be that APUG would honor a couple of deceased members, and put text from their signatures at the top of the page for a while. It stopped. I remember the guy that wrote that line, his handle here on APUG was 'Flotsam'. You can, of course, still find his old posts. A very avid and knowledgeable contributor. I think there was another one that said something like: "Aaaahhh Fixer! Smells like... creativity!"

And, I agree. Grain is what our prints are made up from. Without grain there could be no pictures. But it is remarkable that such a variety of flavor is available to us, so that we can make almost grain free pictures (visible to the human eye, anyway) from commonplace films like TMax and Delta. Even some of the traditional grain films offer similar performance, like Pan-F+, the Efke 25 and 50 films, perhaps even FP4+ and Plus-X. A flavor for each taste, it seems. And that's extraordinarily lucky!
 

I'm there too, trying to print up portfolios of material shot over the years, and it's difficult. I have two portraits that I want to include in a portfolio. One shot on 35mm Tri-X, processed in Diafine, and the other shot on 4x5 HP5+ processed in HC-110. The negatives could not be more different.... But it dawned on me that if both prints are made to the best of my ability, and I'm proud of both, maybe it doesn't matter so much that they don't look cohesive. So I just printed them anyway, and I don't think that either of them look out of place.
 

Thomas, my current project is to make a photo book. To say the photographs are different is an understatement. Thus far, I have medium format color negative, black and white 35mm, cross-processed slide film, and some Fuji/Polaroid stuff all on the table. It's much more about the subjects and the framing than the film characteristics. And yes, some stuff is very smooth, while other stuff is very grainy. After all, couldn't it be argued that there's some value in having the ability to produce meaningful images a variety of film media?

Of course, there's also the possibility that the inconsistency could draw attention away from the images. And also, "jack of all trades..."
 
this is a hard thing to say, lets just say you know it when you see it, its a very subjective and depends heavily if that grain works for that image and paper combo or not...
 
I expect to see grain in greatly enlarged (8x10 and larger) 35mm images, especially mine, because I use Tri-X film almost exclusively. (I usually print 35mm to no larger than 5x7".)If the grain is excessive, I know my process is out of control. I rarely use slower 35mm film. If I want less grain, I go to medium format and 100 IS0 film. The camera goes on a tripod. Little or no grain in enlargements up to 11x14, especially from modern t-grain or similar emulsions.

I don't mind grain if the image is strong or if the content is more important than the image quality. I expect to see it in low-light, "pushed" film settings like night football games from a couple of decades back. It's just part of what it took to make the picture. That said, I prefer to make pictures that show little or no grain. My personal work is all on medium and large formats these days, so it's not really an issue.

Peter Gomena
 
There's more to graininess than just the actual film and developer combination. Exposing the film more than it is necessary to obtain good shadow detail will increase graininess and lower the resolution.
The old 35mm magazines from around the 1950's-1960's always recommended using the minimum exposure required to get good shadow detail and the shortest possible developing time to produce a full tonal range on grade 3 paper instead of the usual grade 2, because that would provide the finest grain, with optimum sharpness and resolution.
 
Is this a discussion about whether we like grain or what is our threshold for "it's grainy" ?

For me (if you want a quantitative answer), FP4 at 8x enlargement (8x10" from 35mm) is getting annoyingly grainy and HP5 is entirely too crunchy. Delta3200 grain I generally don't like at all because (at least in stock D76) it has a horrible mushiness to it that negatively affects image sharpness. Delta3200 grain is pretty in Rodinal but a bit too much except at fairly small enlargements.

Most of the time, I like the (near-)grainless look, e.g. Pan-F, Acros or Efke-25 shot in 6x7 and enlarged to 12x16 or maybe 16x20, but that's a matter of the subjects that I typically shoot, where a clean, bright look suits best. I like to see just the tiniest touch of fine but very sharp grain - not so much that it detracts from the image, but just enough that the image has more apparent sharpness from all the high spatial frequency of the grain. It helps that Pan-F grain is just a bit finer than my lens resolution.

For some images where you want a dark/dirty/cheap/noir look, certainly heavy grain is appropriate and can improve the image. I don't do a lot of that myself but appreciate it in others' images - even when I'm shooting urbex style shots with abandoned ruins/graffiti/etc, I'll typically go for a fine-grained look. At most, I'll put some TMY2 in Rodinal, which results in IMHO a beautiful tonal curve and visible but tight, sharp grain.
 
Thomas Bertilsson said:
Hi Steve, thanks for your response.

What about the grain makes it successful?
Click to expand...

Hi Thomas, really great discussions you're prompting.


The grain is successful if it is visible, I like my pictures to show grain and if they do it's a success. I like to see grain in the areas that transition from dark to light. I like to see what might be described as fine sand on white paper. I exaggerate this as I print hard so that blacks are impenetrable and whites are pure white. I think the online jargon is blown highlights and blocked up shadows. I don't care about these areas, what interests me is what's in between and that transition between the two should show grain. I dislike grain free photos that look like shades of dolphin skin.

I wish that I could do something similar to this in colour where pure black and white are replaced by two extremely dense and saturated blocks of colour with an interesting and grainy transition between the two featuring a third colour. But alas the world is going grain free or at least grain suppressed. The trend is accelerated in colour where all the interesting 'texture' films are long gone. Colour films are now as grain free as my eyesight. I wonder if I could print a colour neg through a sandwiched clear piece of Neopan 1600. Might be worth a stab to see if it will colour balance...
 
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