When would you expect increased grain?

[BMbikerider]

With Forte film, grain comes with the territory and as it has been said earlier that it is old technology. It will not come anywhere near as grain free as Ilford Delta or Kodak T max, or even FP4+. That said the image of the Guitar the grain is a 'bit soft' and is not so attractive as sharp grain which will give more contrast. Also I have always found that scanning a film will accentuate the grain so you are on a hiding for nothing.

 

[Ian Grant]

With Forte film, grain comes with the territory and as it has been said earlier that it is old technology. It will not come anywhere near as grain free as Ilford Delta or Kodak T max, or even FP4+. That said the image of the Guitar the grain is a 'bit soft' and is not so attractive as sharp grain which will give more contrast. Also I have always found that scanning a film will accentuate the grain so you are on a hiding for nothing.

Forte old technology ? The films have a heritage going back to Plus-X, Super-x, Tri-X etc when the Hungarian factory was a Kodak Ltd (UK) subsidiary before WWII.

Tmax developer doesn't give particularly fine grain, Kodak's own comparison chart shows it gives the least fine grain of their consumer developers. As it's name implies it;s designed to get the best from Tmax films which have inherently fine grain anyway.

Ian

 

[grainyvision]

The last picture looks under exposed/under developed. Grainy shadows are the indicator of that. Basically the shadows of your image are too close to the (naturally very grainy) dmin of the film. One thing to watch for in DSLR scanning is that sometimes the default RAW processing includes a fair amount of sharpening, which will of course increase the grain.

How do the negatives look to the eye though? Are they beefy or thin? Does it appear contrasty? Despite common thoughts about this, I've noticed that negatives processed for too low of contrast can tend to be appear more grainy, since you have to increase grain in post.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I keep shooting and practicing on the 12 year old bulk film and I think my negatives come out very grainy. As far as i know the Bulk film is Forte 100. Now I don't know if this is because I do something wrong when developing it, if it's just because it's old or if my expectations are off.

I scan these using my digital camera and a macro lens so they come out at around 13 megapixels, which would make a pretty decent A3 sized print. Maybe the grain is to be expected at this size with 35mm film?

These came out a bit under exposed as I thought digital and exposed for the highlights rather than the shadows, or an average. Possibly also a little bit under developed. The grain is there regardless though.

They are developed in Kodak Tmax 1+4 for 5 minutes @ 20 degrees C.

If I do something wrong in the developing process, what should I do to fix it?

The photo is 40% of its original size due to size limitations.

View attachment 260408

Ifind this to be a pleasant size grain and a nice compromise between and tonality!

 

[cerber0s]

The last picture looks under exposed/under developed. Grainy shadows are the indicator of that. Basically the shadows of your image are too close to the (naturally very grainy) dmin of the film. One thing to watch for in DSLR scanning is that sometimes the default RAW processing includes a fair amount of sharpening, which will of course increase the grain.

How do the negatives look to the eye though? Are they beefy or thin? Does it appear contrasty? Despite common thoughts about this, I've noticed that negatives processed for too low of contrast can tend to be appear more grainy, since you have to increase grain in post.

They all came out underdeveloped and the last one is also underexposed.

There is very little sharpening added but I've noticed that what you say seems to be true regarding contrast, the negatives seem to crack up and fall apart when I try to compensate in post for the mistakes I made while photographing and developing.