ame01999
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- Joined
- Jul 28, 2009
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I've just been flipping through Phaidon's Photo Book as well as analog-originating photos on Instagram, and in so many monochrome examples, the grain lends a beautiful quality—not just adding sharpness, definition, and artificial detail at moderate levels, but creating interesting textures even where some fine-art photographers might term it "obtrusive."
One of my old photo teachers always shot (classic) Tri-X, in sun or shadow, indoors or out, on medium format Hasselblad. His photos looked banal to me: none of the smooth, luscious gradation you'd typically get with medium format on 100-speed films, just grainy and dull. (I wish I remember which developer he favored).
Sebastião Salgado to my knowledge largely shot classic Tri-X, pushed two stops, with overwhelming grain, but most of the time it looks beautiful, even if it's gritty-beautiful.
Whereas beginning photographers following the instructions of their HP5 packaging likely under-expose and overdevelop their photos of wide-contrast subjects, leading to generally ugly pictures with low resolution and clumpy grain.
Finally, how does post-development contrast affect grain? Increased development, as far as I know, leads to larger grain, with more clumping, and thus less resolution. Barry Thornton points out in his Edge of Darkness that if you really want dramatic grain, you can instead develop for a flat negative, and then print with a 5+ contrast filter.
One of my old photo teachers always shot (classic) Tri-X, in sun or shadow, indoors or out, on medium format Hasselblad. His photos looked banal to me: none of the smooth, luscious gradation you'd typically get with medium format on 100-speed films, just grainy and dull. (I wish I remember which developer he favored).
Sebastião Salgado to my knowledge largely shot classic Tri-X, pushed two stops, with overwhelming grain, but most of the time it looks beautiful, even if it's gritty-beautiful.
Whereas beginning photographers following the instructions of their HP5 packaging likely under-expose and overdevelop their photos of wide-contrast subjects, leading to generally ugly pictures with low resolution and clumpy grain.
Finally, how does post-development contrast affect grain? Increased development, as far as I know, leads to larger grain, with more clumping, and thus less resolution. Barry Thornton points out in his Edge of Darkness that if you really want dramatic grain, you can instead develop for a flat negative, and then print with a 5+ contrast filter.