[pure-silver] Re: grain and focus
- From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:04:23 -0700
----- Original Message -----
From: "Shannon Stoney" <shannonstoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 12:48 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] grain and focus
I made some 35mm pictures last winter using an ancient
Leica and mostly HP5+. Some of the negatives are pretty
grainy, even when they're only enlarged to 4x6. The
graininess seems to happen in the out of focus areas, of
which there are a lot because the aperture was wide open
and many of the pictures were taken inside without a
flash. When I use this camera outside and everything's in
focus, there is usually no grain to speak of. Why is
there this relationship between apparent graininess and
out of focus areas?
--shannon
I think this is an optical illusion, the details of the
image tend to suppress the visibility of the grain.
Examining the negative through a strong magnifier or using a
grain focuser on your enlarger should demonstrate this.
Now also grain varies somewhat with the density of the
image being greater for higher density. This is one reason
for the old recommendation to make negatives as thin as
possible while retaining good shadow detail.
I have not used any HP 5 for a long time and don't
rememeber what its like but, if grain is an issue you might
try either Tri-X (ISO-400) or 400T-Max both of which are
quite fine grain for film of this speed. Xtol is a good
developer for both for minimizing grain without loosing
speed.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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