Trying to achieve LARGE grain chemically.... how?

[jnanian]

THIS is where home rolling film, to take a bracket for over development
a bracket for underdevelopment
and a bracket for normal development would come in handy !

nice detective work bill !

maybe the facT that print compensation with a harder grade filter or paper
or developer strength compensates for the underdevelopment boosts the grainy-ness
of the final product ...

T
too bad you don't stick a sheet of paper ( small sheet ! )
in your camera,
rate it for iso 6 or 12 or 24 depending on the paper and kind of light
and then take that paper negative, and put it on a skillet
with a sheet of paper towel, face down, and wax it with parafin or beeswax or ?
to make it translucent-er, and then ... enlarge it ... you might get nice grain ( and paper texture! )
that way as well, and waxing the paper takes about 3 minutes from start to finish ...
( or make a paper contact print internegative of your hopeful print, and contact print the final version )

have fun
john

[Bill Burk]

Bill, my point was not about underexposed shots, but under development.

I didn't read the very next paragraph.... That was graininess on a negative.

LP Clerc: On a print... "This graininess value reaches a maximum at that point on the negative characteristic curve where the exposure is ten times that required at the speed point according to the Jones criterion."

But doesn't that still mean we're talking about exposures falling around Zone III?

What I "think" needs to be done is to create a very flat negative which puts all the pictorial tones in a narrow range of densities - all near the density where there is maximum print graininess.

Instead of trying for the thinnest possible neg though, we want the neg to be mostly around 0.3 - so it may help to fog the film.

[Michael R 1974]

Bill, perhaps Clerc is referring to the equivalent print tonality that appears the most grainy. Studies have been done on this. I don't have the data in front of me but I recall discussion in Richard Henry's book. For example, assume you have a negative of uniform density (any density), and you print a test strip of it on paper. I will check the book for the reflection densities, but I recall it was around what we would normally think of as somewhere between zone III and IV that the tone appears the most grainy to an observer. Perhaps Clerc is referring to a negative density that would normally print to the reflection density at which graininess is most pronounced to the viewer. Just throwing out some ideas.

[Bill Burk]

True you don't see much grain in Zone I or VIII on a print. He gave a formula that I don't want to try to figure out... calling it "an objective measure of graininess".

But I get a kick out of his statement that is SO wrong as far as this thread is concerned... "It is always important to maintain the graininess of negatives at as low a value as possible..."

[Michael R 1974]

Apologies - in the study quoted in Henry the reflection density that appeard the most grainy was around zone V, not the lower values I mentioned earlier. Sorry for the mistake.

[Bill Burk]

Just did a snip test with the leader of a roll to see how fast and how black Dektol 1:4 works. It's too fast, looked like 2 minutes would be a normal time.

So I did a series with Dektol 1:9 and it's hanging up to dry. We'll see soon enough how this turns out.

My first impression is that this isn't going to be grainy enough.

[jnanian]

Just did a snip test with the leader of a roll to see how fast and how black Dektol 1:4 works. It's too fast, looked like 2 minutes would be a normal time.

So I did a series with Dektol 1:9 and it's hanging up to dry. We'll see soon enough how this turns out.

My first impression is that this isn't going to be grainy enough.

i guess one person's not grainy enough is another person's " holy crap " ..
i have a feeling there is a whole concert in play here,
lighting, film, chemistry + print ... its beautiful when everything works together

i guess clerc or henry didn't know what 2013 grainy meant !

john

[Bill Burk]

i guess one person's not grainy enough is another person's " holy crap " ..
i have a feeling there is a whole concert in play here,
lighting, film, chemistry + print ... its beautiful when everything works together

i guess clerc or henry didn't know what 2013 grainy meant !

john

It is beautiful when it comes together - and I just KNOW that exaggerated grain has been an important style for artists before.

I am sure they worked hard to get that look too. But I wonder if anyone used sensitometry (like the Zone System) to deliberately get the "worst" possible results - or if they used to just get lucky (or maybe they worked from the seat of their pants).

p.s. I have done grainy before... just by enlarging. The eclipse shot has two different textures. It's a macro shot of a projected image, so behind the sun you see the texture of the paper. But at top and bottom where it's out of focus, all you see is pure grain - Panatomic-X in D-76 1:1 blown up 24x.

Eclipse

[Michael R 1974]

I still think the easiest thing would be to start with the grainiest film. All other things being equal, generally Haist and others would all say you need a high pH, and minimum solvent action. Maybe something like D-19, or a Lith film developer.

There is also the monobath option - never tried a monobath but under the right conditions some of them are said to be very grainy.

The thing is you don't want (I don't think you want) mushy big grain. Just big grain.

Using a wide angle lens and cropping is still a good idea too.

[Alan Johnson]

Grainiest developer I ever tried was Gainer's Metolal:
http://www.apug.org/forums/forum223/...per-metol.html
But one needs the chems and quite a bit of film to be developed to make it worthwhile.
Both Metolal and PaRodinal have excess sodium hydroxide that swells the emulsion but my impression was that Metolal gave larger grain.
If you just add a lot of sodium hydroxide to Rodinal it's not good, the result was mottling in my test.