Grainy wedding prints

Hi,

 

Recently I did photos at wedding ceremony. Clients wanted to have

full details in a background during the ceremony in a church which is

actually dark. I used 400/800 asa films (35 mm) to make it work but

the reaction was like: what a grainy prints... Prints were enlarged

to 15x22 cm. How do you handle such problems? Do you talk with your

clients before shooting about grainy prints?

I did lot of MF too so some of the prints were grainless but it is

hard to work only with MF during wedding at least for me.<div></div>

Absolutely beautiful Igor.

 

Were the enlargements done traditionally? Or were they scanned.

 

Grain can be suppressed in film development (to late now), or by using a different kind of

enlarger light source. It's been awhile, so I can't remember exactly, but I think it was a

diffusion condenser... or was it a cold light head (????).

 

Anyway, grain is one of the charms of using film. Books like the Vera Wang high-end

wedding book is crammed with really grainy shots. To bad your clients don't get it.

 

If scanned, the images can be run through a noise suppression or grain control program.

Beautiful shot! Yes, I talk to clients beforehand and show them

examples of what to expect.

 

Marc, condensor light sources tend to accentuate grain, and

diffusion sources (such as a cold-light head) tend to reduce its

appearance. Color enlargers with dichroic heads generally fall

in between.

Thanks Mike, it's been 3 years since I was in a darkroom and it's starting to fade ; -)

I'm curious as to which 400/800 films you were using, Fuji NPH/NPZ, Kodak 400NC? I've never used it by I have heard good things about the grain reduction software, Neat Image.<P>

<a href=http://www.dmcphoto.com/Articles/NeatImage/>http://www.dmcphoto.com/Articles/NeatImage/</A>

The answer is called a tripod and Fuji Reala.

 

If many of my old medium format shooters managed to over-expose VPS 160 by a full stop under available churchlight, then you should have no problems with 35mm.

 

Next solution; shoot Kodak Portra UC and err towards the over-exposure side.

 

Best solution; Nikon D70 or Canon Rebel 300.

Igor,

 

I agree with James (above post). If you could get a really high-quality scan of your negative/positive then the FREE software called Neatimage is your answer. It results will blow you away.

 

www.neatimage.com

 

Good luck !

 

Cheers,

Wee-Ming

Thanks for your input. The grain was not THAT big of course - for me just normal 400/800 film grain but when comparing to the 67 shots was really noticable. All negs were processed in a pro lab and then scanned with frontier, then processed in PS and the final prints were done in frontier lab. For the future maybe I will try to keep my asa as low as possible. As for digital - some people want negatives - they want them for the future, they don't have computer skills etc.

I found that scanning film produces more grain than if the negs were printed via

traditional methods. Actually, I've learned to control the scans and sometimes the

maximum ppi isn't the best thing to do. The grain control programs mentioned here are

pretty amazing.

It looks really nice. I would tell your clients that is what you intended. If they don't like, hey, you're an artisit and they'll appreciate it someday. I tell clients that their results depend on my mood that day. Sometimes I'm into reportage, and I'll even shoot outdoors at 1000 for max grain. Other times I want a high fashion look and take multiple strobes with me. I use Noise Ninja (built in digital camera profiles) to remove noise at 1600+, but that's only because camera noise tends to have a blocky shape with luminance. Otherwise, I dislike noise programs as they reduce the overall sharpness of lines.