Tri-x 400 and grain

And more grain. Yikes. Just tried out a new (old) Canonet and shot some tri-X

4oo @ 320. I developed it in D76 1-1 and 68 degrees for 10 minutes. Exposures

were ok but the grain on the scanned image was outrageous. Much worse than the

Tmax 400 and HP5 films I've used before. I read somewhere that Tri-x was

slightly less grainy than Tmax 400 but not in my book. What is it i did wrong

and what do I do to make it right?

 

Thanks,

Mike

Can you post an example? I use this combo a lot and haven't really had any problems with grain. In the past when I had grain issues using HC-110, I actually tracd it back to cold wash/stop water that was causing some reticulation. It appeared like really large grain (abnormal for speeds and developers used). Look at process temps first, make sure they are consistent for all stages.

This is a crop of the original but the grain looks bad even on a 6x9 print.<div></div>

If you mix D76 with distilled water, this is what happens. Been proved out by two people I know.<p>

 

Use tap water and it goes away<p>

<hr>

<i>Moderator note added 2/17/10: Claims that distilled water causes excessive grain or reticulation are unsubstantiated and may mislead beginners or others who are observing grain in their scans of b&w negatives when they haven't seen excessive grain in conventional optical enlargements. See <A HREF="http://www.photo.net/black-and-white-photo-film-processing-forum/00Vmhe"><B>this 2010 thread

</B></A> for an example of how inaccurate information can mislead others who search the archives.</i>

Yes distilled water. I thought that was good?

Strange but true. I proved it with Chicago water and a friend who does meticulous work blew a model shoot with distilled. Well water from Naperville, Illinois was his normal water.

 

His was packaged D76 and mine was most likely scratch mix.

Distilled water has NO negative effect on D76. If anyone can prove other wise, then they

should get hold of Eastman-Kodak and let them know so Kodak can get the word out to the

thousands of photographers using D76 with distilled water. John Sexton, Ansel Adams

assistant once said that he gets less grain using his tap water then distilled water but never

said what was in his tap water. LOL<P>The best way to find out is do your own testing. Do a

tap water vs. distilled water test and find out. Just remember that all tap water is not the

same but all distilled water is.

<i>Exposures were ok but the grain on the scanned image was outrageous.</i> <<< Do a search on the term "grain aliasing".

 

Films (and prints) with sharp grain can look terrible when digitalized.

Gah, I forgot to post that in html.

Just a possibility. Did you make sure to turn off digital ice or whatever infrared dust detection when you scanned your negative?

My experiences were wet darkroom long before I knew what a scanner was.

 

I know Photographer Formulary and others recomment it, my experiences were all terrible. One chemist thinks it has to do with the chlorine in the water.

"Just remember that all tap water is not the same but all distilled water is."

 

<p>

Yup. That's definitely a problem with the tap water notion, for some of us. Where I live, for example, tap water has a <i>very</i> high lime content; can't imagine that would improve the performance of D-76.

This looks like bad scanning. Have you made any projection prints with these negatives? When I started developing film in 1971 I lived in The Bronx. At that time we probably had some of the best water in the country. Even many years later New York City water tested as being cleaner and tasting better than most bottled water. When I moved to NJ I switched to distilled water. The water where I live now has about 16 grains. It's very hard. I've never found that distilled water caused a grain problem.

I find it disturbing that most people here are bickering about the type of water used to mix the developer rather than the obvious issue of the scan quality. Waiting for Adam Sandler to show up and offer his opinion :-)

 

Unless the laws of physics have changed since I've scanned B&W film, we concluded long ago here that film scanners varied to an extreme degree in their ability to scan conventional B&W film. Depending on the profiles used in the scanner, or where black / white points are set, grain can be either subtle and remarkable, or look like grainy snowballs as per the example.

 

For all we know this is a Walmart or Frontier scan from Tri-X. If the poster is having commerial scans made, then he's wasting his time with conventional B&W white film and needs to switch to color print and desaturate. If he's scanning himself, try switching to a slide film profile on the scanner, and then inverting in Photoshop. This is a classic 'hack' to get a better black/white point and not pull out the grain so much with B&W film.

 

Given optimum scanning, my experience with the later versions of Tri-X are that they have a bit more acutance than earlier versions, along with edging out HP5 in terms of sharpness. Tmax 400 has a bit finer grain than Tri-X, but at the expense of density range which gives B&W film it's 'character' anyways. I'll otherwise take Tri-X Pro in Rodinal or HP5 Processed in HC-110 over Tmax 400 anyday - provided I'm shooting 6x7 or larger given it's the only way to get good scans from the medium.

There are some recently scanned tri-x pics in my PN portfolio taken in Russia in 1991. They came out OK. I used Tri-x because it IS grainy and these were food lines and I like the effect. Not my best pictures but I developed them in tap water all those years ago. I have forgotten what developer I used but I never used D76. Just found the negatives again.

To Scott Eaton:<p>

Have you tried the "new" Tmax400 yet? John Sexton said that his recent experience with the new formula shows much improvement over the old. <p>

"I find it disturbing that most people here are bickering about the type of water used to mix the developer rather than the obvious issue of the scan quality"

 

Some of us were merely trying to suggest, gently, that the distilled water explanation didn't seem persuasive. (And ergo, that some other explanation, say scanning issues, might be worth exploring.)

Don`t look at that thing you posted and suggest that its TriX grain that makes it look like that. And whoever told you TriX has finer grain than TMAX needs to get their facts straight. Millions upon millions of rolls of trix have been souped in D76 over the decades, I seriously doubt you were the first to discover some inherent flaw with the combo. The answer is really simple - get the digital camera you obviously want, or the enlarger needed to make a decent B&W print.

Michael, what temperature did you wash the film? I've had a similiar experience with a film that was washed with too hot water... .

But I have to say that this is far worse than what I experienced.

I don't agree that T-MAX 400 (TMY) has finer grain than Tri-X. This may be true of the newly announced version of T-MAX 400 but with a variety of developers the current version of Tri-X looks less grainy to me than TMY.

That photo doesn't look right. Examine the negatives and the grain with a loupe before

making final judgements. Scanners can amplify apparent grain due to grain aliasing. It's

happened to me several times with both Tri-X and HP5+. An article about it here:

http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Grain.htm

I can't tell from your low resolution posted image but it's possible that this is reticulation, which can occur when there are temperature variances between your developer and wash or other chemicals. Film grain would look like fine sand while reticulation is larger and will have a macro/crystalline look to it. There's no way that properly processed Tri-X would have this much grain when shot at ISO 400.

 

Here's a site with some info on reticulation:

 

<http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~mukluk/ret.html>

Oops, the above link doesn't work with the <>:

 

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~mukluk/ret.html

Thanks to the legitimate replies here. As far as the dumb digital reply well I have a fine digital camera but enjoy shooting old classic cameras and film. My question had nothing to do with digital and everything to do with what i did wrong. My scans were made on a Minolta scan dual 4. Not the best but a decent scanner and I'm pretty good with it. I also print in the darkroom but first do a test scan to check exposure, sharpness etc. Results with other film/developer combos have yielded better results.

 

Mike