Fine Grain/Grainy

<p>Hi</p>

<p>I'm pretty confused at the moment, what does fine grain actually mean? do you get it on high ISO films?i.e 1600, <br>

is fine grain the same as when people say "grainy"? i.e like that kind of dirty beaten up look of ruins or something?</p>

<p>I'm confused, because I thought fine grain meant things were very detailed, not grainy. Argghh confused.</p>

<p>I have researched but its confused me more.</p>

<p>Thank you</p>

<p> Fine grain means small, unobtrusive grain, the kind one gets in low ISO films.</p>

<p> "Grainy" is more pronounced, more visible, coarser grain, the kind that is more common with high ISO films.</p>

<p> Different developers tend to emphasize or de-emphasize grain. And increasing development times also brings out increased grain.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Amy -</p>

<p>When referring to film - Grain refers to the size of the silver oxide particles that make a film sensitive to light. The finer the grain - the less light sensitivity there is. The finest grain films ever (IMHO) are Kodachrome 25 and PAN-X 25 (for B/W). Different films have different grain properties as well as color / bw characteristics all of which are taken into consideration when shooting film.</p>

<p>As a film gets more sensitive to light - the larger the particles and the more "grainy" the film / prints look. Also if you underexposed / over developed film - then grain tended to show up more often.</p>

<p>As chemicals and science improved - it was possible to get more sensitivity out of small particles of sliver - so higher ISO films became finer grained.</p>

<p>Grain can be used to character and depth to photos - so it's not always a bad thing. And when people say fine grain - it is exactly the opposite of "grainy". And yes - it does look kind of beat up / dirty at times....almost like grains of sand on the image.</p>

<p>In the digital world grain has been replaced by noise - which looks somewhat similar to grain and behaves the same way. The difference is that grain / noise in digital is controlled / dependent on the camera body, not film. Typically in digital it's a straight relationship between ISO and camera senor which produces Noise. Again different camera bodies have different Noise characteristics with some of the older (2003) bodies producing very noisy images at ISO's as low as 400. </p>

<p>Hope this helps!</p>

<p>Dave</p>

<p> </p>

<p>ahh ok, thats great.<br>

Thank you. <br>

So if wanted to get a grainy look on colour I could get a film of ISO1600 or more, ? ...OR on black and white, could I push in processing , for example a 400 to 1600, does this give a high contrast effect?</p>

<p>Yeah, for extra graininess go with a high ISO film. The Fuji 1600 has some pretty good grain while maintaining good color. The fast Ilford B&W films are nicely grainy. Tri-X is grainy but they updated the formula a while back and made it a bit less grainy. You can enhance it to some degree by push processing with a high acutance developer.</p>

<p>Amy -</p>

<p>Grain / ISO and contrast are pretty unrelated... I've seen fine grain films produce low contrast images and fine grain films produce high contrast images - often on the same roll and vice-versa.</p>

<p>Contrast is controlled via a combo platter of light and development (for film) and Light / Development / Printing for prints. You can only do so much with light (outside especially) but you can control the development and printing. Development by the developer used and in printing by the filters used.</p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

<p>Dave</p>

 

<p>A simple way to enhance grain is to just step back from your subject further, so that it fills less of the frame, and then print a crop. Shots with prominent grain have a very nice feel to them. Tri-X (ISO400) is a moderately grainy, readily available film, used to use it almost exclusively.</p>

<p>Thank you, this is really helpful.</p>

<p>Can you recommend at developer that will bring out the grain on fuji neopan 1600 super presto?</p>

<p>I am about to buy my first developing things, and I think I want to learn about pushing balck and white fujifilm. </p>

<p>You can use kodak developer with fujifilm?</p>

<p>Just out of interest, I bought Illford pan f 50, as I wanted to have a go at fine grain, what would be a good developer for this? I wanted a picture along the ideas of this. But maybe this is a bit ambitious</p>