grain of kodak Tmax 100, looks when scanned

[dirk_dom1]

<p>Hi!<br>

I shot half frame images with a 1960 Olympus PEN F.<br>

I scanned them with an Epson V750 flatbed, at 4,800PPI, using Silverfast.<br>

I wonder if the grain that came out looks natural and if I could sharpen it and keep it natural.<br>

Another question is: do I gain lots by drumscanning or using a Hasselblad Imacon? I intend to print it 12 x 18 inches. I'll sharpen in Photoshop, but I don't want to oversharpen the grain so it looks totally unnatural. my goal is to show the difference between my medium format (6x9) and the half frame, incorporating grain as an important element of the image.<br>

So, i need to know how real grain looks like.<br>

Can you give me your thoughts?<br>

Can anyone post some images of grain of Tmax 100 which looks natural?<br>

Added an image of the whole scan, and a detail.<br>

Thanks,</p>

<p>Dirk.</p><div></div>

[dirk_dom1]

<p>Here's the detail:<br>

I must say the images look completely different on my Eizo screen using photoshop, than on my Eizo using Fastone, than on my laptop screen or using my email program. On the Eizo with Photoshop, it looks exactly like the print, all the rest is different.</p><div></div>

[dirk_dom1]

<p>Here is the grain, sharpened. Does it look O.K.?<br>

Ionce had an Imacon scan made and the grain was sharpened in that scan, to intense black dots.</p><div></div>

[yockenwaithe]

<p>I for one think the sharpened detail looks a little pebble-y for my tastes, do you have a full pic with the sharpened grain?</p>

[kivivuori]

<p>Hi,<br /><br />To me those examples look like "T-Max 1600" than T-max 100...<br /><br />I´m convinced that you should try drum scanning 8000 dpi or Imagon at least once to see the real difference.<br /><br />Best regards,<br /><br />Esa Kivivuori<br />Finland</p>

[Didier Lamy]

<p>the unsharpened version looks ~ok to me, I would apply only a light sharpening. Below is a 100% crop of a 4000 ppi Coolscan 5000ED 16 bits greyscale scan, no processing (pre or post scan). Tmax 100 Xtol 1:1 21°C 9'20. With this protocol I usually add some contrast with the histogram tool of PSPX9, light sharpening, and it looks fine at 360 dpi. The full source is also below.</p><div></div>

[Didier Lamy]

<p>And the full photo</p><div></div>

[dirk_dom1]

<p>Hi!<br>

Thanks a lot for the response!<br>

I 'm not going to print the image I used as an example, but I finished postprocessing one like it:<br>

This is how I like the grain. i want it as an important part of the image, adding to it and making it beautiful.<br>

What do you think, no good?<br>

Didier, what size is your image? is it 35mm or 6x9?</p>

<p>Dirk.</p><div></div>

[dirk_dom1]

<p>here's another one:</p><div></div>

[dirk_dom1]

<p>last one:</p>

<div></div>

[SCL]

<p>Dirk - if you really want a good comparison incorporating grain as a feature, I'd suggest actually printing the negative via a wet darkroom (I saw in your profile you no longer have a wet darkroom) instead of introducing the additional step of scanning it and dealing with pixels. I believe there are still some labs which do this. The Pen F with several of its lenses can really turn out some amazingly sharp images....I've still got some from the 1960s...mostly printed 8x10.</p>

[glen_h]

<p>This is an interesting question. You might run into grain aliasing.</p>

<p>First, if you want grain to be part of the image, then you have to sample, that is resolve, smaller than half the grain size. To avoid aliasing, you need a low-pass spatial filter in the scanner.</p>

<p>I suspect that many scanners have an optical system with less resolving power than the sensor, as do many cheaper digital cameras, in which case no low-pass filter should be needed. </p>

<p>However, the spatial frequency response (MTF) might falls off slowly enough that the grain, specifically the sharp detail of the grain, has enough spatial frequency to cause aliasing.</p>

<p>From: http://imaging.kodakalaris.com/sites/prod/files/files/products/f4016_TMax_100.pdf</p>

<p>the MTF curve goes up to about 140 cycle/mm, requiring over 7000dpi to barely resolve.</p>

<p>In other words, T-Max 100 in full frame 35mm has about 67 megapixels. If you want to resolve the grain, you need even more than that. </p>

<p>Maybe you could start your experiments on a larger grain film, so you can learn about the effects of grain, scanning, and printing with lower resolution (cheaper) scans. </p>

<p>For Tri-X: http://imaging.kodakalaris.com/sites/prod/files/files/products/f4017_TriX.pdf</p>

<p>the MTF graph goes only up to 70 cycles/mm, so it is called fine grain, instead of the extremely fine grain for T-Max 100. So only about 3500 dpi for Tri-X. </p>

<p>Maybe Delta 3200 for a medium grain film?</p>

<p>In 1965, Kodak called Royal-X Pan a moderately coarse grain film. (I don't have an MTF curve for it.)</p>

 

[peterbcarter]

<p>As an owner of a V700, I can't imagine how you managed to get such grainy images from that scanner.</p>

<p>On the Garbage-in=Garbage-out notation: Tmax film should be scanning almost grainless. Is it perhaps over developed? Did reticulation get the better of the film here?</p>

<p>Is it possible the scanner software (I have a pre-disposed hatred of the company that makes the software you use) is not doing you image justice?</p>

<p>My scans are something like this .....</p>

<p><img src="https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7067/6950441370_8e4113f188_b_d.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>This was Foma 100 (35mm) on a V700 with vuescan.</p>

 

[glen_h]

<p>Delta 3200:</p>

<p>http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/201071394723115.pdf</p>

<p>doesn't have an MTF curve either. There are development times to EI 25000, though.</p>

<p>It could be interesting to see what its grain looks like at 25000.</p>

[glen_h]

<blockquote>

<p>As an owner of a V700, I can't imagine how you managed to get such grainy images from that scanner.<br>

</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The OP does mention sharpening, but doesn't say how much was used.<br>

<br>

As I noted, the actual resolution of the film is better than the scanner, but grain will add some high frequency noise. The scanner should mostly filter that out, but if you put a sharpening filter, equivalent to turning the TONE control all the way up on stereo receivers that have one, you will exaggerate the noise that was originally due to grain. This is related to grain aliasing, because it comes out as much lower spatial frequencies, that is bigger than the actual grain. </p>

<p>If that is the desired look, then that is fine, but it isn't actual grain, but a side effect related to noise (from grain) and the sampling spatial frequency (resolution) of the scanner. </p>

<p>You could try scanning at lower resolutions and see what that does to the image.</p>

[john_shriver]

<p>Yeah, that looks more like 1950's Super-XX (which I've scanned a lot of in half-frame format on my V750.)<br>

I think the native resolution of the scanner is either 3200 or 6400, so there could very well be some "scaling" artifacts when the scanner software interpolates to 4800. Or you may be hitting grain aliasing.<br>

Look at the negatives with a good loupe. Do they look anything like the scans? If you don't have a good loupe, a 50mm SLR lens, looking through the back, is a good substitute</p>

[maesphoto]

<p>Did you try the extremely sharp Adox CMS 20 film, developed in Adotech III developer?<br /> I made pictures on a 24x24mm format, which is not that different from 18x24mm and got amazingly satisfying results.<br /> The scans where made with a Microtec ArtixScan F1 scanner and Silverfast 8 software.</p>

[Didier Lamy]

<p>"This is how I like the grain". Dirk, to me this is a lot of grain..<br />My photo above is 35mm (F3, 50mm/1.4 ZF2, +monopod).<br />After the scan (NikonScan) I set three histogram control points at: (in/out) 91/47, 125/76, 231/223. Then sharpenig at R=1.3, i=65, T=10 with PSPX9. Below are the results, 100% and downsized from 20.8 Mpx (scan at 4000 ppi). Once printed at 360 dpi on A4 I find that the grain is inapparent, which is how i like it...</p><div></div>

[Didier Lamy]

<p>And full size:</p><div></div>

[jose_angel]

<p>Same results here, same scanner.<br /> It is one of the reasons to keep printing via traditional darkroom. To me, hybrid processing doesn`t work.</p>

[tklim]

<p>I thought you might wish to view another example. The image below is a 600 x 510 section cropped from the original scan 3398 x 2256 of a 24x36 frame of TMAX-100 developed in Crawley's FX-37 and scanned using a flatbed Epson scanner series 28xx, at the maximum hardware resolution of 2400 dpi. Noteworthy might be the fact that the film expired in 2004 and was exposed in 2016. I applied slight sharpening, an amount I normally use after downsizing a picture to meet typical internet gallery requirements.</p><div></div>

[tklim]

<p>...and a full picture:</p><div></div>

[Didier Lamy]

<p>Looks less grainy than my example, could it be the scan (4000ppi versus 2400)?</p>

[tklim]

<p>I'm not sure, the scanning resolution could be one reason, and another might be the negative density; usually denser negatives of the same emulsion exhibit coarser grain than 'thin' negatives. I strive to give all my 35 films N-1 development.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>These are Tmax 100 scanned with an Epson V600. I don't see grain. Of course this is 120 medium format, but still I don't see how you got so much grain unless you cranked up the sharpening and other sliders.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/tags/tmax100/">https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/tags/tmax100/</a></p>