HP5+....HC-110....grain

[Godfrey]

I guess that's what I really need to sanity check. I know how to expose properly. I know how to scan well enough, and I know what a good histogram looks like, and I've long had my digital workflow dialed in (I can't think of the last time I had to de noise something.) It's the development I was really questioning myself on. Frankly with a little more processing any and all of these are perfectly acceptable. But I'm still going to chase optimizing my development efforts as I think I can improve on that a bit more.

As I said before: there are limits whenever you're working with scanned film originals. Scanned film does not take as nicely to sharpening as digital image originals do, IME, so careful moves work best. But almost all scanned film images require a small amount of sharpening to have the edge crispness that I like.

In this last image post of "girl with flags" you posted, it's looking quite nice on noise and punch, but your denoise effort has taken the edge off the perceptual sharpness ... I'd combine what you did with a light bit of re-sharpening.

G

 

[mjb206]

As I said before: there are limits whenever you're working with scanned film originals. Scanned film does not take as nicely to sharpening as digital image originals do, IME, so careful moves work best. But almost all scanned film images require a small amount of sharpening to have the edge crispness that I like.

In this last image post of "girl with flags" you posted, it's looking quite nice on noise and punch, but your denoise effort has taken the edge off the perceptual sharpness ... I'd combine what you did with a light bit of re-sharpening.

G

Yes, that's a good call. I had not sharpened it at all after de noising. I added a bit back in

I will say, I'm curious about how her teeth are less sharp than I expected - given the shutter speed and aperture there should have been a bit of latitude in the DOF. I'd think my Cron would be sharper at F8/F11. It's not annoying me, I just found it interesting.

 

[Godfrey]

Summicron 50mm or 35mm, or ??

You have to be pretty close to fill the frame with a small child if it's the 35mm with that pose, and DoF drops off fast in the direction of the camera at close ranges, so it's probably a matter of the precise focus distance. I often find myself tweaking focus distance by a tiny bit to accommodate the need for a little more DoF in the direction towards the camera.

G

 

[yossi]

I just checked the date on my bulk film roll, and it's 10/2028 - so quite a ways off from being expired, and it's not stored in a warm environment. I have a couple of rolls of HP5+ that are not from the bulk roll, so I can try those for comparison. I may also just need to accept that it's a bit more grain than I was expecting.

These two are from the same bulk roll, different session, dilution B. The background grain seems really nice to me. Her skin grain on the first one is particularly grainy. The second image is better. Both had decent histograms after scanning. Again, this was Dilution B. View attachment 4871619View attachment 4871620

Beautiful film images. They both look lovely to me as they are.

 

[mjb206]

Summicron 50mm or 35mm, or ??

You have to be pretty close to fill the frame with a small child if it's the 35mm with that pose, and DoF drops off fast in the direction of the camera at close ranges, so it's probably a matter of the precise focus distance. I often find myself tweaking focus distance by a tiny bit to accommodate the need for a little more DoF in the direction towards the camera.

G

Makes sense. It's actually a 50mm. I was probably 3-4 feet back from them, as I can recall.

 

[mjb206]

Beautiful film images. They both look lovely to me as they are.

Thank you!

 

[DennisM]

Hello all
Long time digital shooter, just getting back into film. I've developed a few rolls of HP5+ in HC-110 using dilution B, single tank. I've had mixed success, and I think part of that is getting back into film as it's been over 20 years. I know HP5+ has a lot of grain, but compared to other images I've seen also developed in HC-110, this one (and the rest from the roll) seems excessive (especially in the shadows, see under her chin/neck for example. ) I've attached the histogram from the scan - zero processing or sharpening using VueScan - I feel like it's decently exposed. What am I missing? I know I can switch developers, but I know it can be better based on what I've seen in others. Or am I crazy and this looks perfectly normal? Should I be over exposing by a stop?

HP5+, 400, F8

View attachment 4871544View attachment 4871545

Why don’t you just expose HP5 at ISO 400 and develop in Ilford’s ID11 at the recommended time & temperature: 1:1 @ 68 degrees; easy; no fuss, and excellent, consistent results.

 

[mjb206]

Why don’t you just expose HP5 at ISO 400 and develop in Ilford’s ID11 at the recommended time & temperature: 1:1 @ 68 degrees; easy; no fuss, and excellent, consistent results.

I'll look in to that - I picked HC-110 because of shelf life and the ease of just making up a one shot batch at a time- since I was just getting back in to the developing process, it seemed like the easiest way to get started.

 

[yossi]

This comparison chart of developers is from Kodak, IIRC.

It can be seen that HC-110B is not reputed to produce the finest grain as cf. others. Not sure if other dilution schemes would be better.
There is probably a limit as to how fine the grains one could get out of HC-110. Beyond that, XTOL seems to be a better option.