Please help! My photos are always soft...

Harry S.

Harry S.

Well-known
Local time
3:36 AM
Joined
Mar 14, 2008
Messages
488
Location
Shellharbour, Australia
View My Gallery
Hello

I was scanning some film I developed today and realized that my shots are always soft. Now to the point that its so bad it is bothering me and I am looking for ways to rectify the problem. When I say soft, I mean I am loosing definition to the point that Id have to slide the unsharp mask filter to 250 to see any detail.

I am using good cameras and lenses and at the moment it seems I could be getting better shots with a point and shoot. This is an ongoing issue with a variety of camera outfits and film types, so Im narrowing it down to my developing practice.

I generally develop with 1:1 D-76, base my times of the massive dev chart, agitating for 5 seconds each minute. I get the temp as close as possible to 20*C. I have done about 30 rolls, and I am self taught in terms of developing. A side effect that I am having is that the shots come out very contrasty and I am loosing tonal range.

Is there any tips I can use to get sharper, overall better negatives in developing? At the moment I am loving using my cameras but its extremely frustrating to scan some negs and see such bad results....I am using Leicas with Zeiss lenses so I really want to make the most of such good tools.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,
Harry
 
Thanks for the reply, leicasniper.

Some of the colour film that I've shot has been fine. I dont do much color film but when I have its never been a problem.

As far as fixing goes, I use fotospeed fixer and go by the directions, fixing for 5 minutes, agitating 5 seconds every 30 seconds. I use a jobo developing tank, not a traditional darkroom.

I will have to check for fogging when unloading the film, sometimes I just go into a room that is dark (not a darkroom) and this may be an issue. I'll go back to using a dark bag. As far as I know my thermometer is accurate.

When it comes to scanning I use a Canoscan 8800F. Ive tried turning all the features like "auto tone", "unsharp mask", "remove dust" etc. on and off and on and the results are always the same. I can scan the pro lab colour film on there without an issue.
 
Last edited:
Harry, this is an example of a shot made on XP2, which you can develop in a lab and scan yourself, taken with the Planar 50/2 ZM:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59177039@N00/1469074997/sizes/l/
And this is a shot taken with the Biogon 35/2 ZM on Fuji Acros developed in Prescysol semi stand developer (fairly high acutance):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59177039@N00/2193690452/sizes/l/

Both scanned at 4000dpi on Nikon CS9000 with minimal sharpening applied. I think your weak link in the chain is your scanning. A less probable possibility would be that you over agitate in your development. Try to dilute D76 1+3 and agitate for the first 30 secs and then only 5 secs every minute, then see what comes out.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for your help, mfogiel!

Your shots are great and mine are no where near that kind of clarity. I just tried my fixer on some leader strips and it fully clears in about 2 minutes in daylight. So 5 minutes in the tank is probably okay.

I'll have to look into scanning better. But I do think It has to do with some developing malpractice. I'll also try some fresh chemicals and dilutions. Thanks again guys.
 
Hmm. I havent paid much attention. I usually scan at 300dpi for a 1500 px wide file. When I save for web the file size is usually 500kb @ 11 quality on photoshop.

Maybe I should scan it at something like 1200 dpi and see what happens.

I did just develop another roll. This time I used Xtol 1:1, less agitation, hewes steel reel instead of the plastic jobo one, changed in a dark bag and fixed it for a 7 minutes. The negatives look good, and are cleared a lot better than a lot of my other ones.

Fingers crossed with a bit of good scanning I get some usable results. Cheers gentlemen.
 
Harry, the reason is clear now, you are scanning at a very low resolution - go to the max resolution your scanner allows, and only after you have done your adjustments in photoshop, you can reduce for the web, for your guide, my scans from a 35mm film come out around 5400 pixels wide, then for web use I reduce this to about 1600 or 1200 pixels. For a first rate print, you should use a resolution of 360ppi, for larger prints possibly 300ppi, so if you scan at 300 dpi, your print to be sharp would be 1cm x1.5 cm big...
 
Harry S. said:
I will have to check for fogging when unloading the film, sometimes I just go into a room that is dark (not a darkroom) and this may be an issue. I'll go back to using a dark bag.
Click to expand...

2 things:

1. Definitely do NOT allow stray light in while loading the reels. I think this loading without using your changing bag could explain some of the muddy, unclear image results. So, use the bag...always.

2. Follow mfogiel's advice on scanning.
 
thomasw_ said:
2 things:

1. Definitely do NOT allow stray light in while loading the reels. I think this loading without using your changing bag could explain some of the muddy, unclear image results. So, use the bag...always.

2. Follow mfogiel's advice on scanning.
Click to expand...

(3) Consider a real darkroom. I'm not kidding. For converting a small space, temporarily, take a look at

http://www.rogerandfrances.com/photoschool/ps how loo.html

Cheers,

Roger
 
Last edited:
My shots always appear pretty soft when I scan them. However, when I wet print, they're fantastic. The culprit is my flatbed scanner which does not do a very good job scanning. Good enough for posting on the web, but even those are soft and lose tones compared to most people's stuff on here.
 
I noticed that you mentioned another try, with fresh chemicals... Does this imply that you were reusing the diluted D76 ? Once the stock-solution is diluted then, for best results, it should not be reused - and certainly not without careful testing or more than a day after mixing. The D76/ID11 developers can be very sharp indeed when used correctly.

The changing-bag will be ok for loading film, but certainly not a room with the curtains drawn or the equivalent as there will be a fogging of the emulsion to some extent. That would reduce contrast and apparent sharpness in the negatives.

There are several ways of determining the "best" scanning resolution (and I don't do that often anyway) but think of the size of result you want to print, and then expect to produce 300dpi in your file for printing. There are many more factors to consider though, depending on the scanner, software, printer and desired output. I suspect most people scan at a very high resolution and then resize the large processed-file to suit the various prints to be made individually.

Of course, all this scanning trouble (assuming that was the main cause) is a hint to make silver prints . . .
😉
 
Hi, Harry!

My experience is similar to Chris's (f/stopblues): when I scan stuff, no matter the resolution, size, output type and what not, my photos have a slightly soft look. But the prints... those are something different: so sharp they sting! 😱

Maybe you need to calibrate your monitor.

In my case, I've decided that as long as the prints turn out fine, the electronic files may look any way they want, I won't care. Like Adams said, the print is the performance and I'd rather have that instead.

Take care! 🙂
 
Thanks for all the help guys. And noimmunity, that made me laugh. 🙂

About the 'fresh' developer. I was always using D-76 1:1 as a one shot developer. However the stock solution I had mixed up I suspected to be borderline in its use by date...almost 6 months.

Roger, I will look into a small darkroom light the one you showed.

I scanned some stuff from the roll I developed last night and they are a lot nicer, higher resolution and better processing practice. Id show some examples but all the shots themselves are pretty ordinary. 🙄
 
Harry S. said:
About the 'fresh' developer. I was always using D-76 1:1 as a one shot developer. However the stock solution I had mixed up I suspected to be borderline in its use by date...almost 6 months.

Roger, I will look into a small darkroom. .
Click to expand...

If the D76 was not brown, it should still have been OK.

You might also want to look at the Nova tent, which is pictured in:

http://www.rogerandfrances.com/darkroom.html

and for changing bags look at

http://www.rogerandfrances.com/photoschool/ps how 35mm tank.html

Cheers,

Roger
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom