Some B&W Photos with HP5 Film

To me, those scans look like they were undersampled and oversharpened. I say that because I've tried HP5 in a lot of soups and it may look different in each but never that bad. Now I've never tried it in tmax dev., but I can't believe it would look like the photos you've posted. However, I have seen results like that for many films when I've experimented with different scanner and PS settings.
 
Nick R. said:
To me, those scans look like they were undersampled and oversharpened. I say that because I've tried HP5 in a lot of soups and it may look different in each but never that bad. Now I've never tried it in tmax dev., but I can't believe it would look like the photos you've posted. However, I have seen results like that for many films when I've experimented with different scanner and PS settings.
Click to expand...

Nick: The scanning was done on a Fuji Frontier by Sam's Club. While I don't usually trust Sam's Club with photography issues, I thought that digital scanning was automated with these big machines. Maybe I am wrong. When I asked the technician today whether they do anything to the scanning process, she just smiled and said No.
 
I have the negative strips (uncut), so I could at least try doing some scans (at the ends of the film strips) with my Nikon Coolscan III with ICE. If I don't do anything extreme in the scans, I should avoid getting the faults some of you seem to be seeing from a digital "butchering" of my poor innocent negatives! :angel:
 
Raid, what kind of scanner is the Coolscan? film? flatbed? And what kind of scanner software will you be using?
 
I shot a roll of FP4+ thorugh a Minolta SRT200 and a Rokkor 50/2
Developed fro 9 minutes in Rodinal 1+50+VitC (agitating gently once per minute)
Scans will be in my Rodinal folder, but the first coupl eof pics I scanned surprised me for they little grain they showed on the scanner.


I'll keep adding picutres there

titrisol said:
Frank, look in the unlinkingeye article about Appreciating Rodinal
I've tried the 1+50 + VitaminC and it is really good with EFKE100.
Will try it on FP4 soon.

From the article
A lot of photographers add sulfite to Rodinal to reduce the grain--a practice I always thought defeated the purpose of using Rodinal to begin with. Patrick Gainer writes: “It turns out that 4 g/l sodium ascorbate does a lot of good added to 1:50 Rodinal. A lot better than 100 g/l of sulfite.” Those who are searching for a fine-grain version of Rodinal should give this a try. (Please note: you should add sodium ascorbate, not ascorbic acid, because ascorbic acid will radically reduce the alkalinity of the Rodinal solution. Ascorbic acid is easily converted to sodium ascorbate by the addition of baking soda (in the ratio of the molecular weight of the acid over the bicarbinate, which is 176/84--approximately 2 parts acid to 1 part bicarbonate) or sodium hydroxide (in the ratio of the molecular weight of the acid to the hydroxide, which is 176/40, or 4 parts acid to 1.1 parts sodium hydroxide) . If you use the baking soda, add it to the ascorbic acid in a little water and let the fizzing subside before adding it to the working solution.)
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
"No. We're waiting for your scans from Nikon Coolscan. Turn off ICE, you don't need that for silver b&w.
Cheers,
Eduard"

OK. I will today scan a few ends of negatives and have the posted.


"Yes - definitely turn off the ICE. it will make your scans look far worse than the ones you've shown so far...allan"

No problem. I will turn off ICE.




"Raid, what kind of scanner is the Coolscan? film? flatbed? And what kind of scanner software will you be using?

Nick"

I have a Coolscan III which is a film scanner taking either an adapter for negative strips or an adapter for slides. It is not bad at all.
 
I turned off ICE when scanning this negative. I left it totally without any adjustment. I will then adjust it slightly and re-post the photo. This negative is from an Ilford HP5 roll of film.
 
Here is another scan from the same roll of HP5. The first image is unadjusted at all, while the second was slightly modified.
 
Here is a third scanned negative (unmodified and modified). A comparison should be made with scanned negatives from the same roll of film.
 
raid amin said:
Here are five photos from a second roll of FP5 developed in TMAX. I notice much better grain. The photos are not great, and just posted them to compare results with the developer. How can two rolls of the same type, developed the same way (I assume), give such different results? Could it be that the lens used also plays a role, or is this out of the question? I also noted that the files are much smaller here. It somehow happend. I guess, this is another factor to consider.
Click to expand...


This is the response to go to: #55. The scanned negatives are from the same roll as those given above.
 
Now this looks a lot more like scanned film! Your first posted scans from the lab looked like a cheap digicam. There is definite grain here, but not an excessive amount for 400 film shot at 400. Disregarding dynamic range issues for the moment, now that you have a clean scan, you will find that you can use your digital tools to accentuate or subdue the grain to some extent to influence the look of the shot and/or tailor it to the intended output medium. Or yaou can really overdo it and make it look as crappy as the scan from the lab.

You're doing fine, raid.
 
allthumbs said:
Now this looks a lot more like scanned film! Your first posted scans from the lab looked like a cheap digicam. There is definite grain here, but not an excessive amount for 400 film shot at 400. Disregarding dynamic range issues for the moment, now that you have a clean scan, you will find that you can use your digital tools to accentuate or subdue the grain to some extent to influence the look of the shot and/or tailor it to the intended output medium. Or yaou can really overdo it and make it look as crappy as the scan from the lab.

You're doing fine, raid.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I have learned my lesson that even a fancy expensive digital machine like the Fuji frontier can give crappy results for scans when not adjusted appropriately.
 
kaiyen said:
One word.

Overdevelopment.

More words: over development increases grain.

allan
Click to expand...


I will change my lab to try out another developer and hopefully the developing factor will be taken care of.
 
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