How to influence grain in color process?
Michael Quintero
Dear ng,
As far as I understand it the grain in the bw negative can to some
extend be controlled by choice of the developer. MicrodolX is among
others said to produce a slightly grainier impression than e.g.
Rodinal. Now my newbie question is how this relates to the color
process? Is there also a choice of different developers that influence
the impression of grain (I know it´s dye clouds in this case) or is it
totaly controlled by the design of the emulsion?
Thanks for your input!
Michael
Francis A. Miniter
Hi Michael,
The C-41 color developer only has one basic formulation, but I qualify that
immediately by saying that, as the exact Kodak formula is proprietary, there are
slight variations given by various photochemists who have reverse analyzed the
developer formula. These can easily be found on the internet, in fact, in prior
posts to this group. If you cannot locate them, I will direct you further. For
the most part, these do not significantly affect the grain, though one or
another of them may be more active. I have always wondered about the effect of
making significant variations to the developer forumula, but I have not
attempted any tests.
My experience as to grain, however, is this. Increased agitation makes the
grain rougher.
Francis A. Miniter
Rod Smith
As per another reply, you'll find little variation in C-41 developers with
respect to grain size. In my experience, though, using a poor blix (as
opposed to separate bleach and fix steps, as Kodak's C-41 officially
requires) can create a subjective increase in graininess. The explanation
I've heard is that blixes tend to leave more undissolved silver in the
final negative than does processing with separate bleach and fixer. I've
not tried to investigate this effect very carefully, though; I just know
that the first few rolls of C-41 I processed (using blixes) seemed
grainier than they should have, so I switched to separate bleach and
fixer. If you want to increase grain, though, you might experiment with
using blixes (particularly bad ones -- the one described at
http://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/en/photo/c41_ra4_chemicals.htm was the worse
of the two I tried) rather than separate bleach and fix steps.
Of course, the usual method of adjusting grain in color film is to change
films. Faster films usually have coarser grain than slower films, although
there are exceptions to this rule, particularly across manufacturers. Of
the three current major C-41 film manufacturers, Ferrania film is the
grainiest at any given speed, in my experience. In the US, Ferrania film
is most commonly sold as store brands, such as the Stop & Shop grocery
store house brand or Freestyle's (http://www.freestylephoto.biz) Arista
Color. Kodak recently updated their Portra line using a technology that's
said to reduce grain size, but I don't yet have much experience with this
latest film. No doubt this technology will soon make its way into other
Kodak products, and Fuji will either license it or create something
similar themselves.
--
Rod Smith, rods...@rodsbooks.com
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking
George Mastellone
You can't use B&W developers in the C-41 process, because you
need a developer which will combine with the color couplers in the
emulsion to produce the dye image. On the other hand, the first
developer in the reversal E-6 process is basically a B&W developer and
you can experiment by substituting any B&W developer and then proceeding
through the reversal and color development steps using the "ordinary"
chemicals. That said....takes a lot of experimentation and I can't
really recall seeing anything particularly interesting when I knew a
bunch of fellow photo students trying it out.
happy...@primus.ca
newsgroup does) then you can accentuate the grain by pushing the c-41
film (yes I said C-41) by one stop, and then developing for something
on the order of 40% more than normal i.e about 4.5minutes. There will
be a colour shift, and perhaps the possibility of some crossing of
curves which can be corrected for in the ra-4 printing stage.
Mike Wilde.