Grainy skye?

Why does the skye always look grainy on film?
Even on high resolution BW film.......

Is it the film which react this way......or does the skye just look like
that?

Max

Hi Max,
The graininess is due to the way that film reacts to light. The
grains in the film are sensitive to light, and after development
become more or less transparent, when exposed to more or less light.
Of course, slide film and negative film opperate in opposite fashions,
but the basic idea is the same. Some materials that are light
sensitive have a steeper curve of reaction, than others and this is
noticable in color films. The manufacture can use smaller grains and
spread them out more, to compensate for this. In color slide film the
sky always looks somewhat grainy, due to this effect. In any event, if
you scan your slides or negatives, its easy to blur out the sky with
Photoshop.
Peace,
-chasfs
http://chasfs.com

MXP wrote:
Why does the skye always look grainy on film?

Sky tends to be an area of smooth tone, and of greater than
average density on the negative.

Graininess is strongly related to the density of silver on
the negative and the smooth tone of the sky tends to make
the graininess obvious.

Even on high resolution BW film.......

There I would tend to disagree. Sky from contact prints
looks completely smooth to me. With T-Max 100 in Xtol 1:1
I can get five times enlargements at least in which I see
not the slightest hint of grain on the print. Technical Pan
is even better.

Is it the film which react this way......or does the
skye just look like
that?

No, the sky isn't normally grainy, but I don't think
that the grain is necessarily a bad thing. I quite
like the grain from 6x6 Tri-X enlarged to an 8x10,
but if you want smooth then you should try Tmax 100
or Fuji Acros in Xtol. (Microdol-x gives even finer
grain, but I don't really like the results from
Microdol-X on Tmax 100.)

Hope this helps,

Peter.
--

OK. A shame film react like this. It can look very grainy after some
USM in Photoshop. So I have to find a way to select the skye.
The magic wand can maybe do it.......

One should think that a digital sensor could react the same way. I will
have a closer look at the skye in digital images.

Max


"chasfs" skrev i en meddelelse
oups.com...
Hi Max,
The graininess is due to the way that film reacts to light. The
grains in the film are sensitive to light, and after development
become more or less transparent, when exposed to more or less light.
Of course, slide film and negative film opperate in opposite fashions,
but the basic idea is the same. Some materials that are light
sensitive have a steeper curve of reaction, than others and this is
noticable in color films. The manufacture can use smaller grains and
spread them out more, to compensate for this. In color slide film the
sky always looks somewhat grainy, due to this effect. In any event, if
you scan your slides or negatives, its easy to blur out the sky with
Photoshop.
Peace,
-chasfs
http://chasfs.com

I have worked a little with Gigabitfilm and here the grains in the skye
is quite visible. On other areas the film grains are very small (4000 dpi
scan).
On this film I can get much higher resolution than e.g. Velvia. When I tried
Tmax100 I found resolution about the same as Velvia, but maybe the skye
looks better on this film. Skye is not bad on Gigabit.....but the grains are
visible. So it gives a "film look" when printed.....I am using R2400 in the
moment.
If people think it is a real silver print.....it could be fun.

Max


"Peter Irwin" skrev i en meddelelse
...
MXP wrote:
Why does the skye always look grainy on film?

Sky tends to be an area of smooth tone, and of greater than
average density on the negative.

Graininess is strongly related to the density of silver on
the negative and the smooth tone of the sky tends to make
the graininess obvious.

Even on high resolution BW film.......

There I would tend to disagree. Sky from contact prints
looks completely smooth to me. With T-Max 100 in Xtol 1:1
I can get five times enlargements at least in which I see
not the slightest hint of grain on the print. Technical Pan
is even better.

Is it the film which react this way......or does the
skye just look like
that?

No, the sky isn't normally grainy, but I don't think
that the grain is necessarily a bad thing. I quite
like the grain from 6x6 Tri-X enlarged to an 8x10,
but if you want smooth then you should try Tmax 100
or Fuji Acros in Xtol. (Microdol-x gives even finer
grain, but I don't really like the results from
Microdol-X on Tmax 100.)

Hope this helps,

Peter.
--

"MXP" wrote in message
...
OK. A shame film react like this. It can look very grainy after some
USM in Photoshop. So I have to find a way to select the skye.

What you are seeing could be noise from your scanner or oversharpening.

The magic wand can maybe do it.......

That's one way, but... well, if it doesn't work well for you, come over to
the photoshop group.

One should think that a digital sensor could react the same way. I will
have a closer look at the skye in digital images.

Digital is cleaner, when it's good.

"MXP" wrote in message
...
I have worked a little with Gigabitfilm and here the grains in the skye
is quite visible. On other areas the film grains are very small (4000 dpi
scan).

Is your scanner a _true_ 4000spi scanner? Even the Nikon (35mm) 4000spi
scanner gives way to noise at high resolution.

What scanner do you have and what resolution do you scan with? I find
that with my Microtek 120tf, I get less noticable grain if I scan at
3200 dpi, rather than 4000 dpi, without really losing any noticable
detail.

I often use the magic wand to select the sky. I blur it with gaussian
blur or smart blur. I then invert the selection and use USM on the rest
of the image. Sometimes it helps to feather the selection so the USM
isn't noticable at the horizon. A note about using USM - its important
to adjust the amount of USM for the print size. If you are going to
print at different sizes, save a copy of the image without USM. Then
do USM individually for each print size.

Peace,
-chasfs
http://chasfs.com

MXP wrote:
OK. A shame film react like this. It can look very grainy after some
USM in Photoshop. So I have to find a way to select the skye.
The magic wand can maybe do it.......

One should think that a digital sensor could react the same way. I will
have a closer look at the skye in digital images.

Max


"chasfs" skrev i en meddelelse
oups.com...
Hi Max,
The graininess is due to the way that film reacts to light. The
grains in the film are sensitive to light, and after development
become more or less transparent, when exposed to more or less light.
Of course, slide film and negative film opperate in opposite fashions,
but the basic idea is the same. Some materials that are light
sensitive have a steeper curve of reaction, than others and this is
noticable in color films. The manufacture can use smaller grains and
spread them out more, to compensate for this. In color slide film the
sky always looks somewhat grainy, due to this effect. In any event, if
you scan your slides or negatives, its easy to blur out the sky with
Photoshop.
Peace,
-chasfs
http://chasfs.com

"chasfs" skrev i en meddelelse
ups.com...
What scanner do you have and what resolution do you scan with? I find
that with my Microtek 120tf, I get less noticable grain if I scan at
3200 dpi, rather than 4000 dpi, without really losing any noticable
detail.

I use a Coolscan 9000 in 4000 dpi mode. It can do multi sample to reduce
noise from the CCD. Normally I use 8x multi sample. This gives noise free
results. So the grains is not noise from the scanner but real grains in the
film.
The Gigabitfilm has so much information that I could use more than 4000 dpi.
A 8000 dpi scanner would be perfect, but for A4 size prints 3200 dpi would
be sufficient. For A3 or A3+ 4000 dpi is better.


I often use the magic wand to select the sky. I blur it with gaussian
blur or smart blur. I then invert the selection and use USM on the rest
of the image. Sometimes it helps to feather the selection so the USM
isn't noticable at the horizon. A note about using USM - its important
to adjust the amount of USM for the print size. If you are going to
print at different sizes, save a copy of the image without USM. Then
do USM individually for each print size.

I will try this trick next time.....using invers selection etc. Normally I
save
a copy without any USM. The good thing about film is that you can always
scan again.

Max


Peace,
-chasfs
http://chasfs.com

MXP wrote:
OK. A shame film react like this. It can look very grainy after some
USM in Photoshop. So I have to find a way to select the skye.
The magic wand can maybe do it.......

One should think that a digital sensor could react the same way. I will
have a closer look at the skye in digital images.

Max


"chasfs" skrev i en meddelelse
oups.com...
Hi Max,
The graininess is due to the way that film reacts to light. The
grains in the film are sensitive to light, and after development
become more or less transparent, when exposed to more or less light.
Of course, slide film and negative film opperate in opposite fashions,
but the basic idea is the same. Some materials that are light
sensitive have a steeper curve of reaction, than others and this is
noticable in color films. The manufacture can use smaller grains and
spread them out more, to compensate for this. In color slide film the
sky always looks somewhat grainy, due to this effect. In any event, if
you scan your slides or negatives, its easy to blur out the sky with
Photoshop.
Peace,
-chasfs
http://chasfs.com

I've never taken photographs on the Isle of Skye but I don't see why
the sky should be any more grainy there compared to elsewhere.

If you want finer grain don't scan your b&w film. It's that simple.

MXP wrote:
Why does the skye always look grainy on film?
Even on high resolution BW film.......

Is it the film which react this way......or does the skye just look like
that?

Max