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How to influence grain in color process?
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 itīs dye clouds in this case) or is it totaly controlled by the design of the emulsion? Thanks for your input! Michael |
#2
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How to influence grain in color process?
Michael Quintero wrote:
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 itīs dye clouds in this case) or is it totaly controlled by the design of the emulsion? Thanks for your input! Michael 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 |
#3
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How to influence grain in color process?
In article .com,
Michael Quintero writes: 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 itīs dye clouds in this case) or is it totaly controlled by the design of the emulsion? 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/pho..._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, http://www.rodsbooks.com Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking |
#4
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How to influence grain in color process?
Michael Quintero wrote:
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 itīs dye clouds in this case) or is it totaly controlled by the design of the emulsion? Thanks for your input! Michael 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. |
#5
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How to influence grain in color process?
If you are up for processing your own c-41 ( more than one on this
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. |
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