Grains in pictures

[richardhyx]

I recently shot a roll of Portra 400 and sent it for processing. However when it came back I see that there are heavy grains in the pictures. I have seen photos taken by Portra 400 before. The grains I got look quite abnormal. Can anyone explain why? Thanks!

 

[NathanKing]

Are you shooting 35mm? Have you been looking at scans taken with medium format negatives? Scans of 120 film will have much finer grain because of the vastly increased negative size.

 

[limr]

Are you shooting 35mm? Have you been looking at scans taken with medium format negatives? Scans of 120 film will have much finer grain because of the vastly increased negative size.

This seems to imply that 35mm is just going to be grainy no matter what, and that's not the case. I've seen scans of half frames (that's half of a 35mm frame) that have incredibly fine grain. Depends on the film, not only the size of the film.

OP, I'm not sure I would consider what you posted to be 'heavy grain' but if it's more grain than you are used to, then can you give some information about what you might have done differently with this roll than with previous rolls? For example, were you using the same lens? Was the film expired? Developed in the same place?

 

[NathanKing]

Are you shooting 35mm? Have you been looking at scans taken with medium format negatives? Scans of 120 film will have much finer grain because of the vastly increased negative size.

This seems to imply that 35mm is just going to be grainy no matter what, and that's not the case. I've seen scans of half frames (that's half of a 35mm frame) that have incredibly fine grain. Depends on the film, not only the size of the film.

OP, I'm not sure I would consider what you posted to be 'heavy grain' but if it's more grain than you are used to, then can you give some information about what you might have done differently with this roll than with previous rolls? For example, were you using the same lens? Was the film expired? Developed in the same place?

That's true; however, richardhyx's images look about what I would expect for a medium speed film, 35mm negative, and a low resolution scan (the images are about 1.5 megapixels).

Here's an image using the same film in 35mm wet scanned at 16 megapixels. You can see the grain the background very similar in appearance to the images in question:

Again the same film in medium format developed and scanned identically. Much less visible grain:

 

[limr]

True - at the same size, you're going to see less grain in a scan from a larger negative. If the OP had shot 35mm Portra 400 before and saw less grain, then I figured there's something about the way these new ones were shot that might make a difference. But if the OP had only seen other pictures shot on Portra 400, he might not have known if they were taken on 35mm or 120.

OP - could you give more information? Is this your first roll of this film? Where did you see these other fine-grained pictures that you're comparing your own pictures to?

 

[richardhyx]

You may have a point. I only started shooting film a month ago and this is actually the first roll of ISO 400 film I have ever shot. I found those sample pictures from Flickr by typing 'Portra 400' in search. A number of them seemed to have fewer grains. Perhaps it is because a number of them are scans from medium formats. I didn't notice in what format were they when I first viewed them. Thanks for noticing me this.

 

[_t_o_d_d_]

I only started shooting film a month ago and this is actually the first roll of ISO 400 film I have ever shot.

I never did anything beyond film point and shoot growing up then started with digital SLR in the mid 2000's and have just recently been warming up to shooting film (going to start with 35mm since I have nice lenses)... I for one actually like the grain I see in your shots. Maybe it's just a honeymoon phase I am having with film grain (especially portra) but wow lol.. :mrgreen:

wet scanned at 16 megapixels.

Did a search but didn't find anything so just curious, what is wet scanning?

 

[LeeStar]

They don't look bad to me, but then I just had some developed that came out much worse! Have you dealt with the same lab in the past and turned out well? I just shot my first "test" roll of film in over a decade, and was disappointed but I suspect it was the lab. 400 will definitely be more grainy than 100 or 200 though. From what I've seen so far, digital is more forgiving at higher ISO's than film is. When I shot film I wouldn't use 400 unless I knew I was needing it for a very low light session. Examples below shot with Fuji film 200 ISO.

First shot, from the CD of scans I got from the lab:




Second shot I scanned myself from my negatives, with my Canoscan, it's just a quick scan I did. Could use work, but there's no grain like in the first.



I see that on the forum it doesn't look as bad as it does in my photo viewer, where it looks horrible. I suspect it's because I asked for matte finish and they scanned the photos not the negatives. Just a guess, on the other hand I've scanned matte photos myself in the past and they were fine. Next time I'll probably just get the negatives developed and do the printing myself. Yeah, I'm also not going to that lab again! At some point I may have to do my own developing entirely. Still experimenting.

 

[Josh66]

You may have a point. I only started shooting film a month ago and this is actually the first roll of ISO 400 film I have ever shot. I found those sample pictures from Flickr by typing 'Portra 400' in search. A number of them seemed to have fewer grains. Perhaps it is because a number of them are scans from medium formats. I didn't notice in what format were they when I first viewed them. Thanks for noticing me this.

It would have also included a lot of Portra 160 shots that had "400" somewhere in the description or title. A lot of people put their camera settings in the description, so it wouldn't be far fetched for 400 to be in there somewhere.

Anyway, these don't look bad for 400 speed film. About what I would expect.