A Film Grain Comparison

For as long as I can remember, which is very long time indeed, grain has been high on the list of a film photographer’s preoccupations. My recent sally into sub-miniature has brought this aspect into even sharper focus. A negative of 8 x 11 or even 13.5 x 19 mm demands some pretty stellar performance in this area.

While it is less of an obsession these days, but having tried numerous films with various 16mm/110 cameras, I thought I would share what I have found for interest’s sake.

I set up my copier with the biggest magnification I can achieve – reversed Micro Nikkor with all the E-mount and F-mount tubes available to me – on the 20Mp Sony A3000 I use. These examples are then resized to 72dpi without interpolation. The image at 72dpi is about 6ft or 2m wide so I will let you do the math.

All the films are processed in Rodinal at various dilutions and regimes as recommended by the massive Development Chart in the main or trade.

Results

Conclusions

There is certainly a range of fineness available but, apart from out and out copying emulsions, not as wide as probably once was the case. The flexibility of some emulsions is quite surprising and throughout acuity is fine.

It really points up the strides that have been made with the materials involved and at the processing stage also, including my own technique probably. Processing does have a part to play and care in carrying it out. I managed to achieve some impressive reticulation with one Orca film which was downright ugly.

For really grain free results there is only the somewhat tricky path of processing copy film for continuous tone. The Adox CMS is amazing in this respect but it has zero latitude and exposure has to be spot on.

The Rollei films are very good, apparently based on suveillance films, the RPX 25 stand processed å la Chaplin is particularly notable. Being able to rate it at ISO 100 rather than 25 is a boon. 80S isn’t bad either.

FP4+ is interesting as probably an ‘old school’ film. It is a favourite of mine though and is no doubt much improved from its early days too. I get the feeling that Orca isn’t based on a surveillance film either.

The Foma emulsion performs well too but I haven’t tried it at box speed. Stand processed as here though shows it to be no slouch.

I use Rodinal exclusively at present for convenience and consistency. Other developers will be able to produce finer results but I can only offer these which I hope might be of interest.

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