Do We Shoot Film Now for The Grain?

[LucisPictor]

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We shoot film ...

 

... for genuine black/white

... the process of self-development

... for real grain

... to use our amazing vintage cameras

... because it makes us think about what we do

... for de-acceleration

 

but most of all...

 

... for fun!  

[250swb]

As an ardent film user I find it an unappealing spectacle when grain, one of the key emotive languages available to photography, is hijacked as if only one medium can use it and gain from it. You may as well suggest 'contrast' is of only valid use to film users because they discovered it first. It is an arrogant stance when the language of photography has managed for nearly 160 years to be democratic without the need for film to be claimed as superior to digital just because grain is supposedly 'natural'.

 

Tell me any one thing that is natural about photography? 'Grain' as an emotive concept came along a long time after the invention of photography, but it managed to be integrated into the photographic language, no long term sneering, no long term superiority from the no-grainers, just an acceptance that as with all art forms paths do diverge, usually for the greater good. So why should it be so bad for a digital photographer to use 'noise' or add grain generated by software, they are just using part of the language, where it seems others want to gag them from speaking?

 

Steve

Edited April 19, 2015 by 250swb

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[Cuthbert]

Doc, that's definitely a nice trimax shot! 

 

Nevertheless I have to point out the difference in the shades of grey of the trimax in comparison to BW400CN: if you notice the greys of my pics are "warm", while the ones in yours are "cool"....not all greys are created equal!

 

https://uk.pinterest.com/explore/warm-gray-paint/

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_gray

 

CuthBert, and with TX400 look at this picture

 

Our vineyard Chardonnet for Champagne Veuve Clicquot

black and grey well balanced (any correction needed)

 

Image7vendraispand100nk5M-2lufht+++850-50pf.jpg

 

Kodak TX 400

Mp 50 LA

Scan Nik 5000

 

 

Best

Henry

Edited April 19, 2015 by Cuthbert

[gberger]

Since I shoot transparencies for projection, I want as little "grain" as possible. 

[Cuthbert]

Since we are talking about different shades of B&W films, here there's another sample of BW400CN:

 

 

This is Delta 400 ( I don't use 100):

 

 

This is Ilford XP2, the one I like less because it feels "washed out", but it's cheap and you can find it anywhere:

 

 

This is Neopan C41, good stuff but I need to get used to the contrast:

 

 

When I WANT grain I use HP5+, another taste of grey:

 

 

In short, it's fun to shoot film!

[pop]

  So why should it be so bad for a digital photographer to use 'noise' or add grain generated by software, they are just using part of the language, where it seems others want to gag them from speaking?

Perhaps not "bad", but only appropriate or meaningful in rather few cases. Grain is intrinsic to film photography. Technical parameters of the material and the processing will enhance or otherwise affect the photograph. Grain is not intrinsic to digital photography. While it is not difficult to add grain to a digital photograph, it's certainly added.

 

Unless the situation makes it clear enough why artificial grain is a good choice for a work, it runs the risk of looking somewhat faked, much as an effect which makes the photograph look like a pencil drawing might look faked, even if there are some very valuable works done entirely in pencil.

[Cuthbert]

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On another board a guy asked me if I use a "noise suppressor" to sharpen my pictures.

 

Now you guys are helping me to understand what he meant...so they can add "noise" to their XXX megapixel sensors to simulate grain? It sounds like a joke!!!    

[250swb]

 

Unless the situation makes it clear enough why artificial grain is a good choice for a work, it runs the risk of looking somewhat faked, much as an effect which makes the photograph look like a pencil drawing might look faked, even if there are some very valuable works done entirely in pencil.

 

And yet there are some artists in the hyper reality school who produce pencil drawings that look like photographs. So they are fakes because it doesn't look like your idea of a pencil drawing?

 

Steve

[250swb]

 

Now you guys are helping me to understand what he meant...so they can add "noise" to their XXX megapixel sensors to simulate grain? It sounds like a joke!!!    

 

The joke is on the person who has such a limited visual vocabulary that they take all their inspiration from a medium itself, and then tell everybody else they aren't allowed to see beyond a medium or modify it. It's the sort of evangelism that amateurs bring to art.

 

Steve

[Cuthbert]

The joke is on the person who has such a limited visual vocabulary that they take all their inspiration from a medium itself, and then tell everybody else they aren't allowed to see beyond a medium or modify it. It's the sort of evangelism that amateurs bring to art.

 

Steve

 

If you say so I believe you.

 

 

And yet there are some artists in the hyper reality school who produce pencil drawings that look like photographs. So they are fakes because it doesn't look like your idea of a pencil drawing?

 

Steve

 

 

 

This is no the same thing, the same thing would be having somebody to use an airbrush to replicate the qualities (or flaws, if you prefer) of a pencil drawing instead of using a pencil.

 

Still, it would be a fake.

 

Still, the real thing would be better.

Edited April 20, 2015 by Cuthbert

[pico]

Did someone mention grain?

 

From a film type long gone, Kodak 2475: http://www.digoliardi.net/dawn-n-sean.jpg

[pop]

And yet there are some artists in the hyper reality school who produce pencil drawings that look like photographs. So they are fakes because it doesn't look like your idea of a pencil drawing?

 

Steve

To me, there is a difference between exploiting the compass of any given medium and adding effects that have nothing to do with it. As I wrote above, there certainly may be cases where the result is convincing and necessary for the required expression, but where that is not the casee, it's simple kitsch. Not that I mind a bit of kitsch now and then, but even there the art lies in dosing it.

 

If you want to add grain to your work, go ahead. If you want to add "toning" and serrated edges to your prints, go ahead. You don't need anyone's permission.

[Doc Henry]

Did someone mention grain?

 

From a film type long gone, Kodak 2475: http://www.digoliardi.net/dawn-n-sean.jpg

Wow, very very (2) nice Pico

Best

Henry

[adan]

....there are some artists in the hyper reality school who produce pencil drawings that look like photographs. So they are fakes because it doesn't look like your idea of a pencil drawing?

 

A false equivalency between human talent and push-button computer effects. (no offense meant, Steve - you know we agree on a lot of things).

 

I'd hire (or buy the work of) someone so talented that using just his/her brain and eye-hand-coordination, s(he) can make a pencil drawing as detailed as a photograph. That's something unique and special, that the vast majority of people cannot do.

 

I might hire or buy the work of someone who uses the inherent "laws of nature" characteristics of film and chemicals to produce more (or less) grain - that also shows a special skill in handling their medium.

 

I might hire or buy the work of someone who uses the inherent "laws of nature" characteristics of digital to produce more (or less) noise in a picture - that also shows a special skill in handling their medium.

 

I wouldn't hire (or buy the work of) someone who clicks on an icon and adds "grain" to a photograph - almost anyone can do that, including me (if I wanted to). No particular value....

___________________

 

To borrow and expand upon the gender-stereotyped saw that appears on this forum occasionally: "Sometimes digital looks as smooth and unnatural as a man with shaved legs - and sometimes grain looks as rough and unnatural as a woman with a 5-o'clock shadow."

 

Grain as such has no inherent value (or there would not be so many "fine-grain" films and developers on the market). But some practioners can make a virtue of necessity, as have Doc Henry and Pico.

 

W. Eugene Smith used to mix a bit of expired D-76 into each new bottle "because it takes the edge off the grain." And occasionally print through a black nylon stocking to soften the grain further.

___________________

 

Personally, I don't shoot film for the grain. I shoot if for some of the reasons on Lucis' list: nothing digital can do naturally (and I'm all for many of the things digital does do "naturally") can replicate a 6x6 negative printed full-frame/black-borders, and it keeps the little gray cells turning over through a different set of hand and mental skills. Authenticity - it looks like a film photo because it IS a film photo.

 

6x6 TMax is so grainless (in any rational print size) that I'd have to add grain digitally to my film pictures to see any.

Edited April 20, 2015 by adan

[250swb]

A false equivalency between human talent and push-button computer effects.

 

Push button computers are what digital cameras are, so I'm surprised that any computer generated 'effects' are so demeaned given there aren't many other ways to personalise a digital image?

 

I agree (at arm's length) with many of your points Andy, but what happens if after a lifetimes work you end up with a new digital camera but a different visual language didn't come in the same box? Give up photography, start making HRD pictures, start obsessively pixel peeping and joining in discussions about camera bags? I think those photographers, any photographer, have the right to do without the sneers of people who say you can't have grain without using a film camera.

 

Grain as part of the visual language can deconstruct the image, it obliterates detail and focuses the image around the event or object without the interference of detail. Fundamentally it can make the image more dramatic, make the image more mysterious, or simply be a by-product of the need to use a faster film. But there is no skill in making grain in a film image, but there is skill in using grain. As I'm talking about 'language' it would be the equivalent of describing some daffodils growing as a scientific experiment, then reading Wordsworth's 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'. You follow a set technical path to make grain, you can allude to other things by using it skilfully. And what is a digital photographer to do to 'deconstruct' their image and make it poetic?

 

Steve

Edited April 21, 2015 by 250swb

[250swb]

 

If you want to add grain to your work, go ahead. If you want to add "toning" and serrated edges to your prints, go ahead. You don't need anyone's permission.

 

You buy a grainy film, you develop it in a grain enhancing developer, you've followed all the printed instruction's, and then you call it skill? It is as skilful as pressing a button.

 

I agree, I don't need anybody's permission to do whatever I want to a photograph, and you don't have the right to be so judgemental by looking down on other peoples work. I don't do much digital work at the moment, I don't think I have made more than five or six digital images this last year that I like. But I'm damned if I'm going to treat them as a separate body of work because you say there is no skill in pressing a computer button. It's forty years of experience that tells me when and why to press the button, just as its the same forty years of experience that informs me when and why to use a fast or slow film. And it's the same length of experience that tells me nobody should be judged on what they do to make a photograph, they should be judged on the result, and aiming for results isn't a strong point of this debate.

 

Steve

Edited April 21, 2015 by 250swb

[pop]

... you don't have the right to be so judgemental by looking down on other peoples work....

I am definitely not judgemental and I don't look down on anyone's work. However, if it's your right to apply any kind of processing to your work, it's my right to like it or dislike it.

[250swb]

I am definitely not judgemental and I don't look down on anyone's work. However, if it's your right to apply any kind of processing to your work, it's my right to like it or dislike it.

 

Very true, I always try to have an opinion on other peoples work, but generally speaking I like to see it first, not pre-judge with a general do-it-all put down as an opening gambit.

 

There are of course plenty of digital users who buy camera's specifically in order to be swayed by the way they make pictures look. They want the next best thing to elevate their photography and keep up with their peers. It is those people, just like the complainers, who you hear most from on the internet. Which leaves an awful lot of people who just want a new camera to continue their work, not to change their work. They want to take advantage of portability, of not needing to process film, they don't want to turn sharp left and embark down another path. There should be no reason at all for tomorrows picture to be totally different to last weeks picture just because they bought a new camera in between times. Being true to your vision is not fake, not having a vision, following the herd, and rolling over to misguided peer pressure is fake.

 

Steve

[KM-25]

and you don't have the right to be so judgemental by looking down on other peoples work.

 

But it happens and you *also* can not tell anyone they have no right to think or say what they will, of course they have the right, it is their life, their judgment call to make.

Edited April 23, 2015 by KM-25

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[Mijo]

You buy a grainy film, you develop it in a grain enhancing developer, you've followed all the printed instruction's, and then you call it skill? It is as skilful as pressing a button.

 

 

There is no "undo" button when you accidently leave the negatives in the developer too long.  As simple as you make it sound, it still requires skill and attention to detail to develop negatives and prints.