Well...not happy with my results right out of the gate. Unsharp and lots of grain.

[rpavich]

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http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/227465-tri-x-questionfrustration/

 

Jeff

Thanks for the link!

 

Also another observation. I like the grain of Tri-X better than Kentmere in Diafine. Not sure how Kentmere would look developed some other way, but in Diafine, it's too "sharp" looking for me. Tri-X is more soft and "lumpy" which I kind of like.

[indergaard]

I thought I'd update on this thread.

I bought a really nice scanner and that really helped a lot. The Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 II.

 

The grain is still there but not the mushiness. In fact, I realized that now I prefer a bit of grain because the scan is so sharp and detailed that the grain looks sort of "sharp" or something.

 

At least now I know that it was a combination of my poor focusing skills, and the scan quality. The monobath just made things more grainy; that's all. Also I think mentally I have modified my expectations because now I'm not looking at digital images all of the time. I'm used to film now.

 

Thanks for all of the advice...I learned a great deal in these few weeks.

 

PS: Tri-X curls like a mo-fo and Kentmere 400 dries flat flat flat.

 

HP5+ dries completely flat without effort, and costs in general the same or slightly less than Tri-X, and looks a lot like the old (and better) Tri-X.

I've heard good and bad things about Kentmere 400. But if you want the "Tri-X" look in a film that is very durable and easy to work with, my suggestion would be Ilford's HP5+ 400.

[rpavich]

HP5+ dries completely flat without effort, and costs in general the same or slightly less than Tri-X, and looks a lot like the old (and better) Tri-X.

I've heard good and bad things about Kentmere 400. But if you want the "Tri-X" look in a film that is very durable and easy to work with, my suggestion would be Ilford's HP5+ 400.

That's great to hear, I was planning on bulk loading my film and HP-5 is dirt cheap here in 100' rolls. About half as much as Tri-X rolls.

[philipus]

Thought I'd share this though it's a bit off-point. Sharpening is tricky when post-processing film digitally. I typically use USM in one of two ways, either a low Amount and a very high Radius or the other way around. Here are examples based on Chris's softer image earlier, which is included at top.

 

In the bottom image I used a high amount (70) and a low radius (0.5). As can be seen, this makes USM act equally across the image and affect both grain and scanning noise. I typically use this to a very mild degree as output sharpening.

 

In the middle image I used amount 10 and radius 70. Here, larger uniform areas (such as the wind panes) are much less affected, but edges become sharper. See also the sign - the white is virtually unaffected but there's more punch in the letters. The overall effect of using USM in this way is similar to using Photoshop's Contrast function (among other functions). However it is more gentle and offers more fine-tuning; typically it is enough to keep radius at a suitably high number and try amounts between 10-12. If one grain peeps on large scans one can see that it does also affect uniform areas in an image simply because grain typically has lighter and darker parts, but the effect of this is much less intrusive than when USM is used in the more traditional way, as above. I prefer using USM to "punch up" images rather than other tools and use it on most of my images.

 

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[philipus]

And if one combines the two ways of using USM on the OP's photo one gets this. This is a 100% crop so shows the actual effects of the sharpening. The original image does seem slightly unsharp because (I think) the focus plane isn't on the eyes (I normally use a bit wider apertures to deal with my own/the subject's incidental movement between focusing and pressing the shutter) but careful sharpening can help counteract this a bit.

 

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[chris_livsey]

 Here are examples based on Chris's softer image earlier, which is included at top.

 

In the bottom image I used a high amount (70) and a low radius (0.5). As can be seen, this makes USM act equally across the image and affect both grain and scanning noise. I typically use this to a very mild degree as output sharpening.

 

 

That is most helpful, thank you.

I have not invested the time, which I probably should, to investigate the relationships of sharpening techniques and the levels applied.