How to Scan Film Grain?

Harlequin565

Harlequin565

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Ian
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I have just bought a Panasonic S9. It shoots in 6x6, 645, 6x7 and 6x17. I love this feature. It's also smaller than my MP, will take my M mount lenses (with an adapter) and feels really nice in my hand.
It also allows the application of LUTs (think of it as a Lightroom preset, or simply a table that maps one colour to another) to the image in-camera which allows me to preview how the final image will look before I take the photo (as well as remove any need for PP if I get it right). It's probably the best technological innovation I've seen in a long time.
I think I've got the black & white conversion bit nailed down, so I can acceptably (to me) make an HP5 LUT or a Tri-X LUT in terms of colour response converting to grayscale with the right contrast and tone, however the grain is problematic.

So the last thing I need is a scan of the film grain to add as a layer, and I don't know how to do it - or whether it's even possible. I can always get a reliable "look" from an image that I love if I shoot it on HP5, Tri-X or Delta 3200 and a big part of that is the grain.

My understanding of grain is that its visibility relates to the tone of the scene, so that's why it's so hard to reproduce. Digital grain that I've seen is awful. I have an app called TrueGrain2 that uses actual scanned grain from certain film stocks as an overlay and I absolutely love the results. It's a one-click job to turn a digital photo into HP5. However the dev behind the software has stopped selling it, which means when I get a new computer, or need to do a reinstall I'm stuffed.

I searched the internet for "how to scan film grain" and found this on a forum. To finally get to my question, does this sound reasonable? Is there a better way? Is my overthinking getting the best of me today?

Using a film camera, shoot an out-of-focus picture of a plain white wall to produce a blank frame. Then scan the frame at the same resolution as your digital photo and merge them together as layers. You can shoot the wall at different exposures to get different amounts of grain. (With color negative film, underexposure produces more grain; b&w negative film is the opposite.) The important thing is not to have any detail in the blank frame. Set the lens at infinity and shoot close up to throw any wall texture out of focus.
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Thanks in advance for any responses....
 
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It sounds reasonable to me. The caveats are that colour film once processed has no silver, so no grain as such.

With black and white film, you can also increase the grain by extra development, choice of developer (fine grain developers basically work by dissolving silver as they develop, hence the typical loss of speed). Universal developers - used for prints and film - used to give increased grain, so a print developer may also do so. Higher processing temperatures may increase grain.

And as a final thought (for this round of thinking), mild reticulation can give the impression of grain - so a temperature change in processing may as well- but this isn't easily predicted.
 
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I have a recollection that developers which use a strong alkali also increase grain. Rodinal springs to mind.

Film speed is proportional to grain volume for conventional films, so going from 50 to 400 doubles the visible grain. So of course does extra enlargement so you could develop PanF in a fine grain developer and then cheat by enlarging more.

And if you have a fogged film leader, that could be scanned or photographed. If you can't get enough light through it, you could try Farmer's reducer to cut back the extra density.
 
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droj said:
Now that's curious, since I've always thought that I saw grain in my colour film photos. Something quite distinct from pixels or digital noise.

Wikipedia gave me this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_grain
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The silver is effectively replaced by dye, so the effect remains but a little more fuzzy round the edges.

There are some very informative photos of film grain as enlargement increases in vol 1 of Grant Haist's Modern Photographic Processing.
 
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StephenM said:
So of course, does extra enlargement
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One of the things I really liked about TrueGrain is the ability to simulate large negatives by increasing or decreasing the grain volume.

Thanks for this Stephen. I feel a bit like I'm standing on the edge of a rabbit hole though.
 
Well, perhaps Alice's bottle contained Farmer's reducer :exit:
 
IF this link works, it's scans of pages of a review of Rodinal from the first issue of Silverprint magazine. The enlargements may be instructive.
Rodinal
 
FishyFish said:
Do you have your original licence for TrueGrain? Is there something specific that will stop you from reinstalling if you need to?
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There was a window you could recover it from their site so you could reinstall. It went into the "I must do that at some point". Then the window closed :(
 
On page 92 of spring 2009 50th anniversary edition of Practical Photography that's on my lap at the moment (Poppy the cat having popped off elsewhere) there's a page of adding grain using Photoshop if that would be of any interest?
 
StephenM said:
On page 92 of spring 2009 50th anniversary edition of Practical Photography that's on my lap at the moment (Poppy the cat having popped off elsewhere) there's a page of adding grain using Photoshop if that would be of any interest?
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Thanks Stephen. I've seen a lot of different methods of adding false grain using photoshop (and resolve) and they all look terrible to me. TruGrain was the only "app" that instantly looked like film when I used it. When I have the will, I'll see if I can dig around in their software to find the scans.
 
Ian, is it remotely possible that you still have the download of TruGrain on a computer somewhere or did you delete it after installation?
 
Black and white film grain is not what you see in a Print

what you see is the holes between the grains of silver that make up the negative image.
The. Grain make up of the film will depend on numerous factors.
Film type, film make, film speed, developer used method, time and temperature of development.
Generally speaking the faster the film and the more active the development the more the grain..
However the type of developer plays a large part in the look of the grain.
A highly active developer tends to give sharper grain, whereas a solvent developer gives a softer grain. A physical developer tends to give hairy grain
 
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Nod said:
Ian, is it remotely possible that you still have the download of TruGrain on a computer somewhere or did you delete it after installation?
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Yes, I do, and it's still working at the moment. Finding the program folder is proving... challenging though... Not helped by the amount of crap on my PC and the partitioning I thought was a good idea. Oh and it's all on a round tuit.

Terrywoodenpic said:
Black and white film grain is not what you see in a Print

what you see is the holes between the grains of silver that make up the negative image.
The. Grain make up of the film will depend on numerous factors.
Film type, film make, film speed, developer used method, time and temperature of development.
Generally speaking the faster the film and the more active the development the more the grain..
However the type of developer plays a large part in the look of the grain.
A highly active grain tends to give sharper grain, whereas a solvent developer gives a softer grain. A physical developer tends to give hairy grain
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Yep. I get this.
I'm more after a result I like than specific reproduction. For example, HP5 in Rodinal looks awful to me. Same for Tri-X in DD-X. I've messed around a fair bit with developers and films to get a look I like on screen and in inkjet print (with further modification depending on paper choice). I don't know how TrueGrain extracted the grain to apply to digital images but it blew me away by how well I could reproduce Tri-X, HP5 & Delta 3200. Both for tone, contrast and grain.

So whilst layering scanned grain on a digital image isn't ever going to be representative of what real grain would be like, that doesn't matter to me, only the end result. And the only way I can get that with a digital image at the moment is with TrueGrain.
 
Sorry, I meant the actual files you originally downloaded and used to install the app/programme on your machine. If you have the original download, you should be able to copy it onto a stick and use that to install it on a new device.

Completely understand the "It's somewhere in there" problem!
 
Nod said:
Sorry, I meant the actual files you originally downloaded and used to install the app/programme on your machine. If you have the original download, you should be able to copy it onto a stick and use that to install it on a new device.

Completely understand the "It's somewhere in there" problem!
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Ah, yes. I've got that. I have a folder for all those sorts of odd bits of software that will disappear at some point. Problem is that it's license activated... Hmmm... I wonder if the license is stored in a text file... Thanks for that, I'll add it to my list.
 
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FishyFish said:
If you can't find the license, I'd try to contact the developer if there's an email address on their website. They might still be able to help you out even if they no longer sell the software.
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The email I got from them was pretty clear about getting your license before they shut up shop. It had a tone of finality to it that creased my brows that's for sure. Like someone was going to delete their database.

Anyway, no harm in asking - so thanks for the suggestion.
 
Fingers crossed for you, Ian.
 
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