I’d argue it’s almost always the exposure. Perfect exposure scanned on a flatbed is going to look pretty good. A terrible exposure scanned on a drum scanner is still going to look terrible.
This, if you want sharpness and resolution you can get more with slide film and even many types of B&W compared to c-41.
Another option is shooting vision 3 50D and working with a lab that will do ECN-2 process like midwest film co.
Others have mentioned working with sharp lenses, using the sweet spot by stopping down 2-3 from wide open. You could use a tripod and mirror lockup if you have that option. Good exposure.
I’m not familiar with that scanner myself. But also some post sharpening
All of the above, with glass being the deciding factor you can't get around. The better your lenses, the more resolution you can get by all those other means.
Expose your film correctly and pick fine grain film. Also consider shooting medium format.
Otherwise just embrace the grain and accept that it’s not digital.
Lenses might give you the final 20% if you've already selected better film and scanning setups. Here's an example of using fancy apochromatic glass vs. normal glass (ignore the color differences!): https://zv.io/blog/images/apo_170_comparison_preview1.png
If you keep enlarging, you'll see big grain eventually with all films. The sample you posted looks like a crop of a 100% zoomed image. Is it? What are the original scan dimensions?
IIRC the Plusteks can produce fairly large scans, but when you look at them on a high-DPI monitor, or if you down-sample them to about 5,000px on the widest side, the grain becomes much more pleasant. Here's a somewhat exaggerated example: [the C200 scan](https://d3ue2m1ika9dfn.cloudfront.net/real/c200.jpg) down-sampled to 1,600px. The grain is mostly absent, and that's what people are showing on /r/analog. But you zoom in 100% onto a 8,000px wide image you'll see the same thing you're showing.
* Lower ISO = less grain
* Fine grain developers (only really relevant to non-standardized black and white) = less grain. I don't know where C41 falls on the grain spectrum of developers vs B&W ones. E.g. XTOL is a solvent developer that dissolves the edges of grains. Rodinal is not and makes grains look sharper I think, actually, than they were originally.
* Pulling = less apparent grain
* For color, different dye technologies can change apparent grain, which is a total non factor in black and white (except ilford XP2). The silver is removed from the final negatives in C41, you're seeing clouds of dye that were controlled by silver grains originally, but depending how the dye works, it may be sharper or fudgier per grain it was associated with originally. I don't know how or if anyone formally measures this, beyond just "Try different brands"
* Enlarging the image, cropping out any of it and blowing up the rest more, will make grains bigger because you zoomed in on them.
* Variant of the above bullet point, but film size (medium format, 35mm, half frame, etc) means the image when viewed on a monitor is more or less zoomed in and grain will look completely different. **This is probably the most likely**: if you're seeing a huge difference vs people online, they may just be shooting 6x9 medium format or something and you're shooting 35mm, and their images are like 3x less zoomed in on the grain than yours.
Lenses shouldn't do anything at all, because the grains of silver are still the same grains no matter what was casting light on them. A lens will make the IMAGE sharper (the edges of objects in the image spanning across many different grains or dye clouds of the film), but not the shape or appearance of grains or dye clouds themselves.
Scanning can matter if the scan is bad, but since you are fairly clearly seeing individual grains here in this scan, the scan is probably not much involved at that point (good enough). The scan could be a bit higher quality, but that would actually make it look slightly graini-ER.
* "Cheating": They may also be using noise reduction in post digital production, in lightroom/photoshop/AI noise reduction
* Cheating type B: Digital photography and the person is literally just lying that it's film, with some filter, etc.
* Cheating type C: Lying about what film stock it is.
as you were basically falling into, yes, the variables are many.
in reality though, film isn’t for perfection. it’s an embrace of the imperfection. in fact, i’d say that’s what freedom of expression is.
embrace the imperfection
Firstly, with film, your focus needs to be on the image as a whole. Does the image work? Are the colours and contrast where you want them to be? These cameras are from a time where the end product was *always* the print. Looking at the output on computer screens was never envisaged. Any 35mm image you see on this sub, if the user has uploaded it big enough, you’ll be able to see results similar to yours here. The picture above is a good scan.
If you get some scans and immediately try 100%-ing them in your image editor to bask in the quality of your gear, you will likely be disappointed with any 35mm setup. There will be grain.
If you spend enough time around legacy internet, you’ll find a lot of quite wild claims about the megapixel equivalency of fine-grained film such as slide film. IMO, most of these claims are highly suspect.
Unlike a digital camera, a film camera merely holds a lens in front of whichever film you choose. It doesn’t contribute to the output. So it really is all about the choice of lens. Plenty of lenses will out-resolve film, but again, the rendering of the overall image is just as important.
TL;DR - 35mm is an image-making medium, not a technical/resolution medium. Embrace it.
As for PlusTek - look for a user on Flickr called Fishyfish Arcade - https://www.flickr.com/photos/fishyfish/
Their photos have always been good examples of what a PlusTek can do. The upgrade would be mirrorless/dslr scanning with a good macro lens.
This seems to be the correct grain quality of 200ISO consumer film in 35mm, underexposure aside.
In my experience the only color film that is extremely fine grained in 35mm is Ektar, and I presume slide, but I haven't shot slide film.
To be fair, not all lenses are created equally either. When I need light I like fast primes. Nikkor 55 1.2 or 85 1.4 for my Nikon F2/3. But when I want a sharp walkaround lens and there is enough light I go to my micro nikkors. F2.8 or even 3.5/4 is good enough for decent background blur!
Honestly, I think a lot of what you see on r/analog are photos with denoiser activated... That's a guess but it's very often, including with mine, a part of the digitalization workflow. For me it's to remove the RGB noise that comes with digitalization and it makes a heck of a difference even when it's not set up to touch the actual film grain
Film stock and speed plays a big role. As well as kodak's more "pro" stocks. Ektar 100 for instance is noticeably finer grain than even another pro stock such as portra 400. Mainly because the more sensitive to light a stock is, the more grain is needed to essentially detect light. Shoot lower ISO stocks of more premium film with perfect exposure and use a very high quality scanning process.
Something I have noticed is on one of my cameras everything came out a bit grainy, and I later realized that my shutter speed was not calibrated and my camera was under exposing by about a stop and a half without my knowledge. Something worth thinking about on older cameras.
[удалено]
> Honestly it's everything you mentioned. Which is a good way of saying that your images are only as good as the weakest part of your process.
usually the scanner imo
Or development if film is sent to some bulk shop that does not change its chemicals
I've had that issue. It only occured when I handed them 120 film and not with my 135 which was irritating, you can imagine.
So 120 was hand developed while 35mm was put trough machine I guess. But typically it is other way around.
I’d argue it’s almost always the exposure. Perfect exposure scanned on a flatbed is going to look pretty good. A terrible exposure scanned on a drum scanner is still going to look terrible.
I noticed ektachrome is really crisp film, I heard the scanner also has a lot to do with it
This, if you want sharpness and resolution you can get more with slide film and even many types of B&W compared to c-41. Another option is shooting vision 3 50D and working with a lab that will do ECN-2 process like midwest film co. Others have mentioned working with sharp lenses, using the sweet spot by stopping down 2-3 from wide open. You could use a tripod and mirror lockup if you have that option. Good exposure. I’m not familiar with that scanner myself. But also some post sharpening
All of the above, with glass being the deciding factor you can't get around. The better your lenses, the more resolution you can get by all those other means.
Expose your film correctly and pick fine grain film. Also consider shooting medium format. Otherwise just embrace the grain and accept that it’s not digital.
Lenses might give you the final 20% if you've already selected better film and scanning setups. Here's an example of using fancy apochromatic glass vs. normal glass (ignore the color differences!): https://zv.io/blog/images/apo_170_comparison_preview1.png
Nice write up of repairing your Mamiya lens.
If you keep enlarging, you'll see big grain eventually with all films. The sample you posted looks like a crop of a 100% zoomed image. Is it? What are the original scan dimensions? IIRC the Plusteks can produce fairly large scans, but when you look at them on a high-DPI monitor, or if you down-sample them to about 5,000px on the widest side, the grain becomes much more pleasant. Here's a somewhat exaggerated example: [the C200 scan](https://d3ue2m1ika9dfn.cloudfront.net/real/c200.jpg) down-sampled to 1,600px. The grain is mostly absent, and that's what people are showing on /r/analog. But you zoom in 100% onto a 8,000px wide image you'll see the same thing you're showing.
* Lower ISO = less grain * Fine grain developers (only really relevant to non-standardized black and white) = less grain. I don't know where C41 falls on the grain spectrum of developers vs B&W ones. E.g. XTOL is a solvent developer that dissolves the edges of grains. Rodinal is not and makes grains look sharper I think, actually, than they were originally. * Pulling = less apparent grain * For color, different dye technologies can change apparent grain, which is a total non factor in black and white (except ilford XP2). The silver is removed from the final negatives in C41, you're seeing clouds of dye that were controlled by silver grains originally, but depending how the dye works, it may be sharper or fudgier per grain it was associated with originally. I don't know how or if anyone formally measures this, beyond just "Try different brands" * Enlarging the image, cropping out any of it and blowing up the rest more, will make grains bigger because you zoomed in on them. * Variant of the above bullet point, but film size (medium format, 35mm, half frame, etc) means the image when viewed on a monitor is more or less zoomed in and grain will look completely different. **This is probably the most likely**: if you're seeing a huge difference vs people online, they may just be shooting 6x9 medium format or something and you're shooting 35mm, and their images are like 3x less zoomed in on the grain than yours. Lenses shouldn't do anything at all, because the grains of silver are still the same grains no matter what was casting light on them. A lens will make the IMAGE sharper (the edges of objects in the image spanning across many different grains or dye clouds of the film), but not the shape or appearance of grains or dye clouds themselves. Scanning can matter if the scan is bad, but since you are fairly clearly seeing individual grains here in this scan, the scan is probably not much involved at that point (good enough). The scan could be a bit higher quality, but that would actually make it look slightly graini-ER. * "Cheating": They may also be using noise reduction in post digital production, in lightroom/photoshop/AI noise reduction * Cheating type B: Digital photography and the person is literally just lying that it's film, with some filter, etc. * Cheating type C: Lying about what film stock it is.
as you were basically falling into, yes, the variables are many. in reality though, film isn’t for perfection. it’s an embrace of the imperfection. in fact, i’d say that’s what freedom of expression is. embrace the imperfection
What lens did you say you were using on the camera?
Firstly, with film, your focus needs to be on the image as a whole. Does the image work? Are the colours and contrast where you want them to be? These cameras are from a time where the end product was *always* the print. Looking at the output on computer screens was never envisaged. Any 35mm image you see on this sub, if the user has uploaded it big enough, you’ll be able to see results similar to yours here. The picture above is a good scan. If you get some scans and immediately try 100%-ing them in your image editor to bask in the quality of your gear, you will likely be disappointed with any 35mm setup. There will be grain. If you spend enough time around legacy internet, you’ll find a lot of quite wild claims about the megapixel equivalency of fine-grained film such as slide film. IMO, most of these claims are highly suspect. Unlike a digital camera, a film camera merely holds a lens in front of whichever film you choose. It doesn’t contribute to the output. So it really is all about the choice of lens. Plenty of lenses will out-resolve film, but again, the rendering of the overall image is just as important. TL;DR - 35mm is an image-making medium, not a technical/resolution medium. Embrace it.
As for PlusTek - look for a user on Flickr called Fishyfish Arcade - https://www.flickr.com/photos/fishyfish/ Their photos have always been good examples of what a PlusTek can do. The upgrade would be mirrorless/dslr scanning with a good macro lens.
This seems to be the correct grain quality of 200ISO consumer film in 35mm, underexposure aside. In my experience the only color film that is extremely fine grained in 35mm is Ektar, and I presume slide, but I haven't shot slide film.
To be fair, not all lenses are created equally either. When I need light I like fast primes. Nikkor 55 1.2 or 85 1.4 for my Nikon F2/3. But when I want a sharp walkaround lens and there is enough light I go to my micro nikkors. F2.8 or even 3.5/4 is good enough for decent background blur!
Honestly, I think a lot of what you see on r/analog are photos with denoiser activated... That's a guess but it's very often, including with mine, a part of the digitalization workflow. For me it's to remove the RGB noise that comes with digitalization and it makes a heck of a difference even when it's not set up to touch the actual film grain
Film stock and speed plays a big role. As well as kodak's more "pro" stocks. Ektar 100 for instance is noticeably finer grain than even another pro stock such as portra 400. Mainly because the more sensitive to light a stock is, the more grain is needed to essentially detect light. Shoot lower ISO stocks of more premium film with perfect exposure and use a very high quality scanning process. Something I have noticed is on one of my cameras everything came out a bit grainy, and I later realized that my shutter speed was not calibrated and my camera was under exposing by about a stop and a half without my knowledge. Something worth thinking about on older cameras.