Grain in burnt in sky

[alavergh]

Hi everybody. I've been printing a bit recently and came across some 16x20 Kentmere matte warmtome, if I remember correctly. I'm using 4x5 and in this case, I'm pretty sure it was ilford FP4+. The shot was made with a red filter and shortly after this shot, a storm rolled in over my head.

In the darkroom, I used the 5+ contrast filter to burn in the sky and add a bit of extra drama! but I've noticed that I've picked up quite a bit of grain with the extra exposure.

Is there any way to avoid this or compensate for it? I'm a big fan of Clyde Butcher's, and he's got at least one part on his website where he demonstrated how he adds drama to a rather plain and boring negative in the darkroom, and it doesn't seem like he has any of that grain despite even darker blacks in the sky.

[alavergh]

For reference, this is the one of Clyde Butcher's negatives I was referring to...

http://www.clydebutchersbigcypressga...om/journals/81

[cowanw]

Well he did use the 00 filter to burn the cloud; do you think that may be a difference?

[jp]

A high contrast filter in the darkroom is also going to increase the contrast of the grain. In theory if you shot it with a red filter and exposed it right, it should have adequate contrast for printing without any filter extremes. I usually have too much contrast/range in sky scenes more often than not enough.

One method of having smoother grain is to use a staining developer like pyrocat hd, which will partially hide some of the grain because some of the printed image is from the film grain and some of it from a proportional stain (grainless).

[alavergh]

I wasn't aware that it would be that much different if burning with different filter grades in term of grain. If I burnt it with a 00, that would be affecting shadows and highlights together, right?

I've pretty sure I used a red filter, but perhaps I didn't...I was standing amongst semis in a truck parking area at the time. The negative looks nice and has great detail, but it's fairly flat.

[brucetaylor]

If you burn in sky like that with a 5 filter you will get a grainy look. Try burning in with a 00 or 1 and see what you get, I think you'll be pleased, the low filters primarily affect the highlights.

[Light Guru]

Take a magnifying loops and look to see how bad the grain is in the negative. It's possible your development of the negative effected the grain.

Keep in mind that Butcher used a 8x10 camera in that image and a bigger negative can make grain seem smaller in the final print.

With that said. I think the amount of grain in your enlargement of the clouds is fine. Grain tends to only be really distracting in a image if the image itself is not all that great.

[Robert Langham]

This may not seem like exactly your problem but I'd try prefogging the top half of the paper to get the whites down before I got started. I keep a second enlarger standing by set just to fog paper to get whites to print down. You have to test to get it to fog the paper but not enough to show unless you put more exposure on top of it. A test strip fogged and developed shouldn't show any density, but extra exposure on top of it in a print ought to pick up value. Very helpful for controlling contrasty whites.

[alavergh]

Thanks everybody. I'll go back and try it with a lower contrast filter. I still want to have some brightness in the clouds though. Hopefully it'll be manageable, or maybe I can get another shot before too long.

[jeroldharter]

Probably more than you are bargaining for, but masking might help that negative.