One-Minute Reads about Film Photography

How to avoid that snake-skin grain.

Reticulate (adj.) – : resembling a net or network; especially : having veins, fibers, or lines crossing (Merriam Webster).

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Reticulations are found commonly in nature, like the snake’s skin and giraffe’s hide shown above. Film is no exception, with the top image showing what you naturally want to avoid in film photography.

The close-up of film emulsion shows the pronounced “grain” structure as a result of the emulsion on the film cracking through expansion or contraction. This is due to temperature shifts in the film developing process and a wet emulsion reacting to that shift.

How to avoid? Quite simple: Keep all of the developing steps at the same temperature! In black-and white developing, this can include a pre-wash, developer, stop bath, fixer, hypo clear, final wash, and wetting agent. Any rapid and significant difference in temperatures at any one of these steps can cause reticulation. What is a significant temperature shift is likely different for different films, but a good rule of thumb is to keep the temperature differentials less than 2-3 degrees (F or C).

Now the nuts and bolts of HOW to do that is for another discussion that goes past my one-minute read, but I’ll have a post in Tech Tips on how to control temps both for B&W and Color chemistry.

Happy developing, and no snake skin or giraffe hide, except if you WANT that texture (and some have!)

• gregory gammon / www.vinylfye.com