Does anyone know what film was used for this photo?

Chungle456

Chungle456

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So I've been reading through photographer Stanley Greene's Chechnyan War book Open Wound I purchased recently. I've been pretty blown away about not just the content of the photos, but the actual "look" of them too. I scanned part of one of the photos at 9600dpi. This image is an extreme close up of the grain structure (I think?) from the same scan.

Does anyone know what film this is and how you would achieve this sort of look from shooting / developing? They are incredibly grainy yet still highly detailed and sharp. In the book it says he used Leica M6, Leica glass, Kodak Tri-X 400, Kodak T-max 3200.

If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them. Thanks.


img345 copy 2.jpg
^extreme close up of the "grain" in photo
 
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The "grain" you show in the close up is not grain, but the screen pattern from the negative to plate making for offset printing.
Offset printing can not show shades of grey or colour, so when you have a photo with colours/grey shades you put a screen between the photo and the camera when making the negatives for the plates, which makes the finished print appear to have different greys.
You will see black areas have lots of dots and the lighter the are the less dots.
If you look at a colour print you will also see a pattern but it will make up of CMYK dots.

There are several different screen patterns, like just dots usually used on newsprint and the "circular" pattern as seen above. The plain dots don't require much setup, but with colour patterns, each colour is printed with a separate plate, either by passing the paper through a machine four times (CMYK) or a machine with multiple heads, which obviously requires tight registration. (all done automatically now, even the platemaking, but it all used to require good skills)

There are other tricks in the process that can increase contrast and apparent "sharpness"

The actual grain is what you can see in the main photo


(most modern colour printers also print in a screened pattern, and you will see similar on your computer screen to)
 
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Chungle456 said:
Yep, I'll remove the main photo. © Stanley GREENE / AGENCE VU just in case any lawyers were looking :oops: :$
Click to expand...
You gave the source, you were not claiming it to be your work or profiting from it, using the photo in the context you used it in would be fair use.
 
Maybe write to the publishers or the bloke himself?
 
I've written to authors and publishers before and they've always been very positive and helpful. (y)
 
The book is actually great from a film enthusiasts point of view, as the final few pages have prints of his contact sheets for his Tri-X negatives. Unfortunately, the photos I like the most are not present on those negatives, leading me to believe they might have been Kodak T-max 3200. Stanley Greene died in 2017, but I believe the book mentioned the company that was responsible for the developing / printing of the negatives. I'll check it out again when I get home.
 
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