Just came from the lab. Last week I dropped a roll of Kodak Tri-X 400. I shot it on my secondhand Canon AE-1 Program.

The photos included here are a brief selection from that roll.

First things first, the camera works well. Every frame on the roll looks correctly exposed.

Yet I’m disappointed with the lab development and / or scan. Kodak Tri-X 400 is known for its grain.

But the result here is excessive.

The grain is harsh and overly sharp. It resembles the look of a low-quality newspaper print.

I did some online research. Apparently when scanning negatives, many labs apply digital sharpening by default for standard colour negatives.

Applied to Kodak Tri-X 400, it therefore exaggerates the natural film grain into digital noise.

I applied texture reduction in Lightroom to salvage the images. The results improved significantly compared to the original files.

Still, the output remains unsatisfactory.

Furthermore, it’s not my intent to tweak photos in Lightroom while shooting film.

What now

I’m probably taking the negatives to another lab for a scan to compare the results.

Somewhere down the line I might invest in a dedicated home film scanner for better control.

In fact, I’m also considering taking over the film development myself. I like the idea of taking part of the entire analog workflow.

Let’s wait and see if I’m really this much into film.