A Photographer's Notes | Digital Camera Maker Brings Back the Grain

One aspect of modern digital cameras I have fallen in love with over the last few years is the ability of camera makers to provide a variety of updates to users simply by releasing updates to the camera's firmware. In the past, any changes to a camera would only come when a new model was released. But now firmware updates are common, free, and provide new features to customers even years after the camera's initial release.

An example is the recent 3.00 firmware update for the Nikon Zf. It allows users to now add realistic grain to images shot with the camera.

In case you didn't know, grain in photography refers to the visible texture of small dots in an image. It is a well-loved physical characteristic of film photography. Adding grain to an image in post has always been possible with Photoshop, but this is the first time it is a feature in a modern digital Nikon camera.

Getting Grain in the Picture

Now, I personally never add grain to my images in post. But as I love shooting with my Nikon Zf, I wanted to see what the images with added grain would look like. Furthermore, I wanted to see if it really gives the same feeling as images shot with traditional film. I should note that this firmware allows grain to be added, not only to photos, but also to videos shot with the Nikon Zf.

Before you start shooting, you must turn on the grain effect in the Zf's menu. Then you need to decide how strong you want the effect to be when it's applied to your images.

For photos, you have two options: grain size (small, medium, large) and grain intensity (1-6). Meanwhile, grain added to videos only allows the user to decide the intensity (1-3).

For the majority of my testing, I had the grain on my photos set to small/intensity 3, and the video grain setting set to intensity 3. (Check out the video below)

Testing the Feature

To test the feature, I wandered around Shibuya and Harajuku for an afternoon and enjoyed shooting some street photography and videography. As I shot black and white film in the mid-90s, I started my test with a black and white color preset. And I must say, black and white photography really lends itself well to having grain in the images. Furthermore, the concrete of Shibuya and harsh shadows from the midday sun also felt natural and almost timeless with the addition of the grain in the images.

As I made my way to Harajuku and eventually Meiji Shrine, I also started playing with a few of the color presets I have. In color as well, the addition of the grain adds another layer to the images, making them feel more "retro" than if I was just to use the various color presets.

Using color with grain can be a little more challenging than with just black and white, though. The preset you choose can really influence the overall feeling of the image, so best to try a few and see which works best for your style.

Sharing Some Observations

A couple of points I noticed while shooting should be mentioned here.

Even when the grain setting is turned on, you can't see its effect while looking through the viewfinder. Once you take the picture, the camera adds the effect. So you won't know what the end images will look like exactly until you take the photo.
For photos, the effect is best when used sparingly. As a test, I set the grain size to large and intensity to 6, and it was just way too much. You can see from the images here that the grain is taking over the image, and it's way too strong for my taste. For video, though, I actually liked the highest intensity of 3, and found the lower settings to actually not add enough grain.
If I were to use this effect again in the future, I would be sure to shoot in JPEG+RAW. When shooting like this, the grain effect is only placed on the JPEG, and not the RAW. So you have the choice to have a grainy image or keep it clean when working on the photos in post.

In the end, I really enjoyed my test shooting and feel that the addition of grain really works best with black and white images. The images I captured of the wedding in Meiji Shrine, for example, look amazing with the grain, which is something I honestly never thought I would say!

So, thank you, Nikon, for the consistent updates. Keep them coming!