On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 12:51 AM, Godfrey DiGiorgi <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mar 31, 2009, at 6:55 PM, Scott Loveless wrote: > >> Thanks, Godfrey. That helps quite a bit. I've been digging through >> photos, mainly on flickr, looking at different films souped in Xtol. >> There's obviously the possibility of lots of editing, but I'm seeing >> similarities, too. Just ordered a bunch of Plus-X. And I think I >> have some TMAX around here, so I'll do some comparisons. > > Plus-X and Tri-X do well too, but compared to TMax 100/400 or Delta 100/400 > they simply don't compete on grain structure and tonal differentiation. They > also don't push anywhere near as well. > > TMax 100 took me about 20 rolls to understand how to expose and process it > properly. Before that I thought it was crap. Once I 'got' it, it does better > than nearly anything else other than Agfapan APX25. A truly remarkable film. > > Godfrey >
On the subject of Tonal Differentiation and pushing Tri-X beats both TMax 400 and Delta 400 silly. My experience with the modern emulsions are that they have extremely poor midtone seperation unless you are using per-sheet development compensation to deal with known SBR's and using N-1 or N-2 tiimes to stretch the midtones out. As to TMax 100, try some Neopan Acros, all the strengths of TMax 100 without the excessive sensitivity to slight changes in development, better midtones and no reciprocity failure until 2 minutes. As to pushing, both of the modern emulsions are good for a 2-3 stop push max, while Tri-X can be pulled as far as 100 and pushed to 6400 fairly easily, and at least in 120 EI 12800 or 25600 are attainable (But at the edge of sanity). Of course, my results are in TMax Dev and Rodinal 1:100 stand developed not X-Tol. Both Delta and TMax seem to be to be ideal films for anyone using the full zone system, or who does heavy dev-time or darkroom/PS manipulation. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
