Grainy T-Max 400

Tmax 400 is temperature sensitive in terms of contrast control but also, in my experience, in terms of reticulation. I'm wondering if that is what's happening here... Was there a big temperature swing going into your wash water or at some other point in the process? D76 at 1:1 produces somewhat more grain than straight but this seems excessive to me. I develop my Tmax 400 in Rodinal and under an 8x loupe it is on par with, if not slightly less grainy than, my FP4+ developed the same way.

I also develop in D76 1:1, in Jobo. Did you shoot at box speed? I've shot at 200 before, processed at 400 by mistake and gotten real contrasty and grainy images, but your overall exposure looks OK. TMax ages well also. Could be scanner.

I think I have a bit of output sharpening set on image export out of my program used to adjust exposure level which is likely exacerbating the issue. Shot at box speed, there may well have been some temp swings as I didn't pull water to use as stop/wash before starting the processing, so I was trying to match temp as I filled the tank. I'd heard Tmax was a bit more temperamental and here is proof, I suppose. Thanks to both of you for your thoughts!

I found I have the same problem when I shoot Tri-X and then scan the negatives, I use Rodinal at 50-1. My wet prints do not have nearly as much grain, which is why I wet print my stuff for display. I think it might have something to do with your scanner, mine is a Plustek 7600. I can correct it by using the filter option to remove the grain.

In specific regards to this image, I believe that there is SOME issue here and that there is more grain than should be expected with normal developing and this film / dev combo. Be it a scanner or processing issue...

Michael R 1974 said:

This looks very bad, but I'm not sure why TMY would be prone to reticulation. It is a modern, well hardened emulsion. A few years ago when we were having a discussion about micro-reticulation/grain clumping, I ran tests with several films with controlled temperature shocks up and down during processing. Suffice it to say I could not get anything to happen with sudden temperature swings of up to +/-10C. I didn't go further than that because to me this range represented ridiculously bad control. What I was really looking for was sensitivity to much smaller swings but for fun I pushed it to +/-10C. TMax 400 (TMY-2) was one of the films I tested.How old is this film? How was it stored? D-76 1+1 should give fine grain. HC-110 would be very similar.

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Michael, the discussion about micro-reticulation/grain clumping was the discussion to which I was referring. I had some issues of increased grain that I thought could have been associated with going into a cold wash too quickly. After changing my procedure and washing at development temp I never experienced that problem again. That said, it did not look as severe as this. I was not aware (or did not remember) that you had done any testing. That is good news. I believe it was suggested at the time that it might have had something to do with developing in Rodinal which is somewhat basic... Do you think that could have played a part? All the best. Shawn

Thank you all again for your input. I will try processing another roll from the batch and watch my temps throughout the entire cycle much closer and see if it comes up again, as well as make wet prints from both rolls to compare end results.

Problem solved, with the great help I received here! I tried some alternate scanning settings tonight on freshly developed Ektar 100 (also 35mm) and this is definitely scanning issues. I used similar settings (as what this TMAX was scanned at) at first and got the same blotchy/grainy texture over the whole image. Then, scanned same neg with 48 bit color, res set to 4800 instead of 1200, saved as TIFF instead of JPG, and it resolves down to the grain and is smooth/digital noise-free.Thanks again, all who commented/viewed.