Difference between Tri-X Pan (320) and Tmax400

DREW WILEY said:

"Average" pretty much sums it up. If that's all you aspire to, then your "average" negatives should work. Otherwise....

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I meant 'average' in terms of tonality, thus giving me many aesthetic choices/options when printing with multi-grade paper... But thanks for that.

P.S. Average was a term your buddy Brett used to describe his negatives...

Shawn Dougherty said:

P.S. Average was a term your buddy Brett used to describe his negatives...

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Giggle.

I think your logic is backwards. How can you print something that isn't there? Current VC papers are pretty amazing in terms of ease of printing,
compared to traditional graded papers. But they can't solve all the problems, esp if you're dealing with lighting ratios drastically different from
your "average" set of conditions. Around here, I can talk a walk up on of the hills in the redwoods. At 11:00 the fog will be gently illuminating
everything and I might want to boost that soft light with either extra development to expand the midtone textures and highlights, or might
resort to an 8x10 film like HP5 for that "etched" look. But a hour or two later, the fog will be all broken up, or I will have simply climbed above it, and those same groves of trees might need twelve stops of film range if I want gradation all the way from deep shadows clear up to sparkly highlights. Simply doing minus or compensating development just equates to blaaah. I actually need a completely different film with a whole different kind of development. The game can be equally complex in the desert of high mountains, unless of course, one simply selects
only for those kinds of shots which will be cooperative with limited development options. But per Brett - I think you're confusing his self-
deprecating humor for what he really could do. It was probably his way of poking fun at the Zone System. Just try making a few prints like his!

Drew,

Have ya heard of burn and dodge?

There is a distinct difference between getting the info on the negative and what falls onto the paper.

What I find more and more for me, is that placement is the problem not contrast rate/fitting an SBR to a paper grade.

I hear what you're saying to a point, Drew. I don't develop everything the same way. I use Zone system metering and processing, I just don't go to the extremes I used to...

I also have a pretty good idea what Brett was saying and I think it was all of the above. He was no doubt a master of DBI with sheet film. My understanding is that with roll film he bracketed like a madman.

Stone, since you scan, you will find that aside from granularity, and as long as the films are exposed/processed to your satisfaction, the only differences will be [WARNING NON ANALOG, SHIELD YOUR EYES] in the localized or masked curve adjustment layers you use in PS and how you manipulate them

Mark - dodge/burn has nothing to do with it. I know about that, masking, bleaching.... on and on. I've worked advanced techniques you've probably never even heard of. With respect to the immediate thread, the very different toe and curve characteristics between TX and TMY will have a significant effect on shadow and midtone reproduction, regardless. Yeah, to a MINOR extent you might be able to reconfigure this with PS etc or analog unsharp masking, but you will never turn one film into the other where the extremes do come into play. I neither prescribing what film one should choose or implying that one has to do things in a set manner. But what I am saying, is that the notion that you can fix anything after the fact - after casual exposure and development - is nonsense. And a neg which might be "viewable" after a corrected scan might prove relatively worthless if one decides to actually print it in another fashion.

Chris Lange said:

Stone, since you scan, you will find that aside from granularity, and as long as the films are exposed/processed to your satisfaction, the only differences will be WARNING NOT APUG SUITABLE EVERYONE PUT ON A GASMASK in the localized or masked curve adjustment layers you use in PS and how you manipulate them

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Huh?

The first time in 8 months I used PS was last night but only to get the pink line out, it's not part of the image just the refraction of the ANR glass so I didn't think I was doing anything wrong.

I don't know what the localized curve business is, I don't use curves for anything because u don't understand them.

one man's trash is another man's treasure ..
that is why i spent the last 25 years printing
everything from "trash" to "perfect" negatives
to assure myself that i will be able to make prints
of anything that comes my way ... no outlandish
masking or bleaching or anything else ...

shawn, you crack me up

StoneNYC said:

Huh?

The first time in 8 months I used PS was last night but only to get the pink line out, it's not part of the image just the refraction of the ANR glass so I didn't think I was doing anything wrong.

I don't know what the localized curve business is, I don't use curves for anything because u don't understand them.

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You would do well to learn about them.

after/before

Curves are what distinguished Marilyn Monroe from Fatty Arbuckle. They ain't all the same. ...

DREW WILEY said:

Curves are what distinguished Marilyn Monroe from Fatty Arbuckle. They ain't all the same. ...

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What Drew said.

Drew, I know you understand this stuff really well.

Of course TXP and TMY differ.

In the context of this thread though (see post 173), Stone seems to be simply taking what the scanner gives. That's ok, he's in good company, HCB did essentially the analog equivalent. Jose Villa uses a similar work model too.

In all three cases: Stone, HCB, and Jose Villa, the print process is essentially left to the discretion of a third party. So we have no idea of: how much of the film's curve is being used, where Stone's scanner started clipping (high or low), what reference points Stone uses to set exposure, how stone is metering, what the scanner settings were, where the toe fell in relation to the print, if his monitor has been calibrated, ...

As to myself (or Shawn) using casual development, that, I suggest, is a far cry from reality. Purposeful, well practiced development, with the goal of producing a very reliable normal/average contrast rate that sets us up well for printing with the papers we prefer, might be more accurate. That's a bit of a mouthful though.

Chris Lange said:

You would do well to learn about them.

after/before

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And Stone similar differences can be made with paper grade choices.

This is part of what we are trying to get you to see, this is just one concept of many that can totally change the look of any print.

jnanian said:

one man's trash is another man's treasure ..

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Isn't it though... =)

Chris Lange said:

after/before

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Chris, I was looking around your website earlier and saw that image. I really like that. And there is another one with reflected vertical lines that I really like. I'm sure there are many more but I only had a minute....

markbarendt said:

As to myself (or Shawn) using casual development, that, I suggest, is a far cry from reality. Purposeful, well practiced development, with the goal of producing a very reliable normal/average contrast rate that sets us up well for printing with the papers we prefer, might be more accurate. That's a bit of a mouthful though.

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Exactly.

The only point in my whole diatribe was that, somewhere along the line, Stone might like a particular shot and want to do something with it.
And at this point in time, I have no idea what his long-term objective is, or even if he knows yet. But he did ask the difference between the
two films. If the neg is a bit overexp in the shadows, but not overdev, he's more likely to salvage something than if he underexposes it. Yet
TX with its long toe, and TMY with its steep less-forgiving toe, will behave rather differently in terms of placement. Talking Zone system
at this stage of the game is just going to confuse him. Of course, he could also choose a film more in the middle of these characteristics, like FP4. But until one tries to actually print in some manner with his negs, the learning curve only seems to get so far. Hopefully he can find a public darkroom or something.

markbarendt said:

And Stone similar differences can be made with paper grade choices.

This is part of what we are trying to get you to see, this is just one concept of many that can totally change the look of any print.

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Well I guess I'll actually blame APUG for this one, because as far as I understand it I'm not really allowed to mess with a negative if I scan it and posted here "legally" or at least that's sort of my perception or has been from the beginning, that I'm not allowed to use Photoshop at all to really adjust any images when posting here, so I've been basically doing street scans with most of my images, I do a little adjustment here and there maybe but nothing significant and nothing that I didn't already preplan when shooting. I basically have the same workflow for my digital images as I do for my film images in fact I've taken a shot with both, adjusted the digital version the way that I wanted it to, and then simply copy the same settings to the film Scanned version with generally fairly similar results assuming I didn't do anything crazy like pushing or pulling the film etc.

To give you a really good idea of what I'm actually doing in process, and I wish I could just video this and put it up but I don't have that kind of technology or whatever to edit, I look at the negatives make sure that it looks to me like it's properly exposed to the way that I've been experiencing properly expose negatives, I put it in the scanner and I Preview scan, I look at the image make sure it looks the way that I had intended it to in my brain, if it doesn't because I've got a lot of bright light or dark light in the image that has caused the auto setting to set things incorrectly, I simply highlight the smaller square of the image where I actually aimed my light meter to get a more proper auto exposure, once I'm satisfied with that, I write down the numbers in the little boxes for the "curves" and then highlight the entire image the way I wanted to be scanned, this of course Rees throws off all of the numbers but since I've written down I simply just input the correct numbers for the exposure that I had planned on, and then scan the film after to get my final result. But I'm not exactly relying on the autoscan to fix anything that I've done wrong, because I've preplanned a certain metering and I simply then force the autoscan to to expose properly for the given area that I had planned on.

Did that make sense? It sounded a little confusing even to me, but it seems so simple when I actually do it.

I would assume this is just like printing, where you have a baseline timeframe that you expose the paper for, based on your standard exposure, and then develop the paper as normal.

If I want there to be any nonstandard exposure, I preplan this ahead of time by exposing and develop the negative the way I want the scan to come out.

Assuming I've done this correctly, someday when I actually start to sit down and do real darkroom printing, I shouldn't have much trouble simply exposing the paper at the standard exposure and still getting a print that is very similar to the scanned version without having to do a lot of adjusting in the darkroom, I could be wrong... But that's the idea...

Chris Lange said:

You would do well to learn about them.

after/before

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Chris, it's a very nice image, however I really don't like doing that because I always feel like it's somehow cheating, if you're doing it post, I've always been one to shoot things the way I want them to look ahead of time within the negative, so it with your example you just completely overexposed the whole thing and then brought down the blacks, with me if I were to shoot the same thing I would have underexposed the negative and then pushed the film a couple stops in order to get that look, I usually don't do something so extreme like that, I did it once and it came out really great, but again it was pre planned...

DREW WILEY said:

The only point in my whole diatribe was that, somewhere along the line, Stone might like a particular shot and want to do something with it.
And at this point in time, I have no idea what his long-term objective is, or even if he knows yet. But he did ask the difference between the
two films. If the neg is a bit overexp in the shadows, but not overdev, he's more likely to salvage something than if he underexposes it. Yet
TX with its long toe, and TMY with its steep less-forgiving toe, will behave rather differently in terms of placement. Talking Zone system
at this stage of the game is just going to confuse him. Of course, he could also choose a film more in the middle of these characteristics, like FP4. But until one tries to actually print in some manner with his negs, the learning curve only seems to get so far. Hopefully he can find a public darkroom or something.

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Yep, agreed.

You are wrong, but that's not the point. The point is that you end up with negs that are versatile enough to be usable later on, whatever
that might mean. You can use scan previewing to a certain extent to judge content; but it would help in the meantime to start studying up on what characteristic film curves imply, and how these interact with different kinds of development, film choices, etc. There are analog ways of tweaking these characteristics as well as digital ones. You don't need "perfect" negatives, but you do need versatile ones, with all the necessary exposure information there in the first place, within the boundaries of printability. Within your own chosen profession it's pretty amazing how the old time filmmakers handled exposure and lighting with such precision, and had to. Quite a different game than all the goofball digi action flicks nowadays. They talked about lighting ratios much like studio photographers did, whereas outdoor photographers might speak about the Zone System more. But regardless of which model you take up, you do need to somehow define the boundaries of your ballcourt. And this will differ with significantly different kinds of film.

DREW WILEY said:

You are wrong, but that's not the point. The point is that you end up with negs that are versatile enough to be usable later on, whatever
that might mean. You can use scan previewing to a certain extent to judge content; but it would help in the meantime to start studying up on what characteristic film curves imply, and how these interact with different kinds of development, film choices, etc. There are analog ways of tweaking these characteristics as well as digital ones. You don't need "perfect" negatives, but you do need versatile ones, with all the necessary exposure information there in the first place, within the boundaries of printability. Within your own chosen profession it's pretty amazing how the old time filmmakers handled exposure and lighting with such precision, and had to. Quite a different game than all the goofball digi action flicks nowadays. They talked about lighting ratios much like studio photographers did, whereas outdoor photographers might speak about the Zone System more. But regardless of which model you take up, you do need to somehow define the boundaries of your ballcourt. And this will differ with significantly different kinds of film.

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Drew, I don't need my negatives to be versatile, I need them to look the way I want the image to look, in that respect I &, I don't need my images to look any other way than the way that I preplanned them to look, so I don't need them to be flexible I need them to print / scan the way that I shot them...

To me the most important thing is how the image looks, the framing the exposure etc. the way that it a shot, I could care less if all of the curves were all over the place and completely wrong, so long as the final image is interesting.

I think that the results that you get the way that you shoot are not the kind of results that I would like for my own work, it just doesn't appeal to me, so I'm very hesitant to take your advice.

StoneNYC said:

Chris, it's a very nice image, however I really don't like doing that because I always feel like it's somehow cheating, if you're doing it post, I've always been one to shoot things the way I want them to look ahead of time within the negative, so it with your example you just completely overexposed the whole thing and then brought down the blacks, with me if I were to shoot the same thing I would have underexposed the negative and then pushed the film a couple stops in order to get that look, I usually don't do something so extreme like that, I did it once and it came out really great, but again it was pre planned...

View attachment 76892

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First of all, I don't see how it's cheeting. You know what you want, you make the best negative (file) to get the job done. I generally make flat negatives and print them with high contrast. My negs look very different than my prints, I do lots of burning and dodging with different contrast grades... But in the end I usually end up with what I was after. I did some nudes recently with a high key look in mind and a straight print from the negative would have resembled Chris's before image... the print I made was very different but that sort of negative made it easy to do what I wanted.

And what do you mean "I've always been one to shoot things the way I want them to look ahead of time within the negative"? You haven't been shooting film very long (from what I understand) and are still working hard on the learning curve...

I think the problem you're having is that you don't really have an end point to shoot for... do you? You're not printing optically. And it doesn't sound like you're printing digitally. Until you start making prints you're not going to know what you need to change... to make better prints. However you choose to do it.

You've got a good eye and a ton of enthusiasm so you'll be fine. I just think you'd do well to take some of the advice your getting about simplifying things for while. And starting to make prints of some sort. =)

StoneNYC said:

Chris, it's a very nice image, however I really don't like doing that because I always feel like it's somehow cheating, if you're doing it post, I've always been one to shoot things the way I want them to look ahead of time within the negative, so it with your example you just completely overexposed the whole thing and then brought down the blacks, with me if I were to shoot the same thing I would have underexposed the negative and then pushed the film a couple stops in order to get that look, I usually don't do something so extreme like that, I did it once and it came out really great, but again it was pre planned...

View attachment 76892

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Ahh a whole new metaphysical question.

Let's pick on the concept of over exposure for a second.

Start with a disposable camera (or a holga loaded with TMY). Shoot all day, sunrise to sunset, in a variety of lighting situations. Send the camera (film if Holga) to a really good lab and have it developed normally and printed. You know darn well the real exposures across these shots may have varied by 5 or 6 stops, maybe EI 1600 to EI 25, but you get back a full roll's worth of pretty dang nice prints none of which look significantly under or over exposed.

This exact scenario happens 1000's upon 1000's of times every day. How in the world does that work?

Well, the tech at the lab or the software they use, made good choices about what range of data to print off the negative. You see for normal scenes, like your runner with a building in NYC in the background shot on TMY you may be able to expose anywhere in a 5-7 stop range and get essentially the same print. With TXP that range might be 3-4 stops wide, HP5 4-5, FP4 3-4 stops.

Overexposure in my book only comes only when you over range the film and if you are actually metering and setting the camera that's actually hard to do.

What's happening is that the data you want is sliding up or down the curve some. The reality is that it doesn't matter where it lands on the curve. When we refer to a film's latitude, this is what we are taking about.

So my question for you is are these 1000's upon 1000's of rolls shot by 1000's upon 1000's people on disposables cheating?

Shawn Dougherty said:

First of all, I don't see how it's cheeting. You know what you want, you make the best negative (file) to get the job done. I generally make flat negatives and print them with high contrast. My negs look very different than my prints, I do lots of burning and dodging with different contrast grades... But in the end I usually end up with what I was after. I did some nudes recently with a high key look in mind and a straight print from the negative would have resembled Chris's before image... the print I made was very different but that sort of negative made it easy to do what I wanted.

And what do you mean "I've always been one to shoot things the way I want them to look ahead of time within the negative"? You haven't been shooting film very long (from what I understand) and are still working hard on the learning curve...

I think the problem you're having is that you don't really have an end point to shoot for... do you? You're not printing optically. And it doesn't sound like you're printing digitally. Until you start making prints you're not going to know what you need to change... to make better prints. However you choose to do it.

You've got a good eye and a ton of enthusiasm so you'll be fine. I just think you'd do well to take some of the advice your getting about simplifying things for while. And starting to make prints of some sort. =)

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Haha!

I've been shooting film since 1994....

I've only recently (past 3 years) developed my own... So I've learned to shoot the way I want the result because the lab always did the developing.

I'm not at all scholastically trained in film, but I certainly have prints made, it's just the lab does it...






Sorry about the image quality on the last one, I had my step dad take the last picture, and he held the button down rather than hit it once and it took some kind of strange burst that lowered the image quality, oh well, you get the idea.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)