Do People Like the Older Versions of Tri-X 400 More?

I think, particularly in the film community, there is a large element of what I refer to as the "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be" crowd. Change is bad, anything new is suspect, and corporations are not to be trusted-- so anything new by a corporation is absolutely Evil.

We see complaints of "this film looks too digital", or "the grain is too fine", "Kodak ruined Tri-X!!!!" (sorry, I enjoy Azriel's videos, but that's a click-bait headline if I ever saw one). He, and several in this thread have said they stopped using Tri-X and went to HP5+... but they almost all agree they did it for the price, rather than the film.

What I haven't seen is side-by-side comparisons (and come on-- there's got to be "old" tri-x negatives out there!) demonstrating how Tri-X (or other "insert film name here") has been ruined.

markbau said:

I've heard that modern Tri X has some amount of tabular technology to reduce the amount of silver but I can't confirm that as my Kodak insider is no longer of this world.

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I used to converse with someone who was the chemist and analyzer for PLI. He had been doing that for decades and he saw lots of changes over the years. He told me ( this was in the early 2000s he passed away around 2004 ) that most films didn't have as much silver in them anymore and instead they had "poly vinyl fillers" whatever they are, maybe that means less silver. @grat my dislike for the newer tri x films is they made it look too much like a tabular grained fine grained resolved film. just like the tmax films. lots of people like that slick highly resolved low grain look, I'm not nostalgic and I don't like it I don't mind grain it has a nuance to it that is lacking in highly resolved low grain films yes they seem a bit digital, too clinical for my taste .. but whatever I don't really care, I'm not their target audience. I'm glad people like it, 10bucks a whack seems a bit $$$ to me but whatever. I've learned different ways to get grain out of tabular grained film so I just do that. ( and it doesn't cost me 10bucks a whack )

New Hope, PA Auto Show 1975
Nikon Ftn, Nikkor 24 2.8
Tri-X, D76
It’s hard to tell much of anything from a small image on the internet but it’s been a fun film to use for quite a while.

Nieuport, 1975 New Hope Auto Show by Michael DeLuca, on Flickr

madNbad said:

the reality is the new films are superior

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Sirius Glass said:

Kodak and others have always improved their films and Tri-X is no exception

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I don't think this is a good way of putting it. There hasn't been an "improved" film in many decades. The changes are not improvement, the films aren't superior. Rather, they are tailored to modern tastes, to an aesthetic era in which people are no longer appreciating photography through prints, books and journals but on a computer screen, and are asking for less grain and more sharpness (often not knowing that you can't have both), and to see everything in the shadows.

Alex Benjamin said:

I don't think this is a good way of putting it. There hasn't been an "improved" film in many decades. The changes are not improvement, the films aren't superior. Rather, they are tailored to modern tastes, to an aesthetic era in which people are no longer appreciating photography through prints, books and journals but on a computer screen, and are asking for less grain and more sharpness (often not knowing that you can't have both), and to see everything in the shadows.

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I beg to differ.
The newer films are lower in grain, and more robust and flexible in many ways.
And while I understand your reference to aesthetics, I have no particular trouble emulating 1970s aesthetics with modern films.
There would have been no good way to emulate what our modern aesthetics feature with the older films, without going up significantly in format, and even then there may have been a need to have more control over lighting than is often available outside the studio.
The improvement I notice the most is in how easy it is to print from smaller negatives with modern film. Followed closely by how much I prefer modern colour film stocks to the colour films I was working with in the 1970s. I wish I had the modern films back then when I was working as a colour printer for a number of wedding and portrait photographers.

Has TMAX changed formulation over the years? I've heard the legend of old TRI-X before, but nothing about the early days of TMAX. I am curious, because recently I came into possession of a box that includes 30+ rolls of 120 Kodak XO-287 expired 1988, which just judging from the "T100" inscriptions scrawled in pen on the generic Kodak yellow boxes is probably pre-release TMAX-100.

Maybe I should do a side-by-side with current TMAX-100? I suspect other than fog I won't be able to tell the difference. Old and new TRI-X are indistinguishable to me in any practical sense.

There may not be as wide a section of films but they are better. The T grain films have brought a level of sharpness and tonal range that was not obtainable with the older emulations. Both the rising cost of silver plus environmental concerns were drivers for the change. The fact that Tri-X survives today is in large part to its versatility. It’s a good film for beginners as it forgiving of their mistakes as well as experienced photographers challenging them to stretch its ability.

MattKing said:

There would have been no good way to emulate what our modern aesthetics feature with the older films

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That's assuming they would have wanted to. To me, as opposed to you, it's all about aesthetics. Or rather, as Stephen Shore points out in his latest book, about learning to see the world as your film see it. Your film has grain, high contrast, and infinite dramatic possibilities, that how, as a photographer, you look at things. And if many photographers are tuned to these possibilities of the film—as they were with the old Tri-X—then, as a whole, they condition the aesthetics of the times (and condition how we, today, view these times). So you don't think of less grain as an improvement. You see it as a change—one that will impact on the way you look at things as a photographer photographing them.

In the case of Tri-X, the main improvement was done when their highest speed ISO film went from 200 (both Tri-X in sheet format and Super XX) to 400 with 35mm Tri-X in 1954, and they gave it the pushing latitude it has. After that, many changes — to the point where, from most accounts, it's not even the same film any more —, but no major improvements. It is now a modern film in the same way that wine experts today talk about "modern" wines, i.e., wines suited to our modern palette.

OrientPoint said:

Has TMAX changed formulation over the years?

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Yes - in particular T-Max 400.
Here is a datasheet from 2002 that refers to one change: https://125px.com/docs/film/kodak/f32-TMAX.pdf

Alex Benjamin said:

That's assuming they would have wanted to. To me, as opposed to you, it's all about aesthetics.

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I understand your preference for the grain. But in my case, the grain interfered with the aesthetic that I preferred in the 1970s, and to a great extent still prefer today.
That is part of the reason that when I used Tri-X in the 1970s it made for an uncomfortable compromise, made necessary by practical needs.
When given the choice then, I chose Plus-X, and medium format - to a great extent that was based on the issue of grain.
But I didn't take that too far. I never used Panatomic-X, and my use of Kodachrome 25 was relatively limited.

grat said:

I think, particularly in the film community, there is a large element of what I refer to as the "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be" crowd. Change is bad, anything new is suspect, and corporations are not to be trusted-- so anything new by a corporation is absolutely Evil.

We see complaints of "this film looks too digital", or "the grain is too fine", "Kodak ruined Tri-X!!!!" (sorry, I enjoy Azriel's videos, but that's a click-bait headline if I ever saw one). He, and several in this thread have said they stopped using Tri-X and went to HP5+... but they almost all agree they did it for the price, rather than the film.

What I haven't seen is side-by-side comparisons (and come on-- there's got to be "old" tri-x negatives out there!) demonstrating how Tri-X (or other "insert film name here") has been ruined.

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None of them apparently have a clue about what 1960s or 70s TX actually looks like when optically printed or scanned at an adequate level - or they don't have a clue about the current 400TX under the same circumstances. And in either case we are subjected to logorrheic clickbait from the usual suspects. If they were forced to use actual 1960s TX, they'd be screaming about how the grain was obscuring detail. It's quite eye opening (and amusing - at the expense of the usual breath-holding, foot-stamping brigade) to work with old generations (in the sense of archive, contemporaneously exposed. processed - not someone's aged collection of fogged rolls found in a greenhouse) of TX (and FP4, FP3, HP3, HPS etc) when you normally use the current forms.

There's no question that TX - 50-60 years ago - was dramatically sharper in the low frequencies than any film of that speed (and still holds up in that regard remarkably well) at that time (the whys are hinted at/ discussed in Ron Mowrey's emulsion making posts) with a well controlled toe & curve shape that made it highly adept at all sorts of lighting/ contrast situations - but perhaps at the cost of image content transmission in the higher frequencies (Think Delta 3200 level of granularity/ image content transmission). There's little question that 1960s TX etc forced Ilford to innovate FP4 and HP4 in the mid-late 1960s (though there's no question in my mind that FP3 looked better aesthetically, but FP4 was better for the people in the markets that mattered to Ilford's bottom line). HP5 was initially engineered to beat TX in specific professional markets where shadow speed & shouldering of highlights were potential issues. Modern 400TX is much more monodisperse in its emulsions than that of decades ago - and there is some acknowledgement that a degree of (controlled) polydispersity may be beneficial (see TMY-II's emulsion layer construction, Delta's epitaxial stuctures) to overall 'look' - but it also comes down to the extent of emulsion crystal growth control exerted (all emulsions of TX and the like have been effectively crystal growth controlled since day 1 - but there's a difference between monodisperse-ish via controlling flow-rate of salts/ silver etc in precipitiation and monodisperse via computer control with real-time feedback etc) and methods of manufacture intended to reduce product that has to be scrapped because it fell outwith acceptable parameters.

madNbad said:

There may not be as wide a section of films but they are better. The T grain films have brought a level of sharpness and tonal range that was not obtainable with the older emulations.

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I know I'm repeating myself, but I don't see more sharpness and tonal range is not better. It's what more people want today. Photographers in the 40s, 50s and 60s weren't looking for that. Many were looking for drama, and to express the world very differently than we do now. They were because the film gave them that.

The types of pigments that Monet or Cézanne or Van Gogh used are wildly different from those used by early Renaissance painters. You'd never think of saying they are better or improved. Same with Tri-X, to me.

The idea of "progress" should be used sparingly in the discussion of any art form. Even one that relies on science as much as photography does, mostly because it's difficult to distinguish when scientific "progress" is motivated by necessity, the normal R n D process, or marketing.

braxus said:

Am I not allowed to discuss an older film, even if it is no longer available? This is what this forum is for- knowledge. No need to be a bit testy about it.

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Of course you are, mate. If you look back, you will find I have "modified" the first sentence in my post (which I did before scrolling down to your entirely apt comment), as I too realised I was being a bit, as you say, "testy" in my attitude to what has been, in its time, a wonderful film, one which still had its keen followers to this day even if the price has now hit the stratosphere and is still going up, up, up.

Yes, the good old days, we all miss 'em...

Apology for my endless sentence in the first para. As for the rest, may I suggest you not feel insecure or take unwarranted offence at what I wrote, but let it stand as what we all do in our posts - state our opinions as just those, not as commandments engraved in stone. Best we agree to not leap down each others' throats in disagreeing with who said what, and get on with the more pleasant business of getting on with each other. More fun, new ideas, better thoughts.

All this said, I will spare you all my usual comments about Panatomic-X. To this day I've never forgiven Kodak for having discontinued it in the late '80s, even if I've found TMax 100 to be just as good, in fact in some ways even better. But not the same. Tonality.

logan2z said:

I haven't bought Tri-X for a little while, but I'm pretty sure I paid just over $8 a roll when I last purchased a few months ago. It looks like it's up to $10.49 a roll now. That is getting a bit nuts.

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More so Down Under (Australia). Retail prices have reached absurd levels, AUD$300+ for bulk rolls, AUD$250+ from those retailers that still sell it. TMax almost as high. We are all being dragged off, kicking and screaming, to the digital world, which we all know is fun, but most definitely not the same.

Of course it helps not at all that our Ozzydolla (aka South Pacific Peso) is worth 70.a small fraction US cents, which means a 30%+ upward kick in everything we buy from overseas. Not good for us. Most fortunate that the wine industry here is as good as South Africa's and almost up to French standards, which goes a long way to make our seemingly endless economic doldrums a little more bearable.

Even ordering film online from the USA is now off the boil here. This week I've browsed Ebay for a copy of Henri Cartier-Bresson in China from overseas - the best US price was AUD$150 and some sellers want twice that for it. No way. Mine will come from Britain, I picked it up for AUD$60 including postage, air mail. How the seller can afford that is beyond me to figure out.

Alex Benjamin said:

Photographers in the 40s, 50s and 60s weren't looking for that. Many were looking for drama, and to express the world very differently than we do now. They were because the film gave them that.

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No, they just used lots and lots and lots of ferricyanide on the prints to deal with the films having various failings (and all sorts of other fairly ruthless retouching). And most people encountered the work in repro - which adds several intermediary, tonally altering stages - and where no-one would be wiser about the extent of what had been done to the print.

Look at the Impossible Project and their efforts to keep Polaroid film alive. When Polaroid stopped making film many of the small companies that supplied dyes and other materials went out of business. When the Impossible folks went to replicate it, the EU wouldn’t let them use the old formula because it violated the ecological standards. There is a reason white paint no longer contains lead. Other colors the 19th and early 20th century painters used was full of toxic and even radioactive material. The colors were stunning but will never be seen again. Film needs to continue to evolve, not just as a toe hold against the digital flood but the manufacturers are under government restrictions to reduce the impact from their products.

I have a collection of negatives mainly from the 1950's, and frankly the films are terrible. It's easy to see why the popular formats were larger and most prints were contact prints, or slight enlargements. The grain is massive compared to modern film, and as a result resolution is limited. The overall enlarging potential is quite limited too simply because the image breaks down and goes to mush with any degree of enlargement. There is no way I want to go back to bowling ball sized grain.

I think we are living in a golden age of photography with the modern films that we have; they combine resolution, sharpness, fine grain and tonality in a way that photographers in the 50's could only dream of. They would be astonished by the qualities of Delta or T grain films.

Here is an example from a 645 sized negative. First a 1:1 crop, second full frame.

Craig said:

I have a collection of negatives mainly from the 1950's, and frankly the films are terrible. It's easy to see why the popular formats were larger and most prints were contact prints, or slight enlargements. The grain is massive compared to modern film, and as a result resolution is limited. The overall enlarging potential is quite limited too simply because the image breaks down and goes to mush with any degree of enlargement. There is no way I want to go back to bowling ball sized grain.

I think we are living in a golden age of photography with the modern films that we have; they combine resolution, sharpness, fine grain and tonality in a way that photographers in the 50's could only dream of. They would be astonished by the qualities of Delta or T grain films.

Here is an example from a 645 sized negative. First a 1:1 crop, second full frame.

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I prefer the improved resolution, sharpness, fine grain, and tonality. We have better films now and a choice of traditional grain and tabular grain films.

This is the oldest image I can remember printing, from the original 4x5 negative, as far as I am aware:

Charlie was my boss at the time . And he apparently protected the copyright for as long as he lived.
But as the negative was in the Vancouver Sun's archives, people could order a print from them, and doing those prints was part of my job.
It wasn't the film that made this image what it is.
This is Bannister and Landy in the final corner in what has become known as the Miracle Mile - the first time two runners ran the mile in less than four minutes. It was at the 1954 Empire games in Vancouver.

Can anyone point me to comparison tests of TriX2016 vs. Tmax4002004 ?

Searching the web yields an article stated to be from July 2019, should should include TriX2016, yet the text comments,
I grew up with original TriX and by the time Tmax came out I was engrossed in color photography for pro purposes, so I never really tried it other than simply as a test emulsion for evaluating used gear metering in the past decade. Reading web reports "TriX is more contrasty"..."Tmax is more contrasty" makes me wonder now where is the truth.

wiltw said:

Can anyone point me to comparison tests of TriX2016 vs. Tmax4002004 ?

Searching the web yields an article stated to be from July 2019, should should include TriX2016, yet the text comments,

"Kodak T-Max 400 film was revised in 2007 to the fine grain film that we know today. 3 years earlier, in 2004, Kodak celebrated 50 years of Tri-X which was first released in 1954" So apparently the article with 2019 date didn't include the 2016 emulsion type?!​

​

I grew up with original TriX and by the time Tmax came out I was engrossed in color photography for pro purposes, so I never really tried it other than simply as a test emulsion for evaluating used gear metering in the past decade. Reading web reports "TriX is more contrasty"..."Tmax is more contrasty" makes me wonder now where is the truth.

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Other than production-oriented changes (i.e. component availability), TMY-II was released in 2007 and the most recent full scale revision of 400TX was in 2003 (when it moved to B-38). The rest is a lot of people puffing themselves up without checking that their processes haven't subtly veered off-target over the years.

Alex Benjamin said:

I know I'm repeating myself, but I don't see more sharpness and tonal range is not better. It's what more people want today. Photographers in the 40s, 50s and 60s weren't looking for that. Many were looking for drama, and to express the world very differently than we do now. They were because the film gave them that.

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I am not sure how you know this. I'd have thought that photographers in the 40s, 50s and 60s were like any other set of consumers and had to use what was available to them. Isn't there also a chance that from the 40s to the 60s films improved as well. Most things do over a 30 year period and yet whatever those changes were the 60s photogs from what you say, were just as happy as the 40s photogs

Here's an analogy and it goes without saying that if it is a flawed analogy I am sure somebody will point it out:

The TVs we watched and were amazed by in the same era to which you refer, ran in the U.K. on what was known as 405 lines( non digital era standard for TV pictures). The picture frankly was grainy and with low resolution. When they changed to 625 lines in the 60s, I think. the picture improved considerably. It was both less grainy with higher resolution and was sharper. In a word the definition improved

I cannot recall anyone complaining about the newer quality of the picture on their screens. However for some reason in the area of film this kind of improvement seems to represent a step backwards for some consumers whom I think may be actively enjoying their current HD( high definition) screens

So at the very least this does seem to represent a puzzle in that some people whom I suspect welcome the kind of improvement that we have seen in TV pictures still hanker after the good old days when pictures from those film negatives of yesteryear had less resolution, were less sharp and based on the way we judge most things were of a lower quality

Just a final thought. I have a nostalgia for my "feats" on a bike with a fixed wheel in my youth and just for a wallow in my nostalgia I'd love another short go on a fixed wheel bike again

I fear that after a few miles my love of my youth may wane somewhat and if I had the stamina etc to compete in the Tour de France I wouldn't want to do so on a fixed wheel bike - at least not if I was in my right mind

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

I am not sure how you know this. I'd have thought that photographers in the 40s, 50s and 60s were like any other set of consumers and had to use what was available to them. Isn't there also a chance that from the 40s to the 60s films improved as well. Most things do over a 30 year period and yet whatever those changes were the 60s photogs from what you say, were just as happy as the 40s photogs

Here's an analogy and it goes without saying that if it is a flawed analogy I am sure somebody will point it out:

The TVs we watched and were amazed by in the same era to which you refer, ran in the U.K. on what was known as 405 lines( non digital era standard for TV pictures). The picture frankly was grainy and with low resolution. When they changed to 625 lines in the 60s, I think. the picture improved considerably. It was both less grainy with higher resolution and was sharper. In a word the definition improved

I cannot recall anyone complaining about the newer quality of the picture on their screens. However for some reason in the area of film this kind of improvement seems to represent a step backwards for some consumers whom I think may be actively enjoying their current HD( high definition) screens

So at the very least this does seem to represent a puzzle in that some people whom I suspect welcome the kind of improvement that we have seen in TV pictures still hanker after the good old days when pictures from those film negatives of yesteryear had less resolution, were less sharp and based on the way we judge most things were of a lower quality

Just a final thought. I have a nostalgia for my "feats" on a bike with a fixed wheel in my youth and just for a wallow in my nostalgia I'd love another short go on a fixed wheel bike again

I fear that after a few miles my love of my youth may wane somewhat and if I had the stamina etc to compete in the Tour de France I wouldn't want to do so on a fixed wheel bike - at least not if I was in my right mind

pentaxuser

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You make some really interesting points, pentaxuser, although I'm not sure one can compare a mass-market media like TV with the niche market that is black and white photography. The pressures to make TV a better viewing experience for millions of middle-class baby-boomers were tremendous, and necessary, which wasn't the case for film. To put it in another way, if TV were the same today as it was in the early 60s, nobody would be watching it, if Tri-X were the same today as it was in the early 60s, most black and white shooters, professional or amateur, including those on this forum, would be using it — the difference being that with the amount of different developers available today, including some very fine-grain ones, they'd produce results that would probably not be that far from what they are getting now. Films have changed, but, to me, the amount of developers developed (sorry...) in recent decades is the real improvement.

One last note. I'm not at all nostalgic. I don't shoot Tri-X, but for reasons that have nothing to do with the way it used to be, as I've never had the pleasure to shoot the "old" Tri-X. Again, my point is essentially that the notion of "improvement" is misguided in this case.

pentaxuser said:

I am not sure how you know this. I'd have thought that photographers in the 40s, 50s and 60s were like any other set of consumers and had to use what was available to them. Isn't there also a chance that from the 40s to the 60s films improved as well. Most things do over a 30 year period and yet whatever those changes were the 60s photogs from what you say, were just as happy as the 40s photogs

Here's an analogy and it goes without saying that if it is a flawed analogy I am sure somebody will point it out:

The TVs we watched and were amazed by in the same era to which you refer, ran in the U.K. on what was known as 405 lines( non digital era standard for TV pictures). The picture frankly was grainy and with low resolution. When they changed to 625 lines in the 60s, I think. the picture improved considerably. It was both less grainy with higher resolution and was sharper. In a word the definition improved

I cannot recall anyone complaining about the newer quality of the picture on their screens. However for some reason in the area of film this kind of improvement seems to represent a step backwards for some consumers whom I think may be actively enjoying their current HD( high definition) screens

So at the very least this does seem to represent a puzzle in that some people whom I suspect welcome the kind of improvement that we have seen in TV pictures still hanker after the good old days when pictures from those film negatives of yesteryear had less resolution, were less sharp and based on the way we judge most things were of a lower quality

Just a final thought. I have a nostalgia for my "feats" on a bike with a fixed wheel in my youth and just for a wallow in my nostalgia I'd love another short go on a fixed wheel bike again

I fear that after a few miles my love of my youth may wane somewhat and if I had the stamina etc to compete in the Tour de France I wouldn't want to do so on a fixed wheel bike - at least not if I was in my right mind

pentaxuser

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I agree. As films in general and Tri-X in particular have been improved, the form, shape and mixture of grains have increasing improved the quality of the film. If one wants bigger or clumpier grain, then they can use different developers, different films or both.

Alex Benjamin said:

You make some really interesting points, pentaxuser, although I'm not sure one can compare a mass-market media like TV with the niche market that is black and white photography. The pressures to make TV a better viewing experience for millions of middle-class baby-boomers were tremendous, and necessary, which wasn't the case for film. To put it in another way, if TV were the same today as it was in the early 60s, nobody would be watching it, if Tri-X were the same today as it was in the early 60s, most black and white shooters, professional or amateur, including those on this forum, would be using it — the difference being that with the amount of different developers available today, including some very fine-grain ones, they'd produce results that would probably not be that far from what they are getting now. Films have changed, but, to me, the amount of developers developed (sorry...) in recent decades is the real improvement.

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Well there was a time probably in the 50s when more households had cameras than had a TV set so at that stage still films were more of a mass market where the need to make the product, namely film, better applied than to TV set production.

It seems your contentions is that if Tri-X were the same today as in the 60s more b&w shooters would be using it. Well I accept this applies to you and no doubt to others but stating this as a general "truth" seems likely to be flawed in my book

The solution to the problem of pleasing everybody, if I have understood your argument would have been to have left films as they were at some point in the 60s and simply concentrated on the newer, fine grain developers so the admirers of how films were could be satisfied by presumably avoiding such changes in developers and those wishing for similar results to what they get now could have availed themselves of new developers and everyone is happy

If this is a correct interpretation of your contention above, can you say which old developers should have been kept and which of the new ones developed?

If we now assume that Kodak had decided to effectively stand still in terms of film design would it not have been required to have formed a cartel with all of the other film makers to ensure that no-one broke ranks on film making and equally on the need to retain the old developers?

This all seems to get more complicated, the more we think through what would have been needed to make the film world stand still and dare I say it, would make the whole scenario a less than realistic proposition

Yes there are things from the 60s that I loved ( see my example of the fixed wheel bike) but in reality I recognise that maybe my desire is affected a kind of romance with the old days that ignores the fact that the world has a history of striving for technological improvement that by and large has benefited us

I have to say that I would so hate us to have stopped somewhere in the 60s with medical progress or vehicle production etc

I recall many years ago when I was already in middle age, my 10 year old son saying I had seemed to be having a great time at a barbeque in the company of fellow middle-agers .

He said: What were you all talking about, Dad? Was it the "old days" He had perceptively recognised a phenomenon that afflicts most of us after a certain age but one which remains alien to the pre-teens, teens and twenties generations, called nostalgia

It is a powerful drug and one that can be dangerous in certain circumstances but alas the Soapbox is no more to discuss such matters

I am off to watch the Mount Etna stage of the Giro d'Italia and imagine how Fausto Coppi would have shown these young guys how it was done on his early 1950s bike

pentaxuser

Take some time and watch David Hancocks’ love story to Tri-X: