Looking at films, two developers, I'm truly surprised...

I guess most of you have checked the fotoimport.no site, where we can see how some films behave in a few developers... Basically to check grain, but also IQ and tone in general, though the latter can be tuned to some degree with exposure and development.
What surprise? Some time ago, as I like sharp grain, I took a look at those samples there and went for some FX-39 and TMY... Today I took a longer look,t see how different four ISO400 films look in FX-39: Tri-x, Delta400, HP5+ and TMY.
This is very important for 35mm users, and close to nothing for bigger sizes... If you check those four films all in FX-39, you'll see a clear, no doubt order in IQ: TMY is the best one, with Tri-x showing the worst definition, no surprise, but what I was not expecting, was to see HP5 close to TMY, while Delta is clearly closer to Tri-x... So, my surprise was and is, how can HP5, a film that's considered a lot grainier than TMY, behave that well, precisely in FX-39, a developer that's known for exploiting sharp grain for acutance: yet it makes hp5 smooth !
Then I thought, let's check Xtol in this site too, a developer I tried some time ago but left alone (in the middle of high hopes) because my tests using stock and dilutions up to 1+3 (can't remember if I did them with fp4, Tri-x or hp5) showed xtol being too solvent even diluted...
I imagined I was about to see more or less the same results for those four films but a la Xtol... But... Wrong!
In Xtol TMY looks the best again... But Delta looks great in Xtol, close to TMY, and Tri-x gets better compared to FX-39, while, second surprise, HP5+ becomes grainy in Xtol and shows the worst IQ...
How can Xtol, with its solvency, make hp5 that grainy, while it makes Tri-x look better? A rethorical question, Tri-x and Xtol are Kodak, but what matters is, now I think things are a lot more complex and out of possible general rules than I was taught or used to think for many years...
I don't think the site has wrong testing at all, by the way, because FX-39 is often recommended for slow and medium speed films, and not for ISO400, TMY being, because of its finer grain, a special case as Crawley and others have stated... And that's exactly what the site shows: terrible Tri-x and wonderful TMY in fx-39...
I'd be glad to listen to stories of this type... Not looking for magic bullets here, but it seems possibly there are some sweet secrets between the lines...

Image quality is nebulous and almost entirely subjective. What one person thinks is good image quality another might not find so pleasing. Grain is a little less subjective so, lets focus on that (pun not intended).

Grain is not entirely determined by film and developer alone. Many factors have an effect on grain - consider for example, developer temperature, agitation regimen, development time, exposure just to name a few of the most prevalent and obvious. So, changing one or two of these for just one of the films might have produced significantly different results. An experiment that covered all of these factors for four films and several developers would be enormous, extremely time consuming and costly - which is why it generally isn't done. The space is too large, there are too many variables. Further, it is really not possible to draw any sort of absolute conclusion about grain based upon a small experiment. The results presented on that web site represent only a few specific data points in a huge experiment space. This is why people end up choosing a film and a developer and doing experiments to determine what values of the other variables produce results that are somehow 'optimal' for them personally.

So, if I may make a suggestion, don't get too hung up on chasing "the best". Don't waste a lot of time, money and effort optimizing. Just choose some materials and find process setting that work for you and then use them and be happy. Embrace the uncertainty and imperfections. It is part of what makes photography special, interesting, fun and unique.

Juan Valdenebro said:

I guess most of you have checked the fotoimport.no site, where we can see how some films behave in a few developers...

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Didn't even know it existed so thanks for posting!

ETA: and now I know why!

Same here, I've been using that site a lot recently, and been quite impressed by how different different films react to developers, too.
My general impression from going through this many times is that Ilford films seem to react nicer to solvent developers, without going mushy, than Kodak films. Note that Xtol and D76 are used 1:1 for the tests on that site, maybe things would look very different again in the stock solutions. Maybe differences in design philosophy? What you observed about FX-39 is another question of course.
Too bad Ron Mowrey isn't among us any more, he could have explained a lot.

Juan Valdenebro said:

I guess most of you have checked the fotoimport.no site, where we can see how some films behave in a few developers

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No, I have not, but then it wouldn't be likely that I would, except out of curiosity.
I have a lot of skepticism about what conclusions one can reach from internet images of results. I think a lot of darkroom users share that skepticism.
In particular, I am skeptical about the role that film scanning plays in the results.
OK, so now I've gone and satisfied my curiosity - and my opinion hasn't changed.
The approach there might suggest some combinations worth trying, but unless I were to see prints made from an enlarger I am familiar with I wouldn't come to any conclusions.
Even then, the differences are subtle and mostly subjective.

Hi

MattKing said:

No, I have not, but then it wouldn't be likely that I would, except out of curiosity.
I have a lot of skepticism about what conclusions one can reach from internet images of results. I think a lot of darkroom users share that skepticism.
In particular, I am skeptical about the role that film scanning plays in the results.
OK, so now I've gone and satisfied my curiosity - and my opinion hasn't changed.
The approach there might suggest some combinations worth trying, but unless I were to see prints made from an enlarger I am familiar with I wouldn't come to any conclusions.
Even then, the differences are subtle and mostly subjective.

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Hi Matt,
I think most of us have wet printed and scanned for many years, and we all know, if we have, how grain can appear different in both cases...
Anyway I think that fact has little relevance here, or none, because I'm not looking at that site how films wet print, but only what I talked about in my post: the way films behave, and that can be very well shared if the scans were made in a constant way.
Thanks.

Agreed. I too find this puzzling and my own results processing HP5+ in Xtol are similarly unimpressive. In fact, I found HP5+ to be the quite sensitive to developer choice: not too great in Xtol (1:1), even worse in DD-X (1:4) but absolutely gorgeous in ID-11 (full strength). Tri-X and Delta 400, on the other hand, looked very similar in those 3 developers.

Which reminds me of another contradiction: most people online keep repeating the same thing, that HP5+ is Ilford's "version of Tri-X" with "grainy and gritty" look, but when I look at my results, I see that Delta 400 and Tri-X are much closer to each other in terms of grain structure and the overall look, with HP5+ being very different from both.

Bormental said:

people online keep repeating the same thing, that HP5+ is Ilford's "version of Tri-X" with "grainy and gritty" look, but when I look at my results, I see that Delta 400 and Tri-X are much closer to each other in terms of grain structure and the overall look, with HP5+ being very different from both.

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HP5+ and Kodak TXP are much closer in curve shape, tonal behaviour - as you have noticed, Delta 400 appears to have been designed to provide a closer equivalent to TX.

Bormental said:

Agreed. I too find this puzzling and my own results processing HP5+ in Xtol are similarly unimpressive. In fact, I found HP5+ to be the quite sensitive to developer choice: not too great in Xtol (1:1), even worse in DD-X (1:4) but absolutely gorgeous in ID-11 (full strength). Tri-X and Delta 400, on the other hand, looked very similar in those 3 developers.

Which reminds me of another contradiction: most people online keep repeating the same thing, that HP5+ is Ilford's "version of Tri-X" with "grainy and gritty" look, but when I look at my results, I see that Delta 400 and Tri-X are much closer to each other in terms of grain structure and the overall look, with HP5+ being very different from both.

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Absolutely.
In my situation, this has been great because I got FX-39 for two years, AND now I saw how well hp5 does in it, I'm certain 120 hp5 in fx-39 will look fine, and HP5 is the only fast medium format b&w film that's being sold in this country! So big favor from that site: I recently got TMY, but now I'll be equally happy with hp5, anyday!

Lachlan Young said:

HP5+ and Kodak TXP are much closer in curve shape, tonal behaviour - as you have noticed, Delta 400 appears to have been designed to provide a closer equivalent to TX.

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That's true...
Thanks for being here, Lachlan... I'm sorry about the other day... These last two days I've read several of your posts from previous years about all this, and as always, reading you is a pleasure and you share a lot of knowledge... I really appreciate your help.

Juan Valdenebro said:

Hi

Hi Matt,
I think most of us have wet printed and scanned for many years, and we all know, if we have, how grain can appear different in both cases...
Anyway I think that fact has little relevance here, or none, because I'm not looking at that site how films wet print, but only what I talked about in my post: the way films behave, and that can be very well shared if the scans were made in a constant way.
Thanks.

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Okay Juan,
If I did a lot more printing from scans, or presenting my work digitally, I would add "unless I were to see scans made with my scanner, my scanning software and my workflow, I wouldn't come to any conclusions."

Tri-X grainy and gritty? The old 5063 maybe, not the current one.

MattKing said:

Okay Juan,
If I did a lot more printing from scans, or presenting my work digitally, I would add "unless I were to see scans made with my scanner, my scanning software and my workflow, I wouldn't come to any conclusions."

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I wouldn't come to every conclusion.

I've used HP5 in Xtol 1+1 for years, as well as Pyrocat-HD. I find it to respond very well to both developers.

... I don't think the site has wrong testing at all, by the way, because FX-39 is often recommended for slow and medium speed films, and not for ISO400, TMY being, because of its finer grain, a special case as Crawley and others have stated... And that's exactly what the site shows: terrible Tri-x and ..[/QUOTE]
..iric the test exposures are made by 'flash' - and therefore 'short' in duration in 'high' in intensity. Whilst this will have no bearing on 'grain' or acutance it may have some effect on contrast and speed compared to 'normal', continuous exposures - because of high intensity reciprocity law failure. This may effect the test films each to a different degree. A comparison of their relative speeds and contrast may be somewhat different using another type of sensitometer - maybe one with a more 'normal' exposure time of say 1/50 sec. So, not a question of 'wrong testing' as you put it, but rather recognising the characteristics of the testing conditions.

Andrew O'Neill said:

I've used HP5 in Xtol 1+1 for years, as well as Pyrocat-HD. I find it to respond very well to both developers.

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In the end, if the scene has content, I'm glad to get it... I used Tri-x pushed in Rodinal for more than a decade: I'm very happy with those photographs, and just like you, I allow myself to say I found Tri-x responds very well to Rodinal...
Making clear that I don't want to spend time in a discussion, we'll have to agree it's not words or opinions, but visual evidence only, what can guide us to conclusions:
Up to this moment, in this thread, the only visual evidence, is available at the site quoted in the first post... Nothing else, at all... I believe you when you say you make hp5+ look fine in Xtol... I didn't like Xtol, but parts of the rolls I used for testing Xtol, both in 35mm and medium format, included real street and real tripod work shots too, and I'm glad I got those negatives no matter if I prefer other possibilities... No way hp5+ well exposed and well developed in Xtol could be horrible: both give us an image, and if that image reflects human condition, the image is valid in my book...
That being said, this thread is about hp5+ being capable of working in a more efficient way in FX-39 than in Xtol, and also about Tri-x being better in Xtol than in FX-39... Not about being happy with all our materials or opinions, even if we can get a printable image...
Now, if you show us the same hp5+ shot in Xtol and in FX-39, and if you show us a detail where Xtol makes the image better than FX-39 does, I'd be very happy to see that...
Up to this moment, the contrary is what I have found, and the contrary is also what the site shows visually.

Juan Valdenebro said:

Dear mods, isn't it possible to correct one word here at Photrio?
How can I correct one word if technology and autocorrecting get in the middle?
One word, in the minute it was written...
No matter if I check before posting, sometimes words get bad spelling only after I post... It's a cellphone problem...
Thank you...

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you can edit your own post for some time after initially submitting it. Click on the little stack of horizontal lines and select edit.

I found it in a menu! Thanks!!! I got confused because I thought there was a direct button I used for that in the past...

Looking at D-76 / ID-11 is interesting too...
FP4+, Delta400, and TRI-X all have crisp grain (1+1), and they share the same grain pattern and grain size... They all produce the grain I prefer... Clean looking, tight, stable grain that's not mushed, with middle grays showing it clearly... The result is acutance, more perceived sharpness than real resolution...
The case with HP5+ and TMY is different... HP5+ shows sharp grain, while TMY shows mushed grain... HP5+ has grain that's bigger than the grain showed by TRI-X, and worse, it's a mix of different sized grain (spaces between grain clumping) caused by the very different sensitivity and size from the types of grain mixed in that emulsion to make it versatile and fast... So the result is a huge disorder...
TMY has its grain mushed with the same 1+1 dilution, what kodak wanted, but it's not fine sharp grain, it's mushed dissolved grain... The result is higher resolution but lower acutance.
I cursed my career with HP5+ in this 1+1 because that was the rule where I studied in Barcelona: the site shows, in a 100% perfect way, my HP5+ ID-11 prints... I never liked that look! Chaotic grain in zones 4-6... TRI-X and Delta400 would have been a much much better choice for ID-11 1+1... FP4+ is a beauty too, but at that speed, it's better for slow focusing and tripod work, not for fast street work.
The site made a wonderful job!

Juan Valdenebro said:

TMY has its grain mushed with the same 1+1 dilution, what kodak wanted, but it's not fine sharp grain, it's mushed dissolved grain...

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I think that neg is out of focus in the scanner. This is essentially what I've found Tmax 400 in ID-11 1+1 delivers at a 0.55-ish aim & scanned on a Flextight at 6300 ppi. 50% and 100% crops of the neg, areas chosen for maximum visibility of granularity.