P3200 Question

I bought some Tmax 3200 because the store was out of Delta 3200 and I have a question. With D3200 I would normally shoot at 1600 and develop in DDX for the 3200 time. Should I use this same approach with Tmax 3200 or do the two films behave differently? Thanks.

Jmal

I've never used DDX or D3200, but... when I shoot TMZ, I use the normal times for the exposure index I've shot at. 1600 times for 1600, 3200 times for 3200. I've only ever used XTOL 1:1.

Thanks. I was beginning to see tumbleweed blowing through the streets of APUG.

Haha. Yeah, sometimes that happens. I've been meaning to try out some TMZ in Diafine and XTOL at different times and exposures, but to be honest, I've been happy enough with it in XTOL 1:1 using Kodak's times that I've never bothered doing *any* testing.

The times in the XTOL book are very complete and I would assume, accurate. I thought I remember reading that the XTOL team did quite extensive testing with different films and EI's and the datasheet is pretty complete.

Again, on DDX, you're on your own

I sympathise here. Some combos just don't seem to have been used despite APUG having over 20,000 members or the user(s) have somehow missed the thread or have not been connected to PUG when it came to the top of the list. I had always made the assumption that with fast films it was a good general rule to develop for the next speed and this didn't depend on film make. Again just an assumption but I had thought that all fast films D3200 and TMax3200 were of such similar ilk that the same rule applies. Certainly DDX list times for Tmax 3200 but this isn't telling you anything you don't know.

The increase in time for developing at 3200 when shooting at 1600 is only 2 mins(9 to 11mins) = 22%. This seems to be within the spectrum of what various different photogs might use for a combo of film and developer.

My limited experience with TP3200 and ID11 is that it tends to come out "thin" at the recommended times and certainly D3200 at box speed is thin the recommended times but I haven't used TP3200 and DDX. I would have thought the worse that can happen is that the negs need a bit longer under the enlarger to print and maybe lower contrast.

Being probably overly conservative I might go for 10 mins BUT I need to add I have had no direct experience of TP3200 and DDX. If you can't get any replies from users , you could take some "sacrificial" frames on the roll, say the first 4 and then clip test these at 11mins and use this info to decide what to do with the rest. Takes a bit longer and uses a bit more dev but you get to the answer.

Best of luck

pentaxuser

jmal said:

Thanks. I was beginning to see tumbleweed blowing through the streets of APUG.

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Nah, they are all over in the medium format forum tearing each other up. It's pretty ugly.

While I have tried lots of things, I don't often feel qualified to recommend a time/temp/agitation for someone else. I am a proponent of do it yerself testing, using times form similar films as starting points.

Good luck.

tim in san jose

@pentaxuser - I'm not sure if the rule of thumb is necessarily a general one. I've only ever heard it applied to Delta 3200, because Ilford's times are just to short. So it might not be an intrinsic thing for fast films, just with Ilford's published times for D3200...

I've been very happy with the XTOL datasheet published times and temps with all the films I've used (HP5, Tri-X, TMZ, Plus-X, HIE, Pan F+). Note times for Delta 3200 are not included.

So jmal, the real question is: Is Ilford time too short for its own D3200 or is it also short for the other 3200 film i.e. Kodak? I have no idea but it would seem strange to me that having misjudged its time for its own film where you'd expect it to have greater knowledge then I'd have expected a similar misjudgement for Kodak. The alternative view is that Ilford are better able to judge an other manufacturer's film dev times than their own. Could be, I suppose.

Each time there is a reply the thread gets to the top of the pile but so far it's failed to produce anything concrete. You may have time on your side as you may not have shot the film yet but if there's no joy soon and the thread "sinks below the waves" as it may do then you either (1) stick with DDX times for the speed you shot the TP3200 at. (2) Go the whole hog and risk the DDX time for box speed (3) Go for the compromise of 10 mins (4) Go for the slower, slightly more expensive option of a clip test.

I hope you chose (4) as that way you have to risk almost nothing and get real information on times which APUG seemingly currently lacks and which hopefully you can feed back to the rest of us and increase the APUG pool of knowledge. So you win and we then all win

pentaxuser

Yeah I've always wondered why Ilford's time is 'wrong'. You think they would test it and publish a more acceptable time. I've always been curious, but since I've never shot D3200 or used any of Ilford's film devs, it's not super high on my priority list.

I wouldn't say that Ilford's times are necessarily wrong. They are different. They probably get good negatives with their test methods.
In my own experience, I shoot Delta 3200 (wonderful portrait film!) at EI 3200 and develop at Ilford's recommended time for EI 6400 in Ilfotec DD-X. It works great for me, and those negatives print very well, very easily in Amidol or Ansco 130 developer on all papers I have tried.
TMZ ??? Good luck. Never tried it.

- Thomas

I develop Tmax 3200 in Tmax Developer for 8 minutes at 24 deg Celsius (75 farenheit). That's for 1600 and I beleive it is Kodak's recommended time. It works beautifully. Isn't DDX similar to Tmax Developer?

I have found what appear to be several blunders in the Kodak J-109 data sheet for XTOL. I did not find them by use, but by plotting. I do not expect to find the same developing time for two different CI values with the same film and developer. For example, TMZ shows 6.5 minutes at 80 F for both .56 and .62 CI. TMX shows minutes at 75 F for both .56 and .62 CI. One would think that whoever proof reads those data would have seen those obvious boo-boos, as they were right next to ech other.

At NACA-NASA we found that proof readers of engineering data had to be engineers. We dealt with strips of film with what looked like arbitrary wiggly lines that were often reproduced for publication. Sometimes, in photo reproduction on high contrast film there would be a dropout in a trace. When these were retouched by someone in the Reproduction Section, we wound up with time histories momentarilly going backwards in time.

I have a feeling that whoever proofread the J-109 data was not a photographer or even a lab technician.

See, even I can make a mistake. TMY shows shows 5.25 minutes for both .56 and .62 CI. In fact, TMY shows the same values at those CI's wherever they are listed for full strength and 1:1 XTOL.

Thanks for the advice all. I was in Chicago this weekend and shot two rolls of Tmax 3200 @1600. One was a roll of pinhole images and the other was street photog/buildings and light. Like an idiot, I mixed the two rolls in my bag and now have no idea which one has the more "precious" shots. I'm really tempted to try one roll at the times listed for 3200 and see what happens. I wish I had just loaded HP5/TX for the street stuff, but I thought I might do more pinholes and wanted the speed. Then I got seduced by all the people and good light...

I vote for the clip test for the 2nd and last time after which I will forever hold my peace. It's just that this might make 2-3 frames more difficult to print if using the next speed's time was a wrong decision but even here is unlikely to ruin them AND will give you the basis for a decision on the rest of the roll which should make the other 30+ negs much easier to print and produce better prints. OK you will have one neg's that ruined and that's the one you cut through, unless you happen to cut through the bit between the frames in the dark. If you have that kind of luck then instantly buy a lottery ticket, bet on a horse etc as you are having the luckiest day of your life where nothing can go wrong. Remember the old Bilko episode where he's having that kind of a day but doesn''t realise it until about 3 mins to midnight. If you're not old enough ask some ancient Bilko fans. 50 yrs old and still worth watching- the episodes that is - the fans have to be 60+ at least.

Anyway I digress. If you take a chance on the whole roll, you may have 36 frames which might be difficult to print.

pentaxuser

gainer said:

See, even I can make a mistake. TMY shows shows 5.25 minutes for both .56 and .62 CI. In fact, TMY shows the same values at those CI's wherever they are listed for full strength and 1:1 XTOL.

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Interesting - I never noticed that. Thanks for the tip on the TMZ times. However, to be fair on the TMY times, several of Kodak's films (400TX and 125PX) have the same times listed for box speed and 2 x box speed. Though, they make it clear that this is not a mistake by writing them on the same line, "400/800, CI .56, ... times..." Also, I think in the 400TX datasheet they explain this by saying that you don't need to correct for a one stop under exposure because the film's latitude can handle it.

I wonder if they meant to do the same for TMY - are the times for 800 (or 400) wrong, or is the presentation and CI wrong and they meant to put the same times for both EI's and let the film's latitude compensate for a one stop under exposure like they do with 400TX?

If I do a clip test it will inevitibly ruin THE shot of the roll. Can't bring myself to do it...

Speculation is over. Haha. I looked in the newest TMAX data sheet and it seems to correct both the TMY duplications and the TMZ one for XTOL.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I wouldn't say that Ilford's times are necessarily wrong. They are different. They probably get good negatives with their test methods.

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Very true I think. I use Delta 3200 quite a lot but tend to base my dev times on my own tests. The film is often used for low light shooting so even shot at the same speed as a general 'normal' lighting test, it would probably seem necessary to increase the standard dev time to increase the contrast of the negatives. I've recentley been using it with ADOX APH09 from Retro Photographic, (original Rodinal/Calbe R09) and it gives really good negatives with a very sharp, noticable grain. However, I do change the dilution and dev time accordingly if the shots are taken in low light and contrast situations.