T grain emulsions

Photo Engineer · Dec 17, 2013

Tony Egan said:
Much appreciated as usual. I have always admired your even-tempered and polite responses and willingness to contribute generously to this forum.

Mmmmm. Well, thanks, but I have been known to lose my cool.

PE

cliveh · Dec 17, 2013

Thanks for the posts and please note I am not knocking these types of film which I'm sure produce beautiful prints and mine is just a personal preference. I suppose my view stems from my experimentation with basic halogens. I just like simplicity of form and function.

Photo Engineer · Dec 17, 2013

"Experimentation with basic halogens" just confuses the entire issue for me!

PE

cliveh · Dec 17, 2013

Photo Engineer said:
"Experimentation with basic halogens" just confuses the entire issue for me!

PE

When you go to sleep tonight, try and imagine that chemical photography hasn't been discovered and think how such a concept may produce a practical image. This may lead to a process not yet discovered.

timor · Dec 17, 2013

NB23 said:
while apx100 was very coarse for a iso 100 film.

Really ? Maybe it is your process of development rather. My 8x12 prints from 35mm frame are grainless. They maybe with little less sharpness than from TMX.

Ian Grant · Dec 17, 2013

NB23 said:
Ian, tmax100 is extremely fine grained while apx100 was very coarse for a iso 100 film. And yes, apx 100 had a tonality that was hard to beat.

I can show you 35mm negatives shot on APX100 processed in Rodinal with excellent fine grain as good as Tmax 100 in any regular developer D76/ID-11/Xtol/Rodinal etc. I used the term excellent fine grain because Agfa APX25 gave exceptionally fine grain, finer than both Tmax100 and APX100. My experience of using APX100 alongside Tmax 100 & 400 in all formats was over many years until Agfa discontinued APX in sheet film so I'm speaking from experience of shooting, processing and printing quite large quantities of both films.

I can't comment about the current products since Agfa ceased manufacture of their own consumer/professional films.

Ian

Ian Grant · Dec 17, 2013

timor said:
Really ? Maybe it is your process of development rather. My 8x12 prints from 35mm frame are grainless. They maybe with little less sharpness than from TMX.

I'd add to that the effects of craft/technique, you can see wildly different results with the same film/developer combination and it's totally down to the control of the process, temperature being the key.

Ian

NB23 · Dec 17, 2013

Ian, I was fan of apx100. Used a lot of it in 94 to 98. It was notorious in the market for being the iso 100 film with he biggest grain. As a matter of fact, it was never even marketed as a fine grain film while tmax' motto was "fine grain".

Ian Grant · Dec 17, 2013

NB23 said:
Ian, I was fan of apx100. Used a lot of it in 94 to 98. It was notorious in the market for being the iso 100 film with he biggest grain. As a matter of fact, it was never even marketed as a fine grain film while tmax' motto was "fine grain".

I strongly disagree, APX100 was sold as a fine grain film and it was, Tmax 100 was sold with typical US hype - don't get me wrong it is/was a good film until only available in a few parts of the world.

APX100 was known for it's exceptional qualities including fine grain, sharpness and tonality and never as you claim. See agfa's own data sheets for Agfa APX100 "Today, for example, an ISO 100 material achieve the fine grain of previous ISO 25 film"

Ian

NB23 · Dec 17, 2013

Rms numbers are there for a reason.

And I have no stake in this conversation. If you magically make apx 100 finer grained then tmax 100, that's perfect.

timor · Dec 17, 2013

NB23 said:
If you magically make apx 100 finer grained then tmax 100, that's perfect.

You cannot do that. Both materials are giving grainless prints. IMO TMX holds sharpness better in large blowups, but how often one is making 16x20 from small format ?

NB23 · Dec 17, 2013

timor said:
You cannot do that. Both materials are giving grainless prints. IMO TMX holds sharpness better in large blowups, but how often one is making 16x20 from small format ?

Oh boy... I'm in a 20x24 marathon. I've been printing all my "best of" 35mm negatives since 1990 on 16x2" and 20x24 fb.

Many things struck me. Here's a few:
Tmax 100 is absolutely wonderful.
Apx100 in D76 1:0 absolutely wonderful. It's all about excellent contrast.
No film records whites as fp4 does.
Hp5 really sings at 800 and 1600!
Never shoot apx100 @ 50 and develop in rodinal 1:50. You're in for super boring prints.
Tmax 3200 was the most under rated film ever.
Leica glass is wonderful.
Minolta glass is just as wonderful.
After all has been said and done, D76 does it best.

All and only my opinions.

...

Photo Engineer · Dec 17, 2013

cliveh said:
When you go to sleep tonight, try and imagine that chemical photography hasn't been discovered and think how such a concept may produce a practical image. This may lead to a process not yet discovered.

I've BTDT. That was my job for years. I also worked on light sensitive copper systems. It still does not explain what you mean.

PE

Roger Cole · Dec 17, 2013

NB23 said:
Ian, I was fan of apx100. Used a lot of it in 94 to 98. It was notorious in the market for being the iso 100 film with he biggest grain. As a matter of fact, it was never even marketed as a fine grain film while tmax' motto was "fine grain".

No, it wasn't. Popular Photography did a comparison of 100 speed films and it won overall, and none were particularly large grained.

I still have some frozen, unopened boxes of 4x5. Great stuff.

NB23 · Dec 18, 2013

Roger Cole said:
No, it wasn't. Popular Photography did a comparison of 100 speed films and it won overall, and none were particularly large grained.

I still have some frozen, unopened boxes of 4x5. Great stuff.

Won "overall"? Well of course. It was the cheapest iso 100 film in the market. For the price it was the best "overall" film by far. And one of my all time favorite, partly because of its gorgeous looks and partly because it was the cheapest

RMS ratings place APX second to TMX in the granularity department and very, very far away in the sharpness/resolving department. You may not agree with this but it's all over Google and it's all over my prints as well. I can't argue against that.

Tom1956 · Dec 18, 2013

PE, it's heartening to see a guy doing his work and liking it, after serving his term. I wish I had some of that. Because the day these printing presses are dragged out of here, there never was a man thinking good riddance more than I will be.. Although I still do good work, and don't get careless just because I'd rather be at the dentist at the time. I don't think I'd deserve the respect of your type if I hated it AND did careless work just to escape it quicker. I'm not sure any of that even computes.

Roger Cole · Dec 18, 2013

NB23 said:
Won "overall"? Well of course. It was the cheapest iso 100 film in the market. For the price it was the best "overall" film by far. And one of my all time favorite, partly because of its gorgeous looks and partly because it was the cheapest

RMS ratings place APX second to TMX in the granularity department and very, very far away in the sharpness/resolving department. You may not agree with this but it's all over Google and it's all over my prints as well. I can't argue against that.

Eh? TMX didn't even EXIST when they did that comparison. It was pre-t-grain days then. And I don't remember the individual scores, though I might possibly have that issue in a box somewhere. The competition was Plus-X, FP4 (I think pre +, not sure when the plus was added) and Neopan 400. Neopan came in second and a friend of mine changed from Plus-X to it because we could buy it locally, or at least he could (he lived about 30 miles away, we were friends via ham radio and the high school yearbook photographers for our respective schools, which places this about 1980 or 81 or so.)

If by claiming it was not fine grained you mean it was coarser grained than TMX, I agree. So is everything else in conventional film, even Pan-X was. But it was finer grained than Plus-X, for example. Since you like RMS figures, APX100 was rated at RMS 9, Plus-X at RMS 10:

http://www.digitaltruth.com/products/agfa_tech/FPD1e.pdf

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f8/f8.pdf

You may not agree with that either but it's all over the web.

timor · Dec 18, 2013

NB23 said:
Oh boy... I'm in a 20x24 marathon. I've been printing all my "best of" 35mm negatives since 1990 on 16x2" and 20x24 fb....

WOW ! That explains a lot...but why you do that ? (Pun aside.)

And hey, , you didn't mention Delta 100. It supposed to have better sharpness and smaller grain than TMX... ?

T grain emulsions

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