TMAX 3200 pushed very high

[Ektagraphic]

Hi Guys- I read on one of Kodak's sheets that TMAX 3200 could be pushed to 25,000. That's pretty darn fast. Has anyone ever gone that far and if so what were your results. I need to try it for myself

 

[DLM]

There were a few posts in the "I Shoot Film" group on flickr about this topic that I read. I tried a roll the other night, but didn't have very good results. I set the ISO at 6400 and exposure compensation to -3, then bracketed when I was shooting, which basically gave me a shot at ISO 25,600, one at 51,200, and one at 102,400. I developed in Rodinal at 1:100 for 1 hour. My P3200 was expired, so there is already some fog in the film base, so I think that's part of the reason for my poor results, but basically the shots show only the very bright highlights of the scene, but nothing below that. For instance, I took a shot of the front of a convenience store, but all that showed up was the sign on the building, not the light coming from inside the store (this was at night). sorry, no scans to show since they weren't worth messing with. Here's the link to that thread, it's not just about Tmax 3200, but more about pushing film to those ISO values in general.

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

Rodinal is the worst developer for that. The film was designed for Tmax Developer which is what Kodak Recommends for the high speeds. I've not gone over 3200 but I think not using Tmax Developer isn't giving the film a chance if you're gonna go for the extreme speeds like 25,000

 

[df cardwell]

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f4016/f4016.pdf

Instead of doing research at Flickr,
why not go to the source and see what the film does ?

Kodak is the greatest source of REAL photo information on the planet,
it is free, it is accurate, and (if a little technical) Kodak even has resources to help you learn how to read the data.

For the sheer deviliment of it, TMZ @ EI 25,000 is about a CI of 1 (doubling the exposure doubles the density of the negative.)

With most photo papers, that is a scale of 5 Zones: you get Black, White, and 3 shades of gray. Depending on the scene, and how you deal with it, you might only get Black and White. Fuddy Duddy Old Photographers will tell you there is no such thing as Pushing Film.

You CAN, however, KNOW what the palette will be with your film. In that respect, photography is no different than playing a piano.
Do THIS, get THAT. But the notion of 'pushing' implies a Secret Knowledge that lets you break the rules.

This is the ironic resolution of post-modernism, for there ARE no rules, only plain vanilla facts.

Get to learn a little bit more about night. The substance of Night is shadow. LOOK at the shadows.

How do you image the sound of a shadow ?

Why do you 'push film' ? When you are bathed in light, you push the film to create shadows and texture.
Try shooting TMZ @ 25,000 in XTOL on a totally foggy day, or in the summer at the beach, on a completely overcast day.

 

[mts]

Some twenty years ago I used P3200 for a technical photography project to record images taken in an intensified camera system. The sensitometry was done by EG&G photo for a variety of developers. They found a nice straight line curve was produced by developing in Dupont NDTMD, an X-ray developer. Dilution was 650ml water, 250ml part A, and 7ml part B with water to make 1 liter. The results were quite good but you can expect base fog ~0.2. Second best as I recall was D-19, although the gamma was higher and the straight line portion of the curve shorter giving less useful dynamic range.

This work used P3200 in 1000' rolls in a Mitchell camera that was mated to a 40mm diam. magnetically focused image intensifier tube for imaging components of a rocket test viewed against a star background through a telescopic tracking mount.

 

[AgX]

How do you image the sound of a shadow ?

I would love to learn mnore about that. That is intriguing!

 

[Neal]

TMZ @ EI25XXX

Dear Ektagraphic,

It works, sort of. Tiny metering errors really show up. Here is the best my little scanner could suck out of one developed in Xtol 1+1.

Neal Wydra

 

[df cardwell]

When TMZ appeared, night hawks were stunned. We went from shooting TX at 1600 and throwing out half our palette, with no room for error, to shooting hockey with TMZ, which was sooooo easy.

Didn't need the grease pencil anymore, to draw in the puck.

 

[Ektagraphic]

Thanks for sharing the scans. I'm going to find something in very low light in a building and give it a try.

 

[pentaxuser]

These shots look pretty good to me Neal.

pentaxuser

 

[Neal]

Dear pentaxuser,

You're right. TMZ is a wonderful film and I use it regularly. My "sort of" comment was poorly chosen and left the wrong impression.. What I should have stressed was the metering error problem. Small errors seem to make a bigger difference when pushing so far.

Neal

 

[Jeff Kubach]

I would geuss that the pictures would look grainy, but they do look interesting.

Jeff

 

[Lowell Huff]

Years ago, back in the day, when Tmax 3200 was first on the market, the U.S. Navy aske me to show them how to do this with our Clayton F 76plus Film Developer. Manually processing, dilute F 76 1+19, and procsess for 22 minutes @68ºf.