Today's film IS better.

Ian Grant · Feb 9, 2010

Tom Kershaw said:
Ian,

Assuming good quality control, do you think the "thick" emulsion films such as Kodak Super-XX would still have a place in the market today?

Tom

I doubt it, I think we'll see either the conventional or T-rain emulsions disappear within 5 years, but I doubt we'll ahve both.

I think that Don, the OP's, point is that T-grain films are the way forward, personally I agree and that goes across all 3 major producers of B&W films companies.

A problem that never seems to be raised is that many Photo courses want their students to use films like FP4 and HP5, or Plus-X and Tri-X and seem very reluctant to embrace Tmax, Delta etc. I've seen this first hand in a few places the most striking in Santiago, Chile where there was a whole arcade of shops selling to the student market, the only films on sale where FP4, HP% and some Fomapanm but no Kodak of any type and no Delta.

So while today's films like Tmax, Delta, Acros etc are far better there's still a reluctance by many to embrace them.

Ian

Tom Kershaw · Feb 9, 2010

Ian,

For the relatively short time I've been involved in darkroom work (circa 2003), the 'Delta' films have been my mainstay. Why do you think courses are reluctant to advocate the T-Max and Delta films?

Tom

Ian Grant · Feb 9, 2010

Some people find them harder to use, they aren't as forgiving to exposure or processing errors, perhaps some course leaders prefer to use films like FP$ & HP5 for that reason.

Ian

David A. Goldfarb · Feb 9, 2010

Ian Grant said:
The last of the common old technology films were actiually Forte, based on old Kodak technology, so more similar to Super-XX

Ian

These were old tech films, but I suspect they evolved at various points after Kodak sold the plant in the 1960s. Considering general economic conditions in Hungary, I doubt they were continuing to pour as much silver into film during the silver bubble of the 1980s, particularly given that the film wasn't widely sold outside the East European market then, and I don't think they had begun coating film for Bergger yet. When Fotoimpex started selling Fortepan 400 as Classic 400, many people seemed to think it was going to be a cheaper version of Tri-X, but it just didn't have the density range of Tri-X, though they responded to complaints about this and the film was improved by the time J&C was selling it. I found that the last version was a bit slower than Tri-X and the highlights were a bit more manageable than Tri-X.

Lee L · Feb 9, 2010

i40west said:
Okay, I've never heard of Edwal 12, but Photographer's Formulary claims to have an equivalent.

It's not an equivalent, it is Edwal 12 in kit form. They also sell the separate chemicals needed to make Edwal 12.

The fact that Edwal 12 isn't en vogue on flickr isn't indicative of anything. Do the APUG google search and you'll find a number of Edwal 12 related posts. As df cardwell clearly says, it's the way that you use it that counts. Perhaps you should ask him about his methods here on APUG rather than looking for confirmation from random posts on flickr.

Lee

fschifano · Feb 9, 2010

BetterSense said:
Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me like TMY2 has the same MTF as Panatomic X. So, I take that as evidence that Panatomic X was some really good stuff and we just now caught up to it. How fast was panatomic X?

Close, but Panatomic-X was what, ASA 32? TMY-2 is a definite ISO 400, 4 1/3 stops faster.

df cardwell · Feb 9, 2010

A problem that never seems to be raised is that many Photo courses want their students to use films like FP4 and HP5, or Plus-X and Tri-X and seem very reluctant to embrace Tmax, Delta etc.

There was a plague of college Photo programs and classes that appeared in the early 1970s in the US. Inevitably, they were taught from the Art department. Since the Art department was notably empty of photographers (there being very few MFA courses at the time), the classes were taught by painters and sculptors and instructors with little photographic experience. It DID get better, but Photo education has always been terribly uneven, and largely disconnected from where Photography was going. If you were NOT at RIT (or a hand full of exceptional courses) you played with Dianas and never learned the technical foundation. Which was cool, but as we pick over what remains of our Craft, too many of us are about 25 years behind the curve.

df cardwell · Feb 9, 2010

Okay, I'll bite: duplicate the tonality of APX in Rodinal for me. Let's hear it.

G'morning Chris. APX 100 is tough because it isn't the JUST the exposure/development that makes the negative, it is the spectral response. And APX is unique.

I'm an old Agfa shooter, and shooting APX 100 (in the US) was like feeding your panda... especially if it was up to Agfa to import your bamboo ! And yet APX 100 has a knack for rendering every human complexion in a flattering way, making it easy to shoot a group of ANYBODY easily. But when Agfa killed 4x5, I bailed.

A pale #11 filter (yellow-green) does a good job to mimic the APX 100 'semi ortho' signature. Depending on the light source and film, you might want to tune the results a little... but if you needed THAT specific response, you'd need to tune the APX anyway. As for matching the film curve, that's easy-peasy. I hope you can shoot APX as long as you need to. In the studio, I use Rosco filters to balance the lights. Pay attention to the red, yellow, or blue cast a complexion has. Even APX is right for everybody all the time.

When a client looks at my pictures, such as they are, as see that I care deeply about making somebody look as handsome on film as they are in real life, it is completely up to me to deliver. There is no way to face my neighbor, or a stranger, and say "I couldn't get my old film so I made you bad." It is all up to me to solve those problems. APX is a pseudo ortho film (like Scala) and a little filtration does the trick.

d

Chazzy · Feb 9, 2010

Ian Grant said:
Some people find them harder to use, they aren't as forgiving to exposure or processing errors, perhaps some course leaders prefer to use films like FP$ & HP5 for that reason.

Ian

And some of us just want to use our old favorites, because we like the way they look. As far as I'm concerned, the T-grain look is sterile and devoid of personality. Obviously some people love the stuff, including the consultants who helped with the development of TMY-2. If the film companies drop the traditional films, some of us won't move to Tmax. If our work is going to look digital, we might as well shoot digitally.

df cardwell · Feb 9, 2010

BetterSense said:
You might be able to mimic TXP very well with some other film, but that doesn't make it TXP.

No, it will still be TMY2 with exactly the same response as TXP.
Or whatever you choose the response to be. YOU are the magic, and while TXP (and Portrait Pan before it) made it easier to shoot in flat light and get fully scaled results (by compressing the shadows and expanding the highlights) TMY does that easily enough.

Kodak USED to make a dozen films, so you'd have the right film for any event. Today, they make 3 T-Grain films which cover the same range, and 2 traditional films which cover most of the range. Seems like a win for me.

Thomas Bertilsson · Feb 9, 2010

Yes. It does change the curve that much. Try it and see for yourself.

And, re: cost of the developer, use it as replenished and you can find reasonable economy.

i40west said:
Okay, I've never heard of Edwal 12, but Photographer's Formulary claims to have an equivalent. For $15 a liter, but still.

Does it really change the curve of TMY that much? I'm having a heck of a time finding example images -- Flickr produces 10 results, which isn't enough of a sample to know if the photographer knows what he's doing...

EDIT: and those results all seem to be Edwal fg7, not Edwal 12. So, no luck there at all.

applesanity · Feb 9, 2010

Every time I try T-Max film, the result looks like if I whipped out my digital camera, took the same exact shot, then hit "desaturate" in Photoshop. That's the problem. I like the look of film, and T-Max is too good a film. Also, the critiques I get for my shots when I use Plus-X or Tri-X are hilarious - "Hey, that looks like film. How did you do that?"

Most people assume film is so dead that when they see a picture that has the grain and shifts and tonality and casts of film, they just think someone photoshopped the look of film. Of course, you can never come close to the look of film in Photoshop, nor can you print a RAW file into fiber paper. That's why I still use film. Not because I'm scared of technology, not because I'm trying to be a unique hipster retro trend thing, but because I like the look of film. Making a film "better" will, unfortunately, take that away from me.

Thomas Bertilsson · Feb 9, 2010

Both are prints. Which is T-grain? Which is 'old style'? Does it matter?

jp498 · Feb 9, 2010

df cardwell said:
A problem that never seems to be raised is that many Photo courses want their students to use films like FP4 and HP5, or Plus-X and Tri-X and seem very reluctant to embrace Tmax, Delta etc.

They used those films because, 1. it was cheaper by a couple dollars per hundred feet. 2. They were a little more forgiving of bad exposure and development. eg. Tmax responds more to temperature changes in development in my experience. Possibly 3. they were trained on these films and liked them, future be damned.

I've used TMY and TMX for 20 years, initially alongside Tri-X, tech pan, and some TMZ, but I ended up settling on TMY mostly because I did lots of sports. Now I'm trying efke 25 along with the TMY2 to understand their practical differences.

TMY looks a lot different than a desaturated color digital image. I would go the route of the desaturated color digital if they were the same.

If you want a grainy look, blow it up bigger, shoot wider and crop, or use a different film.

The business benefit of Kodak innovating film is they are creating new unique and useful films to sell. If they didn't innovate, it'd be a drive to zero of commodity film. Sorta like innovation is the only way to create new business in computers, semiconductors, etc...

hrst · Feb 9, 2010

Current T-Max technology means better grain/sensitivity ratio, or less wasted light. It's totally different thing than just "less grain" or "no grain". It's more like "more speed".

What I mean is that you can use TMAX3200 if you want grain. Then the advantage is that you'll get more speed. You can always use ND filters if you need to lose some light no matter what. But you can't add light.

T-Max films have nothing to do with "digital look". Saying that will only reveal that the sayer knows nothing about the basics of film or digital. I hate it when word "digital" is used here as a weapon to attack against different opinions. Tmax is film and looks like film. It's just a bit faster at same grain and you can control it like you can control any film. And if you don't know how to control it, it will give unique, "tmax-like" results, like any film gives it's own character. You may or may not like it.

Some people think you can control it even better than other films. Anyhow, the basics to control and use Tmax films are same as with any film and have nothing common with digital. If you can't use Tmax and would rather use digital, it just means that you can't use any film and you'd rather use digital. Gap between Tmax and other films is very narrow, gap between digital and film is 100000000 times bigger.

removed account4 · Feb 9, 2010

Thomas Bertilsson said:
Both are prints. Which is T-grain? Which is 'old style'? Does it matter?

you can say THAT again!

- john

David Brown · Feb 9, 2010

applesanity said:
T-Max is too good a film.

Making a film "better" will, unfortunately, take that away from me.

You should try wet plate ... :rolleyes:

SuzanneR · Feb 9, 2010

Thomas Bertilsson said:
Both are prints. Which is T-grain? Which is 'old style'? Does it matter?

If I had to guess, I think the horse pic is the "old style", but, as you say, it hardly matters. You've used film that suited your vision for each. All that matters, really, is the picture... and that you made them the way you saw fit.

Thomas Bertilsson · Feb 9, 2010

You're right, Suzanne. The girl with the dove tail joint in the wood shop is Tmax 400 from 35mm, and the other is Neopan 400 from 35mm. Both processed in Xtol, and the reason they look so different has nothing to do with the film properties. It's because of how the lighting was, and how I processed the film.

But it doesn't really matter either. I used the Neopan 400 because it was given to me to try out. Both are very nice films, and with some tweaking in the processing can be made to look remarkably similar.

dwross · Feb 9, 2010

David Brown said:
You should try wet plate ... :rolleyes:

Or, dry plate or handcoated film! (Sorry, I couldn't resist ) I really do understand that not everyone is a d.i.y. type, but they're missing a lot of fun, and more seriously -- artistic control.)
d

Ray Rogers · Feb 9, 2010

df cardwell said:
Kodak USED to make a dozen films, so you'd have the right film for any event. Today, they make 3 T-Grain films which cover the same range, and 2 traditional films which cover most of the range.

I see a lot of wisdom in much of what you said earlier...

However, one thing is fuzzy...

Exactly what are you saying the "3 T-Grain films" can do...
that the "2 traditional films" cannot?

And to what do you ascribe this difference?

(I get the feeling you are saying something more than speed/grain relatonship....)

Ray

David A. Goldfarb · Feb 9, 2010

I don't think "T-grain" vs. traditional is necessarily an interesting comparison, since there are so many very different films that could be described under those rubrics. Fomapan 200 is said to be a T-grain film, but it looks like something from the 1930s. I like Delta 400, but don't care for Delta 100. For scenes that have a really wide brightness range, I like T-Max 100, but not so much for other scenes. I like Tri-X, but don't particularly like HP5+, though I like FP4+ more than Plus-X. On the other hand, in Super-8, I like Plus-X Reversal better than Tri-X Reversal. I don't like T-Max 400 in general, but every once in a while, I see something on T-Max 400 that looks right, and probably people who use it all the time gravitate toward the kind of light or kind of scene where it's just the right thing. Alternative processes are the same way in that I think once someone is into a particular process, you start looking for scenes that will look good to you with that process.

The point is that fine photographs can be made with just about any of the films that are out there, and you've got to experiment a bit and then stick with what works and it all becomes part of your vision.

Thomas Bertilsson · Feb 9, 2010

David A. Goldfarb said:
The point is that fine photographs can be made with just about any of the films that are out there, and you've got to experiment a bit and then stick with what works and it all becomes part of your vision.

Yes! That is exactly the core of it.

This is why I love it how the learned people, here and elsewhere, actually can describe the response of a film in a curve, because it is pretty much the only objective way to look at it. Everything else is personal opinion, based on how the film is used, processed, and printed. Opinion is, as we can tell by thousands of accounts here, something we can never agree on.
Numbers and curves are fairly definite, and something we can agree upon, because they apply to us all. And, they do tell a large bit of what a film can and will do for us when we use it, tweak it, push its limits and go beyond.

I was reminded today that the entity that puts magic in a photograph consists of the photographers and their skills with their equipment.
WE can make our materials sing beautiful songs in silver tones, and that comes from within regardless of material choices.

- Thomas

michaelbsc · Feb 9, 2010

T-max dye in the fixer

df cardwell said:
It depends on what WE do. Different developers give different results.

OK, let me ask a processing question related to the T-Max film. Not about developing, but about fixing. The little T-max I have used looked good after processing, so I'm interested in this.

Two facts are relevant:
A) I shoot a fair amount of 127, and until very recently EFKE was the only thing I didn't have to slit myself. So the very clear based EFKE was my first choice.

B) I usually save and replenish my fixer based on recommendations from Ilford.

Whenever I have processed T-max I get the pink washout into the fixer stream (well know and understood), and I've discarded this T-max'd pink fixer in whole to prevent staining other subsequent film.

I have no evidence that the pink stain can transfer to the clear EFKE base just from reusing fixer from T-max. But it seemed prudent to discard it, and doing so once in a while it isn't a great financial loss. Occasionally I feel the need to pitch out the whole batch and start fresh anyway.

So, do any of you use a lot of T-max, and save the fixer for reuse? If so, do you reuse T-max'd fixer only with subsequent rolls of T_max? Or have you noticed no ill effect on other film even with the pink color? Or is it "OK for the gray based, but tints the clear based film."

Or am I the first guinea pig and everyone is expecting me to report back?

Tim Gray · Feb 9, 2010

RE: fixer. I don't process a ton of T-max, but I've noticed the pink stain goes away after a little while after I've poured it back into the jug.

Today's film IS better.

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