XTOL + TMX = sucky.

Lachlan Young · May 7, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
Half a stop?

Depends on your metering habits - you want to give just enough exposure to get adequate printable detail where you want detail in the shadows - and not to expose them on the basis that 'I can print them down later' - that is what is catching people out as Xtol starts to compress highlights earlier than D-76 in this particular case (TMX) - and increases shadow speed - which will inherently shove a 'box speed' exposure up the curve a bit - and it's these old habits & assumptions about box speed that's what's catching people out as they then drive their highlights up on to the beginning of the shoulder which will compress them.

Michel Hardy-Vallée · May 7, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
Wouldn't a flat response be good for scanning when you can add a curve to it in editing?

Probably; the same logic applies to printing. If you start with a very flat negative and spend time making all sorts of contrast adjustments, that's one way to do it.

Sirius Glass · May 7, 2022

Michel Hardy-Vallée said:
Probably; the same logic applies to printing. If you start with a very flat negative and spend time making all sorts of contrast adjustments, that's one way to do it.

OR expose properly so that you start with a well exposed negative rather than a flat one. The darkroom work is much easier with a well exposed negative than a flat one.

Bill Burk · May 7, 2022

@Lachlan Young I never seem to be able to find it. All I find is coarse, fine, extremely fine.

I suppose there is this. I recently got results at EI 200 ( high contrast graphic quality ).

Alan Edward Klein · May 8, 2022

Lachlan Young said:
Depends on your metering habits - you want to give just enough exposure to get adequate printable detail where you want detail in the shadows - and not to expose them on the basis that 'I can print them down later' - that is what is catching people out as Xtol starts to compress highlights earlier than D-76 in this particular case (TMX) - and increases shadow speed - which will inherently shove a 'box speed' exposure up the curve a bit - and it's these old habits & assumptions about box speed that's what's catching people out as they then drive their highlights up on to the beginning of the shoulder which will compress them.

The two labs I use - one uses XTOL and other uses Clayton F76+. Which would be preferable assuming everything else is equal?

Alan Edward Klein · May 8, 2022

Michel Hardy-Vallée said:
Probably; the same logic applies to printing. If you start with a very flat negative and spend time making all sorts of contrast adjustments, that's one way to do it.

Sirius Glass said:
OR expose properly so that you start with a well exposed negative rather than a flat one. The darkroom work is much easier with a well exposed negative than a flat one.

When I would shoot medium format, I always bracketed +1 and -1 metering from box speed. I would scan all three (flat) and use the one where most of the data were in the middle of the histogram. Now that I shoot 4x5, I no longer bracket. So I still meter box speed with Tmax and give a little more opening with negative BW film and close a little with Velvia 50 chromes.

laser · May 8, 2022

flavio81 said:
This, this this. We should be glad we have TMax 100/400, Delta 100/400, Acros 100.

There's a ton of people that think the old stuff is somehow "superior" with strange arguments such as "more forgiving in development" (if you want the highest quality, you need to be exacting in your development, dont' you think?)

Too much marketing and romanticising about Tri-X or HP5.

We should buy and use more of the advanced/modern films until someday demand drops so much that they get killed.

Year 2040 in Photrio: "Back then in 2022 were happy and joyful, yet we didn't realize it then..."

Facts:

T-Max Films were optimized to be developed in D-76.

T-Max Developer and Xtol Developer were optimized to develop T-Max, Tri-X and Plus-X Films.

www.makingKODAKfilm.com

Sirius Glass · May 8, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
When I would shoot medium format, I always bracketed +1 and -1 metering from box speed. I would scan all three (flat) and use the one where most of the data were in the middle of the histogram. Now that I shoot 4x5, I no longer bracket. So I still meter box speed with Tmax and give a little more opening with negative BW film and close a little with Velvia 50 chromes.

I have not needed to bracket in decades.

Lachlan Young · May 8, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
The two labs I use - one uses XTOL and other uses Clayton F76+. Which would be preferable assuming everything else is equal?

Xtol.

Lachlan Young · May 8, 2022

@Bill Burk

H-1-5222, pg.2, right hand column

F-4017, pg.6, right hand column

Most of the better engineered POTA derivatives seem to attempt to maintain its very high edge sharpness without the development centre access shortcomings of POTA.

braxus · May 8, 2022

I find Xtol looks great with everything I put into it. Nothing that can't be fixed in Photoshop. I just developed a roll of 35mm Tri-X 400 in Xtol straight, as its washing right now. I expect it to look good, as with anything else.

Sirius Glass · May 8, 2022

braxus said:
I find Xtol looks great with everything I put into it. Nothing that can't be fixed in Photoshop. I just developed a roll of 35mm Tri-X 400 in Xtol straight, as its washing right now. I expect it to look good, as with anything else.

I had used several developers starting in the 1960s but the most forgiving fine grain developer I have used in XTOL which is why I so highly recommend it.

jnamia · May 8, 2022

braxus said:
I find Xtol looks great with everything I put into it. Nothing that can't be fixed in Photoshop. I just developed a roll of 35mm Tri-X 400 in Xtol straight, as its washing right now. I expect it to look good, as with anything else.

the problem is when xtol came out in the mid 1990s there was no photoshop, it existed but no like today, I used it but not much ... and super thin negatives were a nightmare to print then, and still are if you don't use photoshop, sure #5+ filters exist but that is the "miracle aisle" at the auto part store. if I didn't have negatives that looked like I under developed my film by more than 3-4 minutes no matter what I did ( over expose film 3 stops ) I'd be a fanboy like everyone else. I found the help offered by Kodak's professional help/customer service division to be suboptimal with this developer ( and TMAX seeing laser mentioned it talk about a nightmare ) and yes when it/they came out I was a working professional, not someone who developed 1 roll of film ever few weeks in his bathroom (it was my job)... not a fan, and I take it as a personal offense at the people that chalk it to "user error" or "clueless noob" or whatever BS insult hurled. I haven't used tmaxdeveloper in 30 years and never will again and I haven't used xtol in 20 years and will never use it again, they are the only developers since 1980 I have ever had trouble with. from my point of view BOTH developers are an epic fail, and I will use SPRINT FILM DEVELOPER or CAFFENOL
D72 or ANSCO 130 for every film I process. my time spent making exposures is important to me and I don't want to have to rely on "photoshop" to fix screwups from champion or sinopromise or whoever owns the xtol name.

McDiesel · May 8, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
I have not needed to bracket in decades.

Why bring this up? The only possible way to interpret your words is that your defect rate is higher than Alan's and you've been happy with it for decades. Quite self-deprecating.

Sirius Glass · May 8, 2022

McDiesel said:
Why bring this up? The only possible way to interpret your words is that your defect rate is higher than Alan's and you've been happy with it for decades. Quite self-deprecating.

Actually my defect rate is quite low, because I understand how to choose the right light meter for the situation and use it correctly. Learning to meter correctly is not difficult and can be learned with a little work and experience.

Lachlan Young · May 8, 2022

McDiesel said:
Why bring this up? The only possible way to interpret your words is that your defect rate is higher than Alan's and you've been happy with it for decades. Quite self-deprecating.

Not if your process is under basic levels of control and you're within a stop of where your exposure should be.

Bill Burk · May 8, 2022

Lachlan Young said:
H-1-5222, pg.2, right hand column

F-4017, pg.6, right hand column

So current Spec sheets give us most of the RMS

Tri-X 17-25
Double-X 14
TMY2 10
TMAX100 8
Panatomic-X 6.2-10

This paper gave a range of 6.2-10 for Panatomic-X, it depends on development time.

https://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1580&context=theses

Alan Edward Klein · May 9, 2022

Lachlan Young said:
Not if your process is under basic levels of control and you're within a stop of where your exposure should be.

I was bracketing Velvia 50 chromes in 120 6x7 often during fast changing magic hour light for landscape shots. A couple extra dollars for film to bracket was worth possibly missing a single shot. One stop is too much for chromes.

Lachlan Young · May 9, 2022

Bill Burk said:
So current Spec sheets give us most of the RMS

Tri-X 17-25
Double-X 14
TMY2 10
TMAX100 8
Panatomic-X 6.2-10

This paper gave a range of 6.2-10 for Panatomic-X, it depends on development time.

https://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1580&context=theses

RMS Granularity numbers are usually given for a 0.6-ish CI (i.e. design/ ISO CI) - some Kodak materials publish charts of RMSG against exposure & density. The Kodak RMSG test setup (which is used in some other RIT papers - more usually at graduate level) seems to have produced RMS Granularity of 10 for Panatomic-X and about 21-22 for Tri-X of the same (early 1980s) era. Both sets of numbers seem to track perceptually with what I have seen from those generations of materials vis-a-vis newer emulsion generations. Tri-X has undergone a fair few revisions in the intervening - with a granularity improvement somewhere between the early 1980s and late 1990s (possibly with the manufacturing/ process control revisions that seem to have come in during the 1980s). And what you might see in a paper may be closer to best-case scenarios - Kodak's data (e.g. MTF) in datasheets often seems to tend towards the minimum baseline level of performance expected, not potential maximum.

Bill Burk · May 9, 2022

The old paper graphed a range and so 10 is reasonable for Panatomic-X. Even though you could get 6.2 you typically would get just under 10.

Surprise is TMY2 getting 10 same as Panatomic-X. That doesn’t make sense

Lachlan Young · May 9, 2022

Bill Burk said:
Surprise is TMY2 getting 10 same as Panatomic-X. That doesn’t make sense

When I first encountered 1970s/80s Panatomic-X (archive images, contemporaneously processed - not expired film) a few years ago, I'd have sworn that the film used must have been Plus-X (from the granularity level) - but that was because my perception was based on the last version of Plus-X, with an RMSG of 10.

NB23 · May 9, 2022

When I revisited APX-25 I was astounded at its high granularity. About the same as today’s TMY. No jokes.

Even TMZ is quite fine grained versus films in the 80-90’s.

pentaxuser · May 9, 2022

laser said:
Facts:

T-Max Films were optimized to be developed in D-76.

T-Max Developer and Xtol Developer were optimized to develop T-Max, Tri-X and Plus-X Films.

www.makingKODAKfilm.com

Is your source for your statements in the link your provide and is this statement endorsed by Kodak itself or is/was Mr Shanebrook a Kodak engineer himself with a pedigree in those fields of TMax films and those developers?

My take on what you have written is that TMax films would be optimised for ID11 as well and is it a reasonable assumption that TMax films are equally at home in TMax and Xtol developers but compared to D76, TMax and
Xtol developers are better than D76 for Tri-X and Plus X films?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Bill Burk · May 9, 2022

laser is Bob Shanebrook and yes he wrote the book and worked for Kodak as a photo engineer.

So his comments carry a little extra veracity.

jnamia · May 9, 2022

laser said:
Facts:

T-Max Films were optimized to be developed in D-76.

T-Max Developer and Xtol Developer were optimized to develop T-Max, Tri-X and Plus-X Films.

www.makingKODAKfilm.com

I used all these films developed in sprint film developer for years ( sprint is similar to d76 ) and got fantastic results, it's obvious they were optimized for this type of developer, it gives a great rich snappy negative

XTOL + TMX = sucky.

Lachlan Young

Michel Hardy-Vallée

Membership Council

Sirius Glass

Bill Burk

Alan Edward Klein

Alan Edward Klein

laser

Advertiser

Sirius Glass

Lachlan Young

Lachlan Young

braxus

Sirius Glass

jnamia

McDiesel

Sirius Glass

Lachlan Young

Bill Burk

Alan Edward Klein

Lachlan Young

Bill Burk

Lachlan Young

NB23

pentaxuser

Bill Burk

jnamia

XTOL + TMX = sucky.

Membership Council

Advertiser

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency