Lol, if you weren’t already retired I’d have suggested you hold onto it to retire on someday.
Originally Posted by Tin Can
Lol, if you weren’t already retired I’d have suggested you hold onto it to retire on someday.
I also shoot 11x14 ,A Wisner Technical Field. I am looking for 11x14 Tri X I wrote to Keith C today and maybe he knows Or does Tin Can know where there si a box or two for sale?
Thanks. I started shooting 4x5, landscapes, recently and have tried both Tmax 100 and Tmax 400. I like smooth toning.Alan, I'll post a few of my own curves below - they are consistent with the published data from Kodak and Ilford but might help with comparisons.
To answer your question, I would first say that unless the scene has an extreme exposure range, TMX, TMY-2, FP4, HP5 and Delta 100 will all produce essentially the same tonality. I think it's important to make this point up front so that people don't obsess over inconsequential differences, especially in LF where other differences such as grain and sharpness are virtually meaningless barring gigantic prints.
Here are superimposed curves for TMX, FP4 and Delta 100, developed in XTOL:
Attachment 240470
TMY-2 differs somewhat from the others in the extreme highlights, where it has more contrast rather than a gradual shoulder. Acros is similar but no longer available in sheet sizes. You can visualize this by superimposing TMX and TMY-2 curves:
Attachment 240471
It should be noted that the highlight contrast/shouldering behaviour of films like TMX, HP5 etc. can be altered somewhat by the developer type. For example, one reason Kodak released TMax developer was ostensibly to extend the contrast of TMX further up the curve. You can see this effect in Kodak's published curves for TMX where it has a longer, somewhat straighter curve when developed in TMax developer. Other developers that can be used for less gradual shouldering are things like HC-110 (or Ilford's equivalent) and Ilford PQ Universal.
TXP 320 is a little different than all of the above in that its "native" curve shape is somewhat upswept (slightly reduced contrast in dark areas/shadows, lots of contrast in midtones all the way up to extreme exposure levels). If you were to develop TMY-2 in one of the developers listed above such as HC-110, you'd get a little closer to the rendering of TXP 320, but I don't want to overemphasize these differences.
TXP 320 has more of the old style (significantly worse) reciprocity failure characteristics than TMY-2.
Incidentally one nice thing about the Ilford films is the much better reciprocity failure compensation information in Ilford's tech docs compared with what Kodak supplies. I badgered Ilford into doing this several years ago. Prior to that Ilford's tech docs showed the same generic reciprocity graph for all of its films. I like to periodically toot my horn on that one.
Hope this helps.
TMY's extra two stops has it's advantages especially when it's windy. Also, I've noticed, at least when scanning 4x5, that Tmax 400 appears to show more grain. if you open the photos and click on them, they will enlarge to see the grain better)
Any thoughts?
Tmax 100: https://flic.kr/p/2iWuqbU
Tmax 400: https://flic.kr/p/2jcbMjA
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
Stick with what you know. HP5+ can make beautiful portrait negatives.
It’s hard to say what’s going on as I don’t know enough about scanning. I’d be surprised if a scanner can resolve film grain or that there is enough magnification in the image to see grain.
I’m any case, TMY-2 is slightly grainier than TMX, as one would expect due to its higher speed. However TMY-2 is also the finest grained fast film and is at least as fine grained as any 100 speed sheet film besides TMX. So if you want smoother/finer grain than TMY-2 you’re pretty much out of luck unless you stick with TMX which is the finest grained of the medium speed films.
I do not want this thread hijacked by other emulsions. I need to know about Tri X 320 I already know about FP4 and HP% and the T Max. I like T max 100 in 8x10 ( thank you Keith) but I need to know about Tri X 320. Or is it so unpopular that no one has any practical experience?
Tin Can what say You?? You have some "On Ice"
Regards
It has its own look which others have made good use of. Seldom me. It doesn't fit my personal style well. I call it Triassic-X. Large buckshot or shrapnel grain, medium toe, much less deep shadow resolution than TMax unless it's overexposed, and then you risk shouldering off the highlights. That didn't bother contact printers with their long-scale slow papers; but it's risky with typical silver gelatin printing. Once in awhile I seek its look and use TX souped in pyro, but only for small format snapshottish applications where a bit of grittiness adds impact. Like "cult lenses", Tri-X lives on mostly due to just an antique reputation. But it is different, so why not try it?
I’m not technical person, but what Michael said in post #2 explains a lot to me.
TriX 320 is my film for 4x5.
I always develop it in Xtol 1:1 and always getting low contrast in dark tones which sometimes makes me mad.
What Roman Loranc did using the combination of 4X5 Tri-X and PMK pyro was to follow the old contact printing adage, despite enlarging onto MGWT, and both overexpose and overdevelop the film in order to boost the shadow values way up onto the straight line, and get good medium to high value tonal expansion. Then his habit was to try to split tone it with gold toner followed by Kodak Brown sulfide toner, which would bring an apricot-pink into the near-highest values, and make those uppermost value
interesting. That amounts to a bit of roll of the dice, and is never entirely predictable; and when it didn't go so well, and the stain didn't transpire, his highlights come out essentially blank and textureless, because these are in fact shouldered off.
Therefore, it has been the strategy of numerous practitioners of Tri-X to seriously overexpose it in order to get decent shadow gradation. With TMax films, you don't have that problem due to the longer straight line way down into the shadows. And in former days, Super-XX was preferred for the same reason in higher contrast scenes. But the same thing could be said about HP5, with its own medium toe characteristics. I simply avoided HP5 when it came to high-contrast situations, or else resorted to unsharp masking (via film) to appropriately alter the curve profile when printing.
The problem is practical experience isn’t going to provide you with any objective or comparative information. The curves in Kodak’s tech pub. tell you how it works. It will be grainier than TMY-2 but image structure is totally irrelevant when it comes to the large sizes you are working with. Reciprocity failure probably isn’t an issue either since you are primarily interested in portraiture. Other than that all there is to know is it is a high quality film with a long, venerable history.
It is undoubtedly less popular than it once was, at least in part because of TMax. Kodak sheet films are also expensive. Etc.
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