Like I already implied, Lenny, I don't choose films according to what they all do similarly or reasonably well, but for what they each do best. Of course, I can't go
around lugging fifteen different films at a time. But I do frequently need versatility that spans wide contrast. TMY does that reasonably well. I wish something like Super-XX or Bergger 200 were still made, but the only so-called "true straight line" film still made it Fomapan 200 and its Arista private label, which as we all know is miserable at long exposures and of dubious quality control. Handling twelve zones of range without resorting to compressed development is something those kinds of films can do. You've never actually seen any of my actual Cibachromes, and the sad thing about the web is that it's almost impossible to reasonably convey the qualitative feel of the soft and subtle images, whether color or black and white, so that probably once gave a false impression about the scope of my work in that respect. I don't know if more recent improvements in scanning and web presentation really cure that issue, but it's a bit premature for me to revive that particular project. I have set up a new copy station. I worked with Delta 100 briefly. It favors midtones and highlights, but packs the shadows a bit too hard for my typical usage. And it's a slick film like TMX, so quite a nuisance in terms of Newton ring risk here, where fog is the norm. When I do want more of a general purpose film and can tolerate the slower speed, I load FP4 in the holders, because it's always on hand for unsharp masking purposes. At lately I've been packing one holder of 8x10 ACROS for certain shots where I want a bit of long-exposure blur in the foliage, but otherwise shoot TMY. One characteristic that hasn't even been mentioned on this appropriate thread is how these various films shift contrast differentially over long exposures relative to
different colored filters. That kind of information is hard to get ahold of. What few people seem to know is back when Kodak was trying to replace multiple films
with just two speeds of TMax, they actually engineered TMX as a suitable color separation film to replace Super-XX in that role. It's actually even more consistent the way it responds to tricolor filtration at consistent contrast at long exposures, at least within the "sweet spot' of roughly ten seconds to a minute.
TMY isn't bad in that respect either. With all the 200-speed films designed for that purpose, including Super-XX, Bergger, and Fomapan, the contrast through
blue filtration was strongly diminished. But more common filters, like green or red, can also fall out of balance. One more thing to think about for you long exp
junkies, before you blame your development on that unexplicable neg that mysterious came out wrong.
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Originally Posted by Jac@stafford.net
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