Kodak Tri x 320 What is your opinion ?

[Torontoamateur]

This "old favourite" has withstood decades and is still going.

It is expen$ive.

Is it so different?

I do portraits of family mostly with my 8x10 cameras . Is it worth the higher cost?

With the rest of the cost of chemicals and the time and paper and darkroom chemicals is the film cost per sheet really that significant ?

What is your opinion or experience with 8x10 Tri X ?

BTW I have been using FP4and HP5 for the most part so far.

Confused in The Great White North

[Michael R]

TXP 320 has a different exposure-density curve than many other films. It was originally intended primarily for controlled lighting/studio/portrait situations. It has a somewhat longer toe (ie a little less contrast in dark areas) than a film like FP4/HP5, and a somewhat “upswept” curve shape favouring mid tone and highlight contrast, compared with FP4/HP5. It will also easily develop to higher densities compared with FP4/HP5.

A unique feature is the slight “tooth” to the base side of the film, originally intended for retouching. The nice thing about that is it means you’re less likely to have to deal with Newton rings when glass is involved (scanning, glass enlarger carriers, contact printing).

It’s expensive, yes. Kodak sheet films are expensive but they’re still my favourite. I really think they are still the best so I’ll hang on as long as I can. If I shot 8x10 and shot a lot of film, it might be a different story though. Depends on what you can afford I guess.

This "old favourite" has withstood decades and is still going.

It is expen$ive.

Is it so different?

I do portraits of family mostly with my 8x10 cameras . Is it worth the higher cost?

With the rest of the cost of chemicals and the time and paper and darkroom chemicals is the film cost per sheet really that significant ?

What is your opinion or experience with 8x10 Tri X ?

BTW I have been using FP4and HP5 for the most part so far.

Confused in The Great White North

[Alan Klein]

TXP 320 has a different exposure-density curve than many other films. It was originally intended primarily for controlled lighting/studio/portrait situations. It has a somewhat longer toe (ie a little less contrast in dark areas) than a film like FP4/HP5, and a somewhat “upswept” curve shape favouring mid tone and highlight contrast, compared with FP4/HP5. It will also easily develop to higher densities compared with FP4/HP5.

A unique feature is the slight “tooth” to the base side of the film, originally intended for retouching. The nice thing about that is it means you’re less likely to have to deal with Newton rings when glass is involved (scanning, glass enlarger carriers, contact printing).

It’s expensive, yes. Kodak sheet films are expensive but they’re still my favourite. I really think they are still the best so I’ll hang on as long as I can. If I shot 8x10 and shot a lot of film, it might be a different story though. Depends on what you can afford I guess.

Michael can you explain Tmax 100 and 400 in terms of density curve and other factors as well in relationship to these other films?

[Daniel Unkefer]

There is a lot of olde Tri-X Pro around and I have some 220 TXP I loaded up on, when 220 was phasing put. As it gets older it generally requires more exposure and adjusted developing. 4x5 TXP I shot a lot in the eighties and I always liked it a lot. Required more exposure than 35mm and 120 Tri-X, was good to have to compare against HP-5 (not +).

[jnantz]

I used to love tri x, but haven't bought it in ages because their emulsion scientists improved it too much.. it's almost like tmy

[paulbarden]

IMO there's no compelling reason to buy Tri-X rather than any other film, many of which are literally HALF the price.

[Sal Santamaura]

TXP 320 has a different exposure-density curve than many other films. It was originally intended primarily for controlled lighting/studio/portrait situations. It has a somewhat longer toe (ie a little less contrast in dark areas) than a film like FP4/HP5, and a somewhat “upswept” curve shape favouring mid tone and highlight contrast, compared with FP4/HP5. It will also easily develop to higher densities compared with FP4/HP5.

A unique feature is the slight “tooth” to the base side of the film, originally intended for retouching. The nice thing about that is it means you’re less likely to have to deal with Newton rings when glass is involved (scanning, glass enlarger carriers, contact printing).

It’s expensive, yes. Kodak sheet films are expensive but they’re still my favourite. I really think they are still the best so I’ll hang on as long as I can. If I shot 8x10 and shot a lot of film, it might be a different story though. Depends on what you can afford I guess.

As usual, Michael provides a thorough, succinct synopsis of a film's characteristics. Given how much struggle with Newton's rings gets documented on this and other forums, the value of 320TXP's base side coating cannot be stressed enough. Also, considering the attention paid to film flatness in holders, especially for 8x10 and larger, it's important to note that the 320TXP base side coating makes this the most rigid sheet film on the market. It does not sag to any appreciable degree. The attached image was made on 8x10 320TXP. In scanning, the only curve adjustment made was to slightly roll off the extreme high values, i.e. foreground snow areas. In a darkroom print they're burned in a bit.

IMO there's no compelling reason to buy Tri-X rather than any other film, many of which are literally HALF the price.

I would argue that, for some users, the factors described are more than compelling reasons to purchase 320TXP. If those things are not important to someone, perhaps they will be happy with lesser products.

[Bruce Watson]

This "old favourite" has withstood decades and is still going.

It *is* an old favorite. No question. It took me years to let Tri-X go. But I did. I replaced it with TMY. For a couple of reasons.

First, TMY has much better reciprocity characteristics than any cubic-grained film like Tri-X. Not a concern in smaller formats where you hardly run into long exposures except for night photography. But for LF, I ran into it all the time. I had very difficult times hitting my exposures exactly right -- that is, so that my shadow detail held up. It was a knife edge kinda deal for me, using 1/4 and 1/8 second shutter speeds a lot (welcome to LF), which is fine for the midtones / highlights, but which tends to starve the shadows of photons (puts the shadows into reciprocity failure).

First time I tried TMY it was "boom -- problem over". I never put any shadows into reciprocity again. This made TMY a no-brainer for me; I threw the rest of my opened Tri-X box in the trash and never looked back. I know -- sacrilege, right?

Second, and more subjective for sure, I find the response curve for TMY to be much more how I see the world in B&W. TMY is more linear I think, with a short toe and hardly any shouldering off. But it's the way it renders colors to B&W that I like best. It renders colors to grayscale just how my mind wants to see it done. Yeah, probably not everybody's taste. But it's what I want in a film.

The closest I've found in a cubic-grained film is FP-4+, but it's too slow for me. I really want an ISO of around 400 or higher (TMY in XTOL gave me a PEI of 500 in my system). And of course its reciprocity characteristics show up even more because it's a slower film.

So yeah, for me TMY is worth the money. It's the only B&W film I've used for the last 20 years or so.

But of course, YMMV.

[Michael R]

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:



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:



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.

Michael can you explain Tmax 100 and 400 in terms of density curve and other factors as well in relationship to these other films?

[Tin Can]

Glad I bought that KODAK garbage

Got a case on ice 320

11X14