18 stop Subject Brightness Range on Tmax400

[Tyler Boley]

Hi Steve, thanks for providing access to the results of your hard work. As usual your images are lovely. I'm in agreement with you and the others here about this great film...
Bruce's post as well, very informative. I have yet to really nail my film procedures for my Howtek, but even fairly normal zone system practice has been working well, though I might underdevelop from there a bit. With a high density range scanner, it's pretty hard to mess it up. How to find the optimum high density target is the hard part...

Hybrid workflows are yielding really wonderful results these days.
Tyler
http://www.custom-digital.com/

[Ben Syverson]

Not to get off-topic, but what do people usually rate TMY at? I've been shooting it at 200 and am happy with the results, but this thread suggests I could shoot it at 400 and possibly be just as happy.

[venchka]

This information applies to the previous Tmax 400 (TMY) or the NEW Improved Tmax 400 (TMY-2) ?

[sanking]

Sandy, what two bath developer do you like.

Kirk,

Diafine is a good two bath developer for LF. It is a true two-bath formula in that no development at all takes place in Solution A. The stock solutions are also very long-lived.

The Ansel Adams divided D-23 formula (and with variations by Barry Thornton) is also very nice, and gives slightly finer grain than Diafine. But it is not a 100% two bath formula since some development takes place in Solution A, which makes time and temperature control more important than with Diafine.

I am also using the Pyrocat-HD formula as a divided developer for MF film, and it produces negatives of very high acutance.

For many years I used BTZS procedures for testing, exposing and developing film, and this allowed for excellent control with regular darkroom printing. However, if one's goal is to scan and print digitally BTZS type controls are not necessary. These days I just expose for the shadows and develop in a two-bath solution and then adjust tonalities in the scanned image file.

Sandy

[sanking]

Not to get off-topic, but what do people usually rate TMY at? I've been shooting it at 200 and am happy with the results, but this thread suggests I could shoot it at 400 and possibly be just as happy.

Depends on how you meter. With LF I base exposure on an incident reading in the shadows, and rate TMY at EF 400. This gives excellent shadow detail.

When I use the same film with a MF camera with built-in meter I rate TMY at EF 200.


Sandy

[Ken Lee]

You might find this thread helpful: Anybody using Pyrocat-HD or MC as a Compensating Developer?

[Bruce Watson]

Not to get off-topic, but what do people usually rate TMY at? I've been shooting it at 200 and am happy with the results, but this thread suggests I could shoot it at 400 and possibly be just as happy.

Much depends on your developer, dilution, agitation method, etc. Enough so you really need to test for yourself to be sure.

For reference, with XTOL 1:3, continuous agitation from a Jobo CPP-2 using a 3010 tank, I get an EI of 500 from 5x4 TMY-2. Clearly, YMMV.

[Steve Gledhill]

This information applies to the previous Tmax 400 (TMY) or the NEW Improved Tmax 400 (TMY-2) ?

Apologies for not making it clear - I'm using the new Tmax400 - "400TMY-2".

[venchka]

Apologies for not making it clear - I'm using the new Tmax400 - "400TMY-2".

Fantastic! So am I. Thanks for all of the great information. Your work is stunning. My feeble efforts need much improvement.

Cheers!

[jp]

Thanks for the testing and verification of what I suspected but didn't do the calculations for.

I believe it. I recently made a few photos at Fort Knox in prospect ME. The interior was seemingly dungeon dark. This cannon was sort of between the interior and a shaded area. I had probably a couple second exposure, I didn't write it down. Outside (through the wall opening) would have been normal bright sunny day, which is magnitudes brighter to say the least. I could see the outdoor detail in the negative, but not on the contact print or quick scan. Scan or print for that outdoor range, and there it is!

There is quite a bit of range available on the indoor exposure too, around the bricks, shadows, rust, bright stone, etc..

This is with TMY2 on my speed graphic / optar 127 lens. The film was processed in straight D76 and scanned on my epson v700.