When you say, coarse and fine grain, do you mean grain that in the print will show up as much grain and/or little grain? Grainy *looking* or smooth? I don't want to assume I know what you mean, because I'm not always sure I do.
Janet On Mar 20, 2008, at 9:59 PM, Richard Knoppow wrote:
At 06:26 PM 3/20/2008, you wrote:How do they do with Kodak developers? On Mar 20, 2008, at 9:05 PM, Graham Hughes wrote:HP5 I'm not so strong on, but generally speaking TMax films are considered to be very "modern" with an extremely linear exposure curve and little to no toe; Tri-X and HP5 have a pretty linear exposure curve but with a noticeable toe and shoulder. What this means in terms of shooting is that Tri-X and HP5 will record shadow detail that the TMax films won't necessarily (something you can correct for by mild overexposure in-camera), but if you have a wide range of brightness in your subject the older films will show much less separation in the high tones. This can be quite irritating and require extensive fiddling in the darkroom to bring those highlights back from muddiness. You can partially compensate for this by using the right paper--Forte's Polywarmtone was muchbeloved in my darkroom for its ability to tame XP2's absurd shoulder.The Delta films are usually reckoned to be intermediate between the two; less tolerant of exposure errors than Tri-X or HP5, less grainy than either, and more tolerant of exposure errors than the equivalent TMax films. I haven't found Delta 400, the one I shoot the most, to be meaningfully grainy compared to TMax 400 or Tri-X, and it is generally a trooper. Delta 3200 is great when you need it but I prefer Neopan 1600 for general high speed use; the Delta film is grainier and has an odd exposure curve IMHO. I have little or no experience with Delta 100; I generally shoot FP4+ when I want something around that speed, which is a delightful film. GrahamThe above is partially the problem with tabular grain films. I think the main problem is that the contrast varies faster with development than conventional films. That means they are less tolerant of errors in time, agitation, temperature, than other films. Also all T-grain films are capable of very high densities so if you don't control exposure and developent carefully you can get negatives which have very dense highlights and are hard to print.As far as developers, Kodak and Ilford developers are pretty much interchangeable. Xtol is probably the optimum developer for a great many films but some have had problems with it. For maximum speed developers with Phenidone derivatives have some advantage over other developers by perhaps 3/4 stop compared to D-76 which remains the standard of comparison. Out of those Xtol will yield finer grain then D-76 and the T-Max developers and DDX and Microphen will give somewhat coarser grain. For the finest grain use either Microdol-X or Perceptol at full strength. There is a speed loss of about 3/4 stop compared to D-76 but even finer grain than with Xtol. As mentioned above 100T-Max has a very short toe characteristic being in that way similar to the old Super-XX sheet film. For a long toe film use Tri-X Pan Professional. Tri-X Pan (not professional) in 35mm and rolls has a conventional medium toe curve as does the current Plus-X Pan and the Ilford conventional roll films. The characteristic curve is shown in the data sheets for all of these films and can be compared. For roll and 35mm film don't forget Fuji Acros, an excellent ISO-100 T-grain film. Due to the nature of the ISO standard its a good idea to shoot many films at about 80% of the ISO speed. This will often result in better shadow detail.-- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx====================================================================== ======================================= To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.
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