Digital BW, The Print

In regards to TMAX 400, while I haven't shot the material in several years I do have a background setting up a few professional B&W processing lines and recall the film's nuances perfectly. The debate between shooting the film at ASA 400 -vs- 320 was always vocal on various forums.

Personally I preferred shooting it at 320 because of it's shoulder. I also found TMAX less flexible for pushing like TX or HP5 was. However, a lot of old school B&W printers prefered negs a bit more on the thinner side while I like a bit beefier negs and lower paper contrast grades. TMAX developer, in my opinion, was the best developer for it at 1:4 while Xtol was a close second. HC-110 was fair while D-76 was ok but not remarkable.

You have to remember what the TMAX films were designed to do. Kodak wanted a pair of B&W films that had more closely matched processing times, met the needs of studio photogs who wanted a straighter shoulder, and was cheaper to manufacture. The TMAX twins met these goals perfectly, but I still feel both emulsions 'lack' the personality of classic B&W films like TX or HP5 or FP4. Fuji Acros is a near clone of TMY 100, and when I google the film some of my images come up :-) Tri-X professional, provided it's still made, is half way between TMAX 400 and classic TXT in terms of tonality, but rates lower than 300 ASA in my book.

Plus-X was a notoriously difficult to process with volume consistency, and was a bear to keep uniform in sheet format which wasn't helped by it's short process time. Panatomic - X was even worse, but had stunning tonality in small format. John Sexton used to write articles on how to build holders for tray development of Plus-X that reduced agitation uniformity issues. In 120 I could keep Plus-X real smooth but in 35mm those sprocket holes caused all sorts of problems. Rotary agitation solved the problem, but constant agitation of Plus-X or Tri-X tends to cause issues with highlight -vs- shadow detail. Hence the TMAX films and their much better behaviour with modern mechanical processing. For hand processing though I'll take TX or HP5 in HC-110 at 1:31 over TMY or TMX anyday, but that's personal taste. I'll also take FP4 over TMX 100 by a long shot.

Remember that the chromogenic B&W films like XP2 were essentially monochrome color neg films. XP2 simply lacked the orange mask of the Kodak version so it was easier to print on conventional B&W paper. The Kodak chromogenics that came later were friendlier with labs using color heads and needed the orange mask to match analog color tables and have a chance at getting a greyscale print from optical gear. With today's digital processing any color neg film will deliver the same curve, better grain, and channel mixing, so the B&W C-41 films are obsolete. I had fun with XP-2 in 6x7 shooting very long brightness ranges and yielding perfect prints with creamy tonality.

One big issue with the chromogenics was they had very little under exposure lattitude (contrary to marketing) and shared the same problem with C-41 films in that dye clouds get chunky and gritty at low DMAX, and this is not the same grain some of us find nostalgic in conventional B&W films. Yes, you could push them (any C-41 film can be pushed contrary to urban myth) but there were better solutions in higher speed B&W. Now a days you are better off shooting regular neg and channel mixing, or desaturating slide film. Last, the B&W chromo films didn't work with zone system very well because they had highly compressed density curves. 

Large format contact printing is in my opinion the apex of B&W fine art production. Even in 4x5 they are remarkable. At 8x10 they'll take your breath away and at 11x14 they'll stop your heart. Too bad they are now rarely made or seen.

--WS

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Tony Sleep <TonySleep@...> wrote:
>
> On 05/09/2012 Seth Rossman wrote:
> > BUT, that was not the OP.
> > 
> > TMax "with standard development," still left too many questions. WHAT
> > standard developer? 
> 
> Fair point.
> 
> TMax400 in Kodak's own TMax developer is very, very good. I never found a 
> dev that suited it better, nor other 35mm T-grain films. I used it for 
> many years.
> 
> I used to rate at ISO400 and dev at 1+4
> 
> 6min 30sec 20C
> 6min 15sec 21C
> 6min 0sec  22C
> 5min 45sec 23C
> 5min 30sec 24C
> 
> The above, off a yellowed piece of paper on my darkroom wall, are probably 
> about 10% less than Kodak's, due to my preference for delicate negs. 
> ISO400 was spot on. I remember that I preferred 24C, but can't now 
> remember why. Probably not just impatience. Even at these relatively short 
> times I never had any problems with uneven processing.
> 
> These negs were aimed at printing with a Durst dichroic head onto 
> (usually) multigrade papers. They present no problems with scanning.
> -- 
> Regards
> 
> Tony Sleep
> http://tonysleep.co.uk
>