tri-x and tmax 400 dev times...

SimonSawSunlight

SimonSawSunlight

Simon Fabel
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the massive devchart gives the same time for kodak tri-x 400 and tmax 400 in ilford ilfotec lc29 1+19 (6.5min).
I shoot 98% tri-x and am really quite used to the process.
I just put one roll of tri-x and one roll of tmax together in the tank, did everything as I always do and while the tri-x came out fine as usual, the tmax looks a little underexposed/-developed, about 1 or 1.5 stops below the tri-x I'd say. :confused:

do they actually require different times with whatever developer or is it just the ilfotec?
 
More or less the same, so I do them the same. But that could vary depending on the developer or in my case I shoot at a different EI than ISO 400. I've done them together many times and have not had any problems
 
It varies by developer, but for D-76 and Tmax Developer, the only two developers I have experience with using on both films, the times are within 30 seconds of each other between the two films. You sure the Tmax 400 roll was exposed correctly? Developing shouldn't have been an issue.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
It varies by developer, but for D-76 and Tmax Developer, the only two developers I have experience with using on both films, the times are within 30 seconds of each other between the two films. You sure the Tmax 400 roll was exposed correctly? Developing shouldn't have been an issue.
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yes it has been exposed correctly, I mean just like I expose my tri-x...
 
I have done several batches together with 120 and also with 35mm and found the same times worked fine. So close I would not care to separate these two films. Dev was DDX.
 
rogerzilla said:
I'm not sure I'd want to put T-Max in a tank with anything else, since it turns the developer pink.
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I find it best to presoak tmax and all bw films for that matter. Most of the surface dye will be removed but that is not why I do it. The emultion "opens up" for development. Everything is more even. As to the OP . Thank you for the topic. I have no experience to contribute with said developer. In tmax developer I use the same time ( formula 1:4).
 
f16sunshine said:
I find it best to presoak tmax and all bw films for that matter. Most of the surface dye will be removed but that is not why I do it. The emultion "opens up" for development. Everything is more even. As to the OP . Thank you for the topic. I have no experience to contribute with said developer. In tmax developer I use the same time ( formula 1:4).
Click to expand...

That is absolutely untrue. Both Kodak and Ilford no longer recommend presoaking, as it can lead to uneven development with modern films because it takes the developer a long time to displace the water absorbed by the emulsion during the presoak. Presoaking is one of those old, outdated techniques that have stuck around that people just don't seem to want to allow to die. There is no benefit to it, and considerable possibility of harm.
 
I've never pre-soaked my film, however some knowledgable people certainly do. For example, PE on apug.org, a former Kodak film engineer, apparently does...
 
Returning to the OP question, underdeveloped and underexposed are two different things, and you can check it easily from the negatives. At what speed are you rating tmax?


Best,
Pau
 
How did they wet print? The conventional wisdom is that Tmax negs look thinner than TriX but should print fine. I've found that to be true the few times I've used Tmax, especially the new 400, but I don't shoot Tmax very often. See how the negs print/scan; if you wet print, are the negs printing with the same contrast? If they're within a half variable contrast filter, you have good shadow detail, and the highlights aren't blown, the negs are developed properly for your use.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
That is absolutely untrue. Both Kodak and Ilford no longer recommend presoaking, as it can lead to uneven development with modern films because it takes the developer a long time to displace the water absorbed by the emulsion during the presoak. Presoaking is one of those old, outdated techniques that have stuck around that people just don't seem to want to allow to die. There is no benefit to it, and considerable possibility of harm.
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Appreciate your enthusiasm for killing old habits. Certainly there are some I would like to let die. I'm keeping mine in this case. I pre-soaked in my first lesson in 1982 as a teen student, all the years since, and will continue. The only times that I have had uneven development was when in a hurry and skipped pre-soaking.
 
I used to presoak in some cases (with pyrocat HD) and then stopped and noticed no issues with any film any time. I regard it as a waste of time now.

Any dye coming off Tmax wont harm TriX or vica versa.
 
By the way, I've just checked that in D76 1+1 (sorry, that's what I use) the developing
time for tmy is 28% longer than the one for trix (12m 30s vs. 9m 45s). Of course,
d76 and lc29 are different developers, but such a large difference may suggest a
typo somewhere? Certainly, a 78% of the recomended time may account for your
thin negatives.

Best,
Pau

P.S.: it looks like I was looking at the time of the old tmy. Current tmy
official times are much closer to those of trix (just a 4% longer, which is
almost negligible). I was developing some tmax 100 this weekend, and
that provided me with the wrong data.
 
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pau3 said:
Returning to the OP question, underdeveloped and underexposed are two different things, and you can check it easily from the negatives. At what speed are you rating tmax?


Best,
Pau
Click to expand...

yes, they look underdeveloped rather than underexposed. I rated it at 400.
 
In the developer I use, XTOL, the times for Tri-X and TMY differ by 30 seconds I think. I'm sure if you ran them together and split the difference, it wouldn't be the end of the world, but I try not to do that. It's easy enough to wait until I have enough rolls of either type to develop 4 rolls of that type together.

That being said, a lot of my TMY *looks* a bit thin on the negative, but it usually wet prints at grade 2 just like my Tri-X does. It also scans just fine. In fact, the first time I developed TMY in a side by side comparison with Tri-X, I figured I messed up the TMY roll somehow because it looked thin. So I developed a second strip of it and it came out the same. I think I might have even extended the time by 10%. Anyway, once I scanned it and wet printed it, I realized it was worked just fine.

That's not to say that you might not want to increase development times a bit for your working habits. And maybe this isn't the problem you were having. I still haven't shot and printed enough TMY to decide if I want longer development... This is a project maybe for this summer for me: to really work out my TMY process.

I saw a comment on APUG the other month about how TMY looks thin compared to other films. They gave some reasoning about why, but I forget what it was. I can't seem to find it either.
 
Correct developed Tmax 400 film looks underdeveloped (thin negatives) compared to "normal" (non T-grain) film. However despite looking thin it scans without any problem.

EDIT: From memory, it might have been Sven (Sven Koller), who wrote about it somewhere in his blog.
 
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