Please Help Tmax 400 or Tri-X?

Please Help Tmax 400 or Tri-X?

  • T max 400

    Votes: 54 12.9%

  • Tri -X

    Votes: 267 63.7%

  • HP5

    Votes: 79 18.9%

  • Delta 400

    Votes: 19 4.5%
  • Total voters
    419
Trius said:
If so, then you don't know how to treat it. Tastes may vary, so please keep that in mind as well.
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Would you please read my hole message with thougt. I would be very, very pleased if you just tell me how to do it. Keep in mind that you don´t know that you´re doing two stops over.... So pulling is out of question. And I`m not going to do that Farmer´s stuff🙂

I was just trying to say that the T-Max 400 is very forgiving film for unwanted overexposures. Tri-x is a great film and I use it alot, but they differ in this quite alot, and I´m not speaking pushing/pulling, which means a different thing.
 
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Very clear issue for me.
Tri-X and Tmax are not exclusive one or the other but complementary:

For a bright day or camera mounted flash: Tri-x for its great rendition of whites tones besides the dark ones. With Tmax in such situations you will near disaster. Tmax is rather for studio controlled light, but still usable in the following case:

For cloudy day, or non contrasty situations: Tmax, as you will enjoy fine grain without paying the penalty.

For unexpected ISO 1600: Neopan1600, but without it, the closer will be pushing Tmax.

For unexpected ISO 200 or 100: Tri-x. At 100 Tri-x reaches its peak of beauty and low grain.

In conclusion, first and meticulous choice will be to take both with you. If only one, then Tri-x is the more all inclusive film.

Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Ruben
 
T max 400 - Modern grain, lovely shadows if you play with it
Tri- x - Classic grain, elegat tones if you play around
HP5 - Classic grain, excellent shadows (deepest I have ever seen) excellent night shooter
Delta 400 - Modern grain, great high key, I don`t like delta 400 🙂
 
david b said:
It's only a matter of time before Kodak sells off it's film division and all hell breaks loose. Just use Ilford.
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Many of us are into film for its individual look. If the point is just to stick to a product that's here for good, wouldn't it make more sense to go digital?
 
Tmax and Tri-X are different animals.....sometimes when I see a Tmax100 shot here it's so smooth and grainless I think it's taken with an RD-1 or M8. Beautiful film....and I just do it in Rodinol with pretty consistent results, but I'm not into pushin' and pullin' (well, not in the darkroom anyways).
But for a classic looking low-light portraiture you can't beat Tri-X AFAIC.
 
3js said:
Would you please read my hole [sic] message with thougt. I would be very, very pleased if you just tell me how to do it. Keep in mind that you don´t know that you´re doing two stops over.... So pulling is out of question. And I`m not going to do that Farmer´s stuff🙂

I was just trying to say that the T-Max 400 is very forgiving film for unwanted overexposures. Tri-x is a great film and I use it alot, but they differ in this quite alot, and I´m not speaking pushing/pulling, which means a different thing.
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Dilute compensating developer, reduced agitation, which is my regular routine. If necessary, soft paper, a #1 with water bath development usually works. Haven't gotten into the PS thing yet. 😀

Edit: Thanks for the tip on TMax 400 overexposure. I find the 400BW to have a hard limit on overexposure, at least for my tastes. So that TMX is different is interesting. Right, they're not the same film at all, but both are T-grain. My results with 400BW are that 200 is too much, 250 is about right, 320 can work. 400 is too thin for most shots.
 
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All good options here,

My current fav is tri-x 400 at 250iso and developed in Perceptol 1+1, 12 mins...

But I've had great results with Neopan 400, and HP5 aswell.

I'm not really into delta and t-max, but thats just a matter of taste. I've seen them put to great efford countless times.
 
The formula is simple: T-Max for flat indoor light and Tri-X for hard indoor light.

Tri-X has more gradation in the highlights. It was designed back when most public spaces were still lit by incandescent lights. That meant there were small pools of bright light, fading away into darkness. The tone curve of Tri-X was designed so you could hold detail in the light areas near the lamps without losing shadow detail in the darker areas. The same scene photographed on T-Max would look more like "soot and chalk," with too-hard highlights and too-dark shadows.

T-Max 400 has more contrast in the highlights. It was designed more recently, by which time most public spaces were lit by fluorescent lamps. These produce broad, even light with few deep shadows but also with very little directionality or shape. T-Max's harder tone curve hardens up the highlight areas so fluorescent-lit scenes look a bit snappier. The same scene photographed on Tri-X would look gray and flat, as if it had been dipped in mud.

So, which one to take on a trip? Depends on what kinds of spaces you're going to be visiting...
 
Tri-X is my long time favorite.. HP5 is also a good film but T-Max is very unforgiving of simple processing errors so I never use it..
 
Hey Wes, can you elaborate on the picture you posted above? I understand from your posting that it was taken with Plus-X. But can you explain further about the left-hand versus right-hand portions of the image?

Thanks,
Randy
 
I was a die-hard Tri-X user until I realized that Neopan 400 canisters are WAY easier to open with my teeth for home developing purposes. The metal is a lot thinner. You could probably run over a Tri-X canister with a truck and nothing would happen to it, which is nice for travel purposes but makes it almost impossible to get the damn tops off in the dark. The Neopan canisters deform really easily if you squeeze them a bit with your back teeth and then the tops pop right off.

But I digress. I really like both of these films. I variably use a handheld incident meter, an on-board incident meter (on the Rollei), or no meter at all and have very very few shots that are not satisfactory exposure-wise. I don't print my own so I judge my satisfaction with negatives based on how well they scan on my crappy flatbed scanner and how little fussing around they require in Photoshop. In this sense I like Neopan 400 best of all -- I hardly have to do anything to my Neopan negatives. But I don't know how they'd print.

I recently used TMax (in 120) for the first time and I hate it. The scans are flat and terrible and practically impossible to make look like I want them to look in Photoshop. I attached two examples to illustrate this. The first one is Tri-X 400, the second one TMax 400. Both were taken with the same camera (Rollei) using the on-board meter, of the same dog, in similar lighting circumstances in basically the same place (but different days -- OK, so I take the same photos over and over again, shoot me). Besides the fact that I focused on his ass instead of his face in the second photo (oops) these look totally different to me. In addition, the first one required very little post-processing, and the second took a lot of flogging and still didn't end up any better than you see it.

I guess TMax has its virtues but my reaction to it is "yuck."

419107334_9d270d1053_o.jpg

Tri-X 400

solo_ggp_0307_5.jpg

TMax 400
 
That's not a fair comparison Melanie. I don't understand people who say Tmax400 is crap. Don't get me wrong, Tri-X is still my fave, but Tmax is a nice change once in a while.
I don't find it finicky at all to develop. This is an M3 and 90mm V1 Summicron, 1/50th@F2.8, in Rodinol 1+50 for 10 minutes.
 

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Looks to me like the T Max 400 has very little "toe"... the darker tones transition quickly to black. Melanie's Tri-X dog shot has much richer shadows. I wonder if and how it might help to give the T Max more exposure and less development; maybe it just gets dull?
 
tri-x it is so versatile:

Contrasty desert scenes overexpose by one stop underdevelop by one stop to a stop in a half, you will retain shadow without blocking up highlights.

Cloudy rainy weather, underexpose by one stop, overdevelop by one stop or slightly more, you will extend your midtones, and shadow areas.

Process it in Rodinal, you will win a pultizer!

Night scenes got you down, no problem, leica m, 35mm 1.4 lens, tri-x 1000asa, expose normal, process it in accufine at 70 for 5 minutes, another pulitzer!

it is endless!

Portraits, rate it at 250, process in rodinal, 1:50, you just had the most amazing wet dream in your life!

Ok, I got to stop, I am getting really horny now!
 
Sisyphus said:
tri-x it is so versatile:

Contrasty desert scenes overexpose by one stop underdevelop by one stop to a stop in a half, you will retain shadow without blocking up highlights.

Cloudy rainy weather, underexpose by one stop, overdevelop by one stop or slightly more, you will extend your midtones, and shadow areas.

Process it in Rodinal, you will win a pultizer!

Night scenes got you down, no problem, leica m, 35mm 1.4 lens, tri-x 1000asa, expose normal, process it in accufine at 70 for 5 minutes, another pulitzer!

it is endless!

Portraits, rate it at 250, process in rodinal, 1:50, you just had the most amazing wet dream in your life!

Ok, I got to stop, I am getting really horny now!
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Just out of curiosity: do you process your Tri-X in Rodinal no matter a which speed it was shot ? (i.e. 400 or slower) or only if you exposed it at slower then its nominal (which is 400) ? I'm quite a newbie into B&W, so far learning the virtues of Tri-X in HC-110, but heard Rodinal is good for slower films (200 and downwards)...
 
I voted for Tri-X, but I equally like Neopan 400. They are interchangeable as far as I am concerned. I even develop them for the same time in HC-110. Both 9 minutes at 20c in dilution H.
 
Unfortunately I haven't experimented enough with any of these films
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Then go for traditional emulsions (HP5, Tri-X or Neopan 400). They are easier to process, more forgiving emulsions, incredible latitude in D-76 or HC-110.

Only drawback, they may be harder to scan well because of larger grain.

If you are going to (mostly) scan consider a C-41 B&W such as Ilford XP2 or Kodak BW400CN (or whatever its current name is). They would be my personal choice for travel, because it is so easy to have the occasional roll processed on location and see how it is coming along.
 
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