Tmax 3200 may be gone :(

Chriscrawfordphoto

Chriscrawfordphoto

Real Men Shoot Film.
Local time
7:43 AM
Joined
Apr 1, 2007
Messages
11,629
I looked at Freestyle, B&H and Calumet and NO ONE has it in stock. I'd been buying tons of the short-date special from Freestyle for cheap and am down to 16 rolls....I hope more of the film comes back, even at normal price, its the mainstay of my doll house project.
 
Chris,

Do you feel Tmax 3200 has large advantage/unique characteristics (I've seen your doll house stuff and LOVE it) against Delta 3200 or Tri-X pushed? I used to use Tmax 3200 for semi-long project about a decade ago, but been away from it since then.
 
TMY-2 1600? Pretty, please?

Let's hope we get lucky and Kodak sprinkles a little of that TMY-2 400 magic on to something a lot faster.

And also sells it in 120...
 
Hmmm, this would be a shame. I don't use it but I was thinking on giving some a go to compare to D3200. Hopefully it is not as it seems.
 
Kodak may be on a exotic product killing spree, but so far they haven't ever omitted any cancellation notice, any cancellation was published months ahead of the fact. As they haven't said so, we can assume it was not cancelled. Maybe the current batch is out of stock, or suffers a uneven global distribution - in Europe everybody seems to have it in stock.
 
Photowarehouse seems to be blowing out shortdated or expired tmax3200 on ebay , I got 12 rolls about a month ago that expired in 2007
Someone posted the link above . I just started using this stuff , I like it in my iiif with the 25/4 . I plan to buy more from them and throw it in the freezer.
 
Last edited:
Problem is expired TMZ is basically worthless. This film quickly gets very grainy and loses speed past its expiry date. Even if frozen. I've tried expired Tmax 3200 a number of times hoping for a bargain and never liked the images I got. TWoK posted a link to a bunch of ebay sales of the film but they were mostly expired. One of the sellers had film that expired later this year but the rest were expired, some very old.
 
By the way, Chris, that happened to me last month with Portra800... What a shame! Fast film must be really fresh...

I hope, as Harry said before, Kodak's preparing a magic TMZ-2... Their last goal was leading best 100 color film (Ektar in several formats) and best 400 B&W film (TMax2), so I guess it wouldn't make any sense to quit high speed...

Cheers,

Juan
 
macodirect.de has TMZ "new for February", after they were out of it at my last purchase - which does not sound as if it were expired.

Sevo
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Problem is expired TMZ is basically worthless. This film quickly gets very grainy and loses speed past its expiry date. Even if frozen. I've tried expired Tmax 3200 a number of times hoping for a bargain and never liked the images I got. TWoK posted a link to a bunch of ebay sales of the film but they were mostly expired. One of the sellers had film that expired later this year but the rest were expired, some very old.
Click to expand...
Ah I see, I guess I have no idea what its supposed to look like, the two rolls of it I shot seem pretty decent to my eye , but then again I'm not well trained in what its supposed to look at.
 
Fresh Tmax 3200 can be quite good if processed carefully and exposed correctly. It is grainy and contrasty compared to 400 speed films but has pretty good shadow detail. I've found it gets pretty grainy the longer you wait past its expiration to use it and loses shadow detail and contrast. I had been buying a lot of Freestyle's short date special on Tmax 3200. It expires in May of this year and they were selling it for $5 a roll. Its normally around $8 a roll most places. Its working well, though it expires in a couple months, but I am going to have the last 16 rolls I have here used before that date comes. If the film really is gone, I'll use the Ilford stuff.
 
I have a roll of TMax 3200 in my Hexar at the moment - I know Rodinal would be less than ideal for processing, would ID11 be a reasonable choice?
 
nathanp said:
I have a roll of TMax 3200 in my Hexar at the moment - I know Rodinal would be less than ideal for processing, would ID11 be a reasonable choice?
Click to expand...

Neither Rodinal nor ID-11 are that good for Tmax 3200. I have used both. Rodinal produces extreme grain. ID-11 (I actually used Kodak D-76 but they're supposed to be identical) produced poor tonality in my opinion and grain wasnt that great either, though better than Rodinal. The Best developer in my experience for this film is Tmax Developer. Xtol is ok too but Tmax Developer gave nicer tonality and shadow detail to me. If Tmax Developer is hard to get where you live, you might try Ilford DD-X. Its what they recommend for their Delta 3200 and would probably be good for Tmax 3200. I've not tried it though.
 
I was pleasantly pleased with Tmax developer with a bunch of films and also rate DDX very highly (and Xtol) so would bet that DDX is likely to perform very well with this film. It works superbly with everything from the deltas to TriX, Neopan 1600, HP5, FP4 etc.
 
I've seen several of the B&W experts like Tom A. explain several times that residual radiation wreaks havoc on fast films and will quickly fog them even when frozen or cold stored. I've not seen that myself, but I'll take their word for it.
 
Hmm maybe I'll pick up some Tmax or DDX developer for it. I've got a few rolls of Ilford Delta 400 to try too
 
TWoK said:
I've seen several of the B&W experts like Tom A. explain several times that residual radiation wreaks havoc on fast films and will quickly fog them even when frozen or cold stored. I've not seen that myself, but I'll take their word for it.
Click to expand...

I believe that's also why it's difficult for a supplier to keep the stuff in stock. Cosmic radiation is everywhere, makes no difference if it's your own freezer or Freestyle's or Kodak's. So this may indeed just be a supply chain hiccup.
 
I hope not. I love this film. When it was mentioned last month, I called Kodak and they said it was not discontinued. The Kodak guy, Scott DiSabato said the same. Hopefully that wasn't just market speak for "not discontinued yet."

I put an email into Freestyle to enquiry about it missing on their website. I just ordered two bricks of it from B&H a couple weeks ago.

TMZ does get pretty nasty about a year after it expires, in my experience.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom