Tri-X, T-Max 400, and TMZ comparison

T

Tim Gray

Well-known
Local time
1:44 AM
Joined
Aug 28, 2006
Messages
1,965
View My Gallery
I was testing some films this weekend and ended up comparing Tri-X shot at 400, T-Max 400 at 400, and T-Max 3200 at 800 (close to it's real speed), all dev'd in XTOL 1:1. I did comparisons of both scans and real darkroom prints. Thought you guys might be interested.

I kind of got sick of hearing all the things these films are *supposed* to be and decided to test them for myself. I'm not a darkroom master by any stretch of the imagination.

Summary:
Tri-X and TMY-2 are pretty close, all things considered. The differences in grain were magnified more with wet printing than scanning. I haven't done more general shooting with TMY-2 (which I am going to start doing soon), so take it with a grain of salt. But, it is noticeably sharper and a bit finer grained from what I saw. It's pretty easy to process and shoot, just like Tri-X. And I didn't find it's grain character or tonality horrible like it's often made out to be. I don't know if that's just me or... 😀

Oh, and TMZ is awesome.

comparison here
 
Your scans are WAY too flat. At normal contrast, the grain, sharpness, and tonality differences become apparent. The Nikon scanner you use is like mine, it gives flat lifeless scans with muddy midtones. You simply have to add curves adjustments and sometimes levels in Photoshop to get normal contrast, like this:

mack-raw.jpg

The scan from the scanner, scanned with Viewscan

mack-done.jpg

Proper contrast added so the photo doesn't look blah and flat. Grain becomes much more apparent at normal contrast levels, and the difference in graininess from different films becomes very obvious.
 
Can't comment on the comparison much, but despite relatively fine grain on the new TriX, its resolution is poor by comparison with modern films. Neopan 400 and Delta 400 resolve far more detail and have finer grain, but when the grain shows little difference the resolution gulf is often more obvious. Still love TriX tho!
 
Chris, I'm trying to get to grips with scanning and editing, can you maybe recommend some literature or tutorials on how to improve contrast and such? That would be very helpful.

Oh also, sorry for hijacking the thread O🙂
 
I wouldn't call it too flat. One of the complaints I often see about 'tests' is too much adjustment of the scans to achieve a final image masks the differences in the underlying material. I made an attempt to adjust the scans so that they a) looked similar and b) showed most of the range in the negative without too much clipping on either end. The originals are much much flatter than this.

I was a bit flat on the highlight end of the negative scans, no doubt influenced by the specular highlights, but they look pretty close to the grade 2 prints, which was the goal. How is that too flat? 😀

By the way, the scans of the prints look pretty close to the prints themselves in terms of range. At least on the monitors I look at.
 
Last edited:
I agree that they arent too flat. Chris your example of 'Proper contrast' is too contrasty for my tastes to be called normal. Seems everybody wants more contrast these days.
 
Tim Gray said:
I wouldn't call it too flat. One of the complaints I often see about 'tests' is too much adjustment of the scans to achieve a final image masks the differences in the underlying material. I made an attempt to adjust the scans so that they a) looked similar and b) showed most of the range in the negative without too much clipping on either end. The originals are much much flatter than this.

I was a bit flat on the highlight end of the negative scans, no doubt influenced by the specular highlights, but they look pretty close to the grade 2 prints, which was the goal. How is that too flat? 😀

By the way, the scans of the prints look pretty close to the prints themselves in terms of range. At least on the monitors I look at.
Click to expand...

Your monitor may be calibrated different than mine and if your printer matches your prints, then thats fine, but on my screen, calibrated to the standard used for commercial printing your scans are flat. I find a lot of darkroom workers make too flat of prints too though, because most people simply do not know what a good print looks like. A lot of time spent looking at prints in places like MOMA, or even in galleries that sell works by great photographers (Santa Fe is full of them, I learned a lot there) shows you that most people print with way too little midtone contrast.
 
Krzys said:
I agree that they arent too flat. Chris your example of 'Proper contrast' is too contrasty for my tastes to be called normal. Seems everybody wants more contrast these days.
Click to expand...

Whats too contrasty? Do they have blown highlights that shouldn't be? (windows in indoor pics are going to be near-paper base white, that's simply reality because of the brightness difference). On my screen, which is a self-calibrating monitor designed for graphics work, my images have good highlight and shadow detail and my prints match the screen.

Your screen is probably not capable of displaying the full range if its an LCD, most of them suck. I had to save money for nearly a year to buy the nearly $2000 monitor I bought when I lived in Santa Fe (making good money back then!) because nothing else satisfied me when it came to displaying tones properly so they match the prints. So I suspect that if you saw my photos in print or on my screen, you'd like them.
 
First of all, I never printed the scans. I printed the negatives in a darkroom. So there's no matching of a printer to the screen.

I agree with you that some of it is subjective. But still, my goal of the negative scans was to match prints made in the darkroom. Which I made and scanned and showed. I never mentioned calibration of monitors, printers, etc., since that doesn't fit into the way I work at the moment - I never claimed to be an expert at the digital side of things. Never mind the problem with screens calibrated for gamma 1.8 and 2.2. I didn't adjust the wet prints scans at all.

The point was to try reach a middle ground between the scans and the wet prints. The full sized scans are there if you wanted to download them and adjust them yourself. I can make the unadjusted scans available too.
 
Tim Gray said:
I wouldn't call it too flat. One of the complaints I often see about 'tests' is too much adjustment of the scans to achieve a final image masks the differences in the underlying material. I made an attempt to adjust the scans so that they a) looked similar and b) showed most of the range in the negative without too much clipping on either end. The originals are much much flatter than this.

I was a bit flat on the highlight end of the negative scans, no doubt influenced by the specular highlights, but they look pretty close to the grade 2 prints, which was the goal. How is that too flat? 😀

By the way, the scans of the prints look pretty close to the prints themselves in terms of range. At least on the monitors I look at.
Click to expand...

I agree with you on this. If we change the variables especially with scanners the exercise becomes meaningless. Probably the best way to compare is to not scan the negative just print on number 2 paper (obviously, you will have to adjust exposure time, like you I would pick an easy subject. So to minimize the exposure time difference). Then scan (do them with the same settings) the print like you did for comparison.
 
Thank you for sharing this valuable test. I'm changing my standard film and this really helps.

Tim Gray said:
I was testing some films this weekend and ended up comparing Tri-X shot at 400, T-Max 400 at 400, and T-Max 3200 at 800 (close to it's real speed), all dev'd in XTOL 1:1. I did comparisons of both scans and real darkroom prints. Thought you guys might be interested.

I kind of got sick of hearing all the things these films are *supposed* to be and decided to test them for myself. I'm not a darkroom master by any stretch of the imagination.

Summary:
Tri-X and TMY-2 are pretty close, all things considered. The differences in grain were magnified more with wet printing than scanning. I haven't done more general shooting with TMY-2 (which I am going to start doing soon), so take it with a grain of salt. But, it is noticeably sharper and a bit finer grained from what I saw. It's pretty easy to process and shoot, just like Tri-X. And I didn't find it's grain character or tonality horrible like it's often made out to be. I don't know if that's just me or... 😀

Oh, and TMZ is awesome.

comparison here
Click to expand...
 
Just an update - I looked at the neg scans and readjusted them. I initially did them the day before I did the wet prints and never revisited them to compare. They now look closer to the overall tonality of the wet prints BUT the neg scans no longer match each other as well (which is how I initially adjusted them). So there are some differences in the gray scale separation... don't read too much into it. Or do. It's hard to tell exactly. On one hand you could probably adjust them to be very similar, negating any differences in the film and processing. On the other hand, a 'typical' adjustment that you might do is more representative of what you might end up with.

The infinite possibilities available in photoshop just highlight the fact that it's really hard to make absolute statements based on comparisons such as these 😀 - if you don't know exactly what was done, it's hard to draw hard conclusions about things like tonality. That doesn't make them useless in my mind, but something to remember. Grain is a little more straightforward...

I also linked to the original unadjusted scans.
 
The original test scans looked good to me on my Mac monitor(s). They didn't seem flat. But Christopher's adjustments to his image, while further than I would go, still look great to me (nice "Rembrandt lighting"). IMO, sometimes it comes down to taste and artistic expression. The test isn't going for expression, so IMO as little as possible should have been done to those scans.
 
Tim Gray said:
Just an update - I looked at the neg scans and readjusted them. I initially did them the day before I did the wet prints and never revisited them to compare. They now look closer to the overall tonality of the wet prints BUT the neg scans no longer match each other as well (which is how I initially adjusted them). So there are some differences in the gray scale separation... don't read too much into it. Or do. It's hard to tell exactly. On one hand you could probably adjust them to be very similar, negating any differences in the film and processing. On the other hand, a 'typical' adjustment that you might do is more representative of what you might end up with.

The infinite possibilities available in photoshop just highlight the fact that it's really hard to make absolute statements based on comparisons such as these 😀 - if you don't know exactly what was done, it's hard to draw hard conclusions about things like tonality. That doesn't make them useless in my mind, but something to remember. Grain is a little more straightforward...

I also linked to the original unadjusted scans.
Click to expand...

Another thought about negative scanning, I assume TriX doesn't scan as well as Tmax. Aliasing, scanner sharpening, levels adjustment, etc all add variations that are not really, well, real. They are interpretations by the scanner. That is why I think the printed image (scanned) with as much turned off of the scanner as possible will give you the least destroyed digital image file. If you read page 18-27 in Real World Image Sharpening, you will see some of the problems that arise with scanned negatives.
 
Agreed about scanning. But some people just scan, so the character of scanned film is important to them.

The other odd thing about scanning is that the difference in grain between TX and TMY was downplayed when scanned, at least in this test.
 
Curious choice of films, but nicely reported.

I don't do wet printing, but went through a similar process with Xtol, Rodinal and more recently TMax Developer. I shot EI: 320 TMY-2, Tri-X and Neopan 400 EI: 500 Neopan 1600 and EI:800 Delta 3200.

I found myself responding to Acutance and film grain and tweaking in CS3 with regards to contrast and tonality. Lastly, I responded to price and probably shortchanged TMY-2 in favor of Arista's version of Neopan 400, along with Neopan 1600 in 35mm. Tri-X just didn't do it for me, mostly apparent sharpness, in 35mm, but I find myself using it in medium format and tweaking it less than the Fuji offerings in 35mm.

After reading this, I'll have to load up my 100' roll of TMY-2 and give it another try.
 
Thanks. The original test also included Delta 3200, which I haven't tackled yet (lack of times for XTOL 1:1), so that's how the TMZ fits in. Also, I'm partially through the push processing tests to see how 400 speed films stack up against the faster ones.

I'd be interested in seeing your developer results. I've been thinking of picking up a Rodinal or TMAX and trying them out...
 
Tim, thanks for sharing the test!

I did it a few weeks ago too... Your crops show very well the grain structure and acutance...

Differences in overall tone and character are harder to show in one or two shots... There are many factors involved, so it's not easy... Exposure and development decide differences that we can see, but they could not exist if a small change anywhere was made, so absolute truths are not an easy task... Printing (different light sources, and contrast in enlarging lenses), scanning and monitors, complete the tale making it an almost impossible one to believe visually this side of your story...

But one thing is sure: your prize... For sure you know now what with your style of doing things you can get from one film or another... And the improved and cleaner results will surely shine in your photographs! And yes, TMY2 and TMZ are surprisingly good films, and can do some things Tri-X can't...

Cheers,

Juan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom