What do you rate TMAX3200P at ?

[karlori]

Hi,

Just a quick question, what do you rate the TMAX3200P film ? I got about 12 boxes of it, I hate tmax for it purple residue no matter what i try... But this i got for free and i would really like to try a fast film.
So give me your votes and if you have a minute to spare your developing techniques would be appreciated !

 

[Arjay]

Depends on how much shadow detail you want to have. I normally shoot TMZ 3200 @ EI 1600; if you don't care too much for shadow detail, use EI 3200. For more shadows, you might pull it to EI 800, however, I think there are better films for that speed.

Re purple residue: You might contain the blue tint by increasing washing time, intensity and the number of washing cycles after fixing.

 

[filmfan]

I shot it at ISO 1000 and developed in XTOL 1+0 with great results.

 

[Freakscene]

I shoot it from 1000-25000 depending on the light. I open the aperture wide open, choose a shutterspeed that will give me the results I want, then see what EI gives me that shutterspeed.

EI 6400, Nikon 200/2 at f2.

Marty

 

[samuelphoto]

I shot it at ISO 1000 and developed in XTOL 1+0 with great results.

Similar for me, EI 1250 in XTOL 1:1. I don't have my notes with me as to the development times, but I believe they are consistent with Kodak or the recommendations in the Massive film development chart at digitaltruth.com. This is my go to film for anything faster than EI 800 (for that Tri-X is great).

 

[excellent]

1600 with tmax developer works great for me.

 

[Bob Michaels]

I shoot it from 1000-25000 depending on the light. I open the aperture wide open, choose a shutterspeed that will give me the results I want, then see what EI gives me that shutterspeed.

Marty

This is exactly what I do. Allow the light available to determine the exposure index. And remember that the e.i. is not the end all. If you must underexpose a few stops and lose some shadow deal, plan your photos accordingly.

Most importantly, learn to measure the ambient light and then use your brain. The reading you will get from your TTL meter is close to worthless.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I think it gives the best tonality exposed at 1600 and developed in Tmax Developer for the time Kodak specifies for EI-1600. The purple residue doesn't hurt anything, this is beautiful film for lowlight work and shouldn't be rejected for something that has NO effect on the images.

All done at 1600 and developed in Tmax Developer

 

[Freakscene]

Chris,

Your shots are great and the film-and-developer combination is obviously very close to optimal for this film. I just can't get enough light to use it at 1600 all the time.

Marty

 

[Arjay]

More than with any other film, Tmax 3200 has left me frustrated when trying to get rich tonality in scarcely lit situations - at any EI I've tried.

Most of my Tmax 3200 shots feature speckled shadows - no really, truly dark, uniform black tones, and no detail in darker shadows (Freakscene's picture illustrates what I mean). The lack of shadow detail seems to be unavoidable with hi-speed films, but I am still looking for a way to have more control over where I will have detail in my pictures other than in the really bright areas.

Bob Michaels' post got me thinking - what if the way I measure exposure is incorrect? Most of the time, I use my Hexar RF for this film, and I use it in AE mode.

So the question is not what IE, but which part of my image to measure, and that gets tricky considering my camera has a meter with a center-weighted measuring style. I'm thinking of preparing a cue card with diagrams of my VF framelines and superimposed meter sensitivity graphs as an orientation, so I can really tell what (and where) my meter will be measuring.

Or should I abandon reflected light metering altogether with this film, get an external meter and measure incident light?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Chris,

Your shots are great and the film-and-developer combination is obviously very close to optimal for this film. I just can't get enough light to use it at 1600 all the time.

Marty

It works well at 3200 too, also in Tmax Developer (dev time is longer than for 1600). Contrast is higher. I don't have an example online to show though, been a long time since I shot it at 3200.

 

[excellent]

Shot at 3200 developed at 1600 using tmax developer. great combo.

 

[Freakscene]

Most of my Tmax 3200 shots feature speckled shadows - no really, truly dark, uniform black tones, and no detail in darker shadows (Freakscene's picture illustrates what I mean).

In a print or on my calibrated screen this shot does not show that speckling; I could fix it by simply raising the black point in ps. I just processed it very quickly (automatically from a .psd for printing) a while ago. It is grainy and if pushed it's contrasty, but you can get solid blacks easily enough.

Marty

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

In a print or on my calibrated screen this shot does not show that speckling; I could fix it by simply raising the black point in ps. I just processed it very quickly (automatically from a .psd for printing) a while ago. It is grainy and if pushed it's contrasty, but you can get solid blacks easily enough.

Marty

The speckling Arjay mantioned happens with Underexposure on this film. It doesn't handle it well in my opinion. He mentioned using autoexposure, which often underexposes. I often shoot this film with an Olympus OM-4T and I use the built in spotmeter to ensure I don't let important detail fall below Zone III (I use zone system when I can). With my Leicas, I use a Minolta Flash Meter VI's spotmeter mode.

 

[tonal1]

800 when I can; up to 12,500 when I can't.

 

[Tim Gray]

Most of my Tmax 3200 shots feature speckled shadows - no really, truly dark, uniform black tones, and no detail in darker shadows (Freakscene's picture illustrates what I mean). The lack of shadow detail seems to be unavoidable with hi-speed films, but I am still looking for a way to have more control over where I will have detail in my pictures other than in the really bright areas.

A couple thoughts:

The lack of shadow detail is because it's underexposed. Give it more exposure or accept the fact that shooting a film like this in a contrasty AND low light situation means that those shadow tones you see with your eyes are just too many stops below whatever you metered at to be picked up on film. Especially when you've uprated the film.

With regards to the speckled shadows, in my experience the answer is to raise the black point. There is some detail in the last little bit of shadows, but if you try to save it while working with a scan, you end up with the speckled shadows. Or at least I do.

I find it's a beautiful film printed traditionally - it's much better that way. At least compared to a Coolscan V. No speckled shadows. Also, related to what I said above, I find that I am tempted to set the black point in a scan at a lower level than where I set the 'black point' in a wet print. When I adjust the scan to a similar level to the wet print, speckled shadows go away mostly.

 

[DNG]

The speckling Arjay mantioned happens with Underexposure on this film. It doesn't handle it well in my opinion. He mentioned using autoexposure, which often underexposes. I often shoot this film with an Olympus OM-4T and I use the built in spotmeter to ensure I don't let important detail fall below Zone III (I use zone system when I can). With my Leicas, I use a Minolta Flash Meter VI's spotmeter mode.

What do you spot meter?

I'm guessing somewhat middle tones.
I try to get a highlight and mid-tone reading within the meter area, on my M5 [selective spot]. And have had good success with shadow and highlight details maintained fairly well.

I haven't tried that fast film, only Delta 400 @ 800, with pretty good results. Though I think I should have added a bit more developer time. I used the Xtol chart, but, it seems it is always giving me a slightly lower contrast negative. Not sure if the Agitation intervals make much difference. I've use 30s to 90s, and haven't seen that much difference, a little though.

So, I think I need to increase the development time by 20% or so. I try to use 9-15 minutes in Xtol 1:3...OR use a lower dilution?
Sorry for asking an OT question. But it may help with TMX 3200 also.

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

i was over zealous and got about 10 boxes of 2000, 2005 and 2007 each.

Then I found out that fast film doesn't age as well as slow film.

But the effects of such a grainy film is interesting too.

captured this week, p3200 (2005 vintage) on d-76 developer. camera was the cl and voigtlander 15mm/f4.5
exposure index is 800.

 

[Arjay]

The speckling Arjay mantioned happens with Underexposure on this film. It doesn't handle it well in my opinion. He mentioned using autoexposure, which often underexposes. I often shoot this film with an Olympus OM-4T and I use the built in spotmeter to ensure I don't let important detail fall below Zone III (I use zone system when I can). With my Leicas, I use a Minolta Flash Meter VI's spotmeter mode.

Thank you Chris for your info.

Just one more question so I can correctly understand your comment :

If I get the zone system right, medium gray - the luminance that our lightmeters measure for - corresponds to zone 5, isn't it? So what you say is that any important shadow detail depicted on high-speed film should not be underexposed by more that two stops, right?

I guess I also have to bear in mind that my camera's center-weighted exposure meter is effectively producing an averaged (integrated) value reading across its measurement field. So, I should better look for an image area with rather uniform midrange brightness which I should measure, or my exposure readngs might be rather random.

 

[Faintandfuzzy]

For weddings, I rate at 1600, and meter for low to mid shadows. For other stuff, I rate it as high as I can to get way huge grain!!! 😀