Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Not to beat a dead horse ... okay *to* beat a dead horse on a slow news day... viewing Ted Grant's book has given me new inspiration to get back into available light B&W after a 15 year pause. In the old days I had a Canon FTb with a 50/1.8 lens and shot Tri-X @ 200 and developed in HC110 Dil B. Worked pretty great at the time for outdoor photography. I've recently been doing a bit of T-Max 100,400,3200 in T-Max developer and printing on Forte Multigrade developed in Ilford film dev. The negs are a tad thinner than the old Tri-X but perhaps a tad smoother (modulo film speed). Recently I've been reading about Ilford's 100,400,3200 lineup in Ilfotech DD-X developer and the consensus of the articles seems to prefer Ilford. In particular, the October issue of the U.K Practical Photography compares the films and the Ilford appears a bit sharper than T-MAX. On the other hand the test setup used of all things a cheap zoom lens (albeit stopped down and in the center). It seems to me that what I can see as differences on the test shots are more due to focus, contrast and developing differences than real film differences. Given that both are about the same price etc, is there a real difference between the two? Is either sharper or easier to work with, print etc? I would and plan to test the two myself but I fear that at this stage in my regained darkroom experience and differences might be more due to my errors than real differences. What do people with more experience think about Delta/DD-X vs. T-MAX/T-MAX using sharp lenses with high local contrast? Jonathan Borden