[Leica] Film snobs and Tri-X

[locke at straylight.ca (Greg Locke)]

I will dissent  (...of course :^)

I HATE Tri-X. 

Shot thousands of rolls of it in my UPI days. It sucked (eventually learned
about HP5)... still does. T-Max is not much better.

HOWEVER, I loved shooting magazine jobs with Kodachrome even opting to shoot
an Indy car racing season in 1989 on Kodachrome 25!!
It was a challenge shooting motor racing on K25 with 300, 400 and 600mm lens
but the pictures are still some of the best I've ever shot.  ...and we ALL
did it except newspaper and wire shooters. It took shooting disciple and a
serious understanding of shutter speed and limits of your film.

A lot of the Ektachromes were awful but they did make a couple of emulsions
I liked. EPP, EPN, EPX were all decent with a nice neutral tone and
reasonable grain. These all had different marketing names in different
countries, however.

...then Fuji gave me Fujichrome RDP 100 and its successor Provia  and my
life changed.  If Kodak had kept making my favourite emulsions I probably
have stayed with them but, alas, Kodak's failure was not in their product
but their marketing dept.

Agfachrome 50 and 100 professional emulsions are the best for neutral
tonality but are a bit grainy.
But as you Tri-X users know, grain is fine as long as the image is TACK
SHARP.

...and that is my voice of dissent today.

...and I don't like 50mm lenses either!... SO THERE!

Greg Locke
St. John's, Newfoundland
http://blog.greglocke.com

--TRINITY Photographic Workshops--
     September 3 -5, 2004
  at The Artisan Inn, Trinity
www.straylight.ca/trinityworkshop 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lug-bounces+locke=straylight.ca@leica-users.org 
> [mailto:lug-bounces+locke=straylight.ca@leica-users.org] On 
> Behalf Of Karen Nakamura
> Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2004 12:43 PM
> To: Leica Users Group
> Subject: [Leica] Film snobs and Tri-X
> 
> >
> >And why do film snobs eschew Kodak film, execpt for Tri-X?
> 
> Jesse -
> 
> Thanks for the kind words about my site. :-)
> 
> Hmmm...... good question. For me, it's not so much that I 
> eschew Kodak film, it's just that Fuji film beats Kodak in 
> all of the categories I care about.
> 
> Fuji Provia 100F is finer than any Ektachrome and scans very 
> well Fuji Profia 400F has the least grain of any 400 slide 
> film Fuji Acros 100 is one of the best 100 speed B&W films I've used
> 
> but there's no beating the "look" of Tri-X so I keep using it too.
> 
> Karen
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Karen Nakamura
> http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCameras/
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