Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/09/24

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Tri-X; Kodak Films
From: Eric Welch <ewelch@ponyexpress.net>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 23:18:38 -0500

At 10:58 AM 9/24/98 +0200, you wrote:

>Where do you get that developper Eric? I'm really interested because I've
>always found that the images I got with TMY, even sharp and grainless were
>much more difficult to print than those taken with tri-X...It's of course a
>matter of tone!

Two things.

First, my development time with TMax 400 was 5.5 minutes at 75 degrees. Not
Kodak's 6 minutes. Now before people think that's not much of a change,
this film is very sensitive to development changes - purposely. Kodak
removed the "safety" of Tri-X so that photographers would have more
control. So says John Sexton (and me - I was a beta tester of TMax 400 for
Kodak). Until I came up with that, I had problems printing highlights.

And pulling it to 200 and using a development time of 4.5 minutes makes
absolutely gorgeous negatives in high contrast light (like football games
in blazing sun at 1 p.m.).

These times are mine, and only useful for comparison.  Find your own times,
through experimentation (nobody can tell you what you have to learn
yourself). It's fun, and you will be amazed at what wonderful negatives
this film can produce. 

Second of all you can find Press Maxx at B+H in New York. It comes in 1 and
5 gallon kits. It's so highly concentrated, it's not efficient to mix per
processing session, so if you don't do a lot, get the gallon and mix it all
at once. It's liquid, and needs some thorough mixing.
- -- 

Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch

I disagree with unanimity.