[Leica] All hail Tri-X

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

Dan S.: >>>>
Tri-X is also remarkably resistent to emulsion scratches, dust and other

pain in-the-butt accidents that can really ruin your day.

Shoot a roll of Tri-X, and a roll of T-max400.  I'll just bet you'll
have
more specs other oddities with the Tmax.
<<<<

True. AND it matches up well (or superbly) with a wide variety of
developers and processing chemicals, is very forgiving of exposure
errors and development errors, and offers good speed and very good
resolution for its speed. Because it lends itself to good edge effects,
it can look subjectively sharper than other finer-grained and
smaller-grained films.

Its BEST quality, though, its its tonality. There's almost no mistaking
Tri-X prints. They can have a tonal beauty that is most remarkable. In
my opinion, tonality or gradation, although discussed relatively
infrequently (if ever), is a more important property of black-and-white
prints than ANY OTHER SINGLE PROPERTY. And the curves it yields at
normal development times match up very usefully with the highlight
contrast of many of the better VC papers.

If you go look at my prints in the "Collector Print Offer" this issue
(got to www.phototechmag.com, click on "Collector Prints" at the bottom
of the page, then click on my name), only one of those four prints was
taken with a Leica lens, and only one was taken with Tri-X. And believe
it or not, that one shows the best resolution of any of the four prints!

And it does this without the need for altering its spectral response
with colored filters, once considered necessary even with most
panchromatic films. The other three pictures were taken with a K2
(Wrattan #8) filter.

One final felicity: since the advent of the T-Max films, Kodak has
stopped tweaking TX. It's the same now, year-in, year-out.

Oh, no, one more: because it's still a best-seller, it's very unlikely
to be discontinued, at least for years and years.


>>>All hail Tri-X....<<<

I'm with that. Hip, hip...!


- --Mike J. / _PHOTO Techniques_ magazine