Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/12/30
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As far back as I can remember, Salgado has used Tri-X almost exclusively
(some T-Max P3200) for his work, and "Terra" has numerous examples of it---a
lot of the pictures in that book date from the early 1980's, and have been
published in some of his earlier books ("Other Americas," "Uncertain Grace,"
"Workers"). He's said in several interviews that he's been using Tri-X for
so long that he knows instinctively how it will react, and shoots it at
various speeds (in different cameras, of course) depending on the lighting
conditions, and develops it in developers that he has found work well for
those speeds.
That doesn't mean you can't get good results with Tmax films, but they're
pretty unforgiving (relative to Tri-X, HP5+, and other "old tech" films) of
exposure and processing errors, and you'll have to invest a certain amount
of time to make them work the way you want them to. As with Salgado and his
preferred films, it's simply a matter of getting to know your materials.
That said, I've never had much fun with T-Max 400 myself. And we never get
enough ambient light in Seattle to shoot
T-Max 100...
Chuck Albertson
Seattle, Wash.
> So true about the tonality. I recently received Salgado's
> "Terra" and was
> amazed by the results he got with Tmax...So I jumped from good
> old Tri-X or
> Delta 100 back into Tmax 100 and Kodak Polycontrast paper.
>
> What a waste...Whatever Salgado does to Tmax, it looks a hell of a lot
> better than MY stuff. All I get is murky crud. I either
> overdevelope by 15
> sec and blow out the highlights, or end up with negs that print
> flat. (I'm
> pretty careful about temp/time etc, so I am guessing there is
> something else
> in my equation that is not adding up)
>