Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/02/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>Greetings, > >I was recently at Keeble and Shucket and while I was speaking to the sales >person, (Who shoots leica, and infact has some of his Cuba shots in a Leica >Mag) he let me see some of his work. All 5x7. They had absolutely no grain.. 5X7 - do you mean feet or inches? How do you get grain to show in 5x7 inches? >so I asked.... being the curious sort that I am, what type of film he uses. >He replied that he had been given a couple rolls of Delta 400 to try out and >he had fallen in love with it. I then noticed that his last shot was grainy >and he replied that the person whom had developed that roll did so poorly. There is a new Delta 400 out, and a French magazine test reports that the new version is grainier than the old (but also faster and easier to push). Were the last shots with the new version? >So I guess my question here is which film has better tone and grain, and how >touchy is it to time and temp for grain granularity? If you do shoot Delta, >do you use T-Max/X-Tol developer or the standard (for me) HC-110 Dil B. I think the general agreement is that Delta is sharper than Tmax, but (no, _and therefore_ , because these things are too some extent interdependent) grain is finer with Tmax. Tmax has a straighter curve, but now we are getting too technical. For Delta 400 Xtol 1+1 is very good, T-Max is grainier, but in a very nice way, and Rodinal is terrible. I have never used HC-110 which I read is convenient, economical and versatile. These are not qualities I look for in a developer. The Film Developing Cookbook goes on to say that HC-110 produces coarser grain than D-76 and is not as sharp as many high acutance developers. (Guess that is in line with your grain experience.) Kodak's published times for Xtol are quite accurate. Get yourself a digital thermometer and a digital kitchen alarm clock (you can set the time to 99 min 59 secs, and it runs backwards, cost is less than $ 10.-) and follow time and temperature recommendations closely, it is easy, and stop worrying. >Incidently, one of the other shots he had was taken with a Nikon and you >really could see how that lens was flat compared to the leica lens. (He did >a test with the 2 cameras, same film, same development tank, same exposure.) > > >Thanks :) > >NO ANCHOVIE I liked that one!!! > > >Mark Cohen >(San Francisco) - -- Christer Almqvist D-20255 Hamburg, Germany and/or F-50590 Regnéville-sur-Mer, France