Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/08/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Friday, August 9, 2002, at 08:29 PM, eric korenman wrote: > I have shot tons of XP2 and TCN (now portra B&W). TCN hasn't been replaced by portra b-w, has it? your supplier may have stopped stocking it, as the portra stuff just plain sells like crazy, but, as far as i can tell, TCN is still very much available. > TCN 'dye clouds' seems finer. But skin tones sometimes are odd. > At first blush, Portra B&W has given me better skin tones. > XP2 seems punchier, more 'grainy', and pushs very very poorly. anyhow, i'm in a strange minority of people who prefer TCN. in my experience, it's nearly grainless (kodak lists it as topped only by techpan developed in technidol, has incredible skin tones and an amazingly long tonal range. it handles underexposure much better than XP-2. it's virtually impossible to get a completely blocked up highlight. i've never had the contrast problem that some people have complained of. i've printed similar TCN and XP2 negs and ended up with nearly identical contrast ranges and exposure times. the drawback, of course, to both the C-41 films, other than their lack of archival stability, is the fact that their masks make them really, really slow for darkroom work. this has been no more than a nuisance for me. i print everything on ilford MGIV FB warmtone, and see no significant difference between the two films, other than just thinking i like the look of TCN a little better. that may be psychosomatic. > > Does underexposure help? I haven't tried. it begins to lose some sharpness, in my experience, with lots of overexposure. and the negs get incredibly dense. i rated it at 50 once, to see what would happen. i ended up with printing times over two minutes at f5.6. still, though, no blocked up highlights. i was shooting small objects on a lightbox, and in printing, i was able to get a teensy weensy bit of tone in the field. - -- brad daly bwdaly@bigfatpipe.net http://www.bigfatpipe.net/~bwdaly http://www.bigfatpipe.net/~bwdaly/paw.html "I pledge allegiance to Queen Frag and her mighty state of hysteria." --Calvin and Hobbes "War, what is it good for? It's good for business." --Billy Bragg Bruce Springsteen not only cares about America, he is America, and what's even better, he understands just how fucked up it is and has always been to be an American, the ridiculous mix of the grand and pathetic, the painfully self-aware and the mockworthy clueless spiritual state that has gotten us so far ahead and so sadly behind the rest of the world. --Joey Sweeney - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html