How are Kodak TMAX and Tri-X Different?
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- Опубликовано: 17 дек 2017
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In this episode of Ask David, I address the technical and aesthetic differences between TMAX and Tri-X and discuss how those differences can inform and improve your photography and film selection.
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Tri-X of today is very different than Tri-X of the 1950s. It was revised to be more Tmax like with finer grain. In the end, it was all about saving silver.
Funny though, I always thought Tri-X was the contrastier one, but that could be because it tends to be the film people push.
Tri-X is actually contrastier but TMax LOOKS contrastier. So when I said that TMax is contrastier, it's because of the appearance of the final image, not the film's performance.
The difference is that Tri-X has a more gradual tonal shift from one wavelength to the next TMax is the opposite with a more abrupt change. That manifests in the two spectral sensitivity curves where Tri-X has a smoother curve that would be generally fine for hiking on but TMax has a bumpier curve that would be great for a mountain climber. The reason that Tri-X is actually contrastier even though TMax looks it is that the difference between the peaks and valleys is greater on Tri-X than TMax. On Tri-X, the lowest-density point for wavelengths to which it's sensitive is just above two (dark red) and the highest is around 2.75 (blue-green, I believe) With TMax, the same data points are just shy of 3 (dark red) and just a bit above 3 (oranges, I think). So the density difference is less great with TMax but more dramatic. Also, TMax's maximum sensitivity is in the warm tones where Tri-X's is in the cool tones. And like adding a red or orange filter to a lens will increase contrast in an image, increasing red and orange sensitivity relative to cooler tones will up the apparent contrast.
And yes, I did forget to read that page of my notes when I recorded the video.
very helpful!!! Thank you so much for your time!
Thank you!
Nicely put David, thank you.
Thank you!
Thanks for creating this video. This is what I ran into when I started in LF photography. I wanted low grain so many suggested I start with Delta 100. I found out really quickly, in the harsh Florida sun, it was a challenge to keep details in the highlights and shadows. Also, I looked at the tone curve and there was little toe and shoulder. After watching your video on FP4+, I bought a box and tried it. This worked much better. There is a longer toe and shoulder. I have since switched to using Pyrocat HD in the divided method that Sandy King came up with for scanning negatives. I have a few sheets of Delta 100 left to use with the Pyrocat and see what happens. Thanks!
Thank you!
With Delta 100, give it a go pulled to 50 and 25 ISO. One of those should mute the highlights and add shadow detail sufficiently. But FP4+ in 8X10 is probably a pretty magical result in and of itself. :D
Great Video Thanks !
Thank you!
Although I rarely shoot Kodak black and white film I found this video fascinating, thank you.
Thank you!
Great info!
Thank you!
That was a great explanation. I’ve used thousands of rolls of Tri-X since the early 1980’s and more recently some TMax. Both are sold films, just artistic choice. But I usually go for Tri-X. Thanks, man.
Thank you!
Cheers for this mate. I have a couple of rolls of Tmax 100 can't wait to give it a go.
Thank you and enjoy!
It's a very good and useful video! Thank you very much!
Thank you!
I've started film about a year ago and now only getting into B&W. Thank you, sir.
Thank you!
As usual, a very, very well done presentation by a thoroughly prepared professional. Thank you. RS. Canada
Thank you, Richard!
Very interesting, good info. Tmax was the first B&W film I ever shot, and I have been happy with sticking with it so far, but I suppose I should try some tri-x at some point just so I can compare.
Definitely yes. Tri-X is fantastic.
THANK YOU !
Thank you!
Great information
Thank you!
I like TMAX a lot. I enjoy your informative video. Thank you.
Thank you!
My friend's dad gave me a roll of tmax.. Little did I know that one roll would end up costing me so much, becuase now I'm addicted. I really just love how it looks scanned, usually shoot tmax 100 at 200, then dev like normal
It's a great, but addictive, hobby.
Jesse O'Ravez wondering what this adds to the image? I just got a box of tmax 100 and im now curious.
Awesome video!
Thank you!
Since I'm finally getting into developing on my own, do you have any recommendations on fixing times for TMAX, and can fixir be reused after using it, at least with other TMAX films, and how many times? How many times can you actually reuse fixir with all films (and papers)? :)
I have always loved Tri-X, partly because it was the first quality film I ever used in my first real camera and because of it's versatility and latitude. I haven't tested T-Max to the same extent as Tri-X, and it hasn't really 'wowed' me yet.. I've used Ilford Delta 400 more and Pushed Acros and Delta 100 a few stops (not much opportunity to use 100 ISO handheld in Scotland unfortunately) and have had nicer more pleasing results from those films.. I'm sure it'll just take a bit of experimentation like all other quality films.
Cheers for another great video.. Happy New Year when it comes.
Thank you!
I love Delta 100 at 400. It's better than Delta 400 in some ways. :D
David Hancock I generally shoot 35mm Delta 100 at 200 or 400 ISO, and Delta 400 at 800 or 1600, It's a rare opportunity I'll shoot a truly slow film, if I do, I'll go shoot medium format Rollei RPX 25 or the store of 35mm EFKE KB25 I have in my freezing (I'll be guttted when that's gone 😕), but I recently ran out of Delta 3200, so I tried pushing Delta 400 to 3200 ISO, Developed in Ilford DD-X..
The shots held together surprisingly very well, but that's about as far as it'll go I think, it was very grainy, lost a little sharpness and dynamic range of course, but still great. I'll stick to Delta 3200 in future though..
With Delta 3200, i've found i've gotten better overall results by shooting the film at a particular ISO and develop one stop up, ie shoot at 3200 and develop at time listed for 6400 ISO, it definitely gives me anyway, a better negative for scanning.
Anyway, have a good one mate ☺️
very interesting. I know we're talking about 400 asa but have recently used TMAX 100 and really enjoyed the look of that, also got some very good prints from that film.
Thank you!
Great video again, I shoot lots of Tmax 100 with my yashica mat 124 with red yellow and Orange filter. Man it is awesome in both landscape and portrait.
Thank you! Isn't the Yashica 124 a square-format camera?
@@DavidHancock sure, 6x6
Just got Tmax and can't wait to shoot it. Great video!
Nice!
@@DavidHancock omg, I love tmax and my first successful development with Kodak xtol. The grain is so smooth and it just came out great. Better than the rordinal I usually use. Used a point and shoot Olympus stylus 150 and the flash metered perfectly. It seems film doesn't suffer as much as digital when it comes to flash highlights
Been waiting for a video like this to come out
Thank you! This is part of my weekly series, so there will be many more like it.
a late thx for this vid!!!
Thank you!
Would love to hear a comparison of Tri-x and Delta 400.
I just added that to the list. That's going to be an interesting one to tackle. I'll have to research that a bit.
Very nice. Where I live in Europe Tri-x is always more expensive than T-max
Curious. I wonder why. TMax is more expensive here.
T-Max was really quite revolutionary back in 1987 when it came out.
T-Max 100 was a direct replacement for what had been the standard in black and white photography for years : Panatomic-X 32, Kodak claimed T-Max 100 had finer grain than Panatomic X 32 and nobody believed it, but it was true, the T-Grain technology was very new at the time.
T-Max was fine grained for one exception, P3200, it had to be stored in salt mines undeground to protect it from cosmic rays, and had a 12 month exp. date, try some P3200 now and it will most likely have golf ball sized grain!
Blue Oval Forever good thing i didn't buy the 70mm rolls floating around eBay.
Man, I have some old P3200 that expired in 2004. Holy cow. It's one big grain. And it has to be shot at 400 but developed as 3200. I didn't know it had to be stored in salt mines, though. That's fascinating.
im working my way thru 10 rolls of Trix right now, ill grab some tmax after that
If you haven't had a chance to push or pull a roll of Tri-X, give that a shot. It's performance at different ISO ratings is great.
oh yes, i mostly shoot Trix at home pushed to 1600. I love the grain and contrast
flic.kr/p/22tCrsD
Received, thank you!
I haven’t shot much tmax out. I have shot the new rolls of tmax p3200
How is that? I'm going to hold off on buying new film stock until I shoot through what I already have. But I'm really curious about the P3200.
Its been a couple of years since shooting tmax. One thing I remember is that I had to give a long soak in fixer, otherwise it would be almost pinkish, which you could put back in for a a bit longer. Is this what you meant about fixing issues?
Yes, that's it. I leave mine to fix for about 12 minutes and then wash for about 30. It's insane how wasteful the washing process is.
David Hancock You should check out Tim Hill, on RUclips. He has these great lessons on b/w darkroom printing. It's kinda heady, and a great challenge, negative masking.
@MetalDog MetalDog That's a bit more metaphysical than we tend to get here, but it sounds like I shouldn't feel bad about giving my film an extra few rinses after I develop it.
I used the Kodak TMAX400 120 film for many years, I shot it at 200 ASA/ISO and developed it in a thin solution for a long time with very few and very gently agitations, in that way the film had more grey tones and had still very good contrast, in modern words, larger dynamic range. I guess you can do the same with a Ilford Delta 400 film. Of paper I used Ilford Multigrade. Made great images from my 6x6 Hasselblad ! I also used the TMAX400 with my Nikon F3.
Thank you!
@@DavidHancock Thank you :)
So for old fixed exposure cameras such as brownies, box cameras, and simple duoflex would tri-x be the more forgiving option?
That sounds correct to me. I would choose Tri-X for that, too.
I always thought TMAX is less contrasty than Tri-X.
Overall, yes, but the changes from tone to tone are more dramatic in TMax giving it a more contrasty look.
There's no Tri-X 400 sheet film, but Kodak makes the TXP 320 sheet film.
Could you compare the TXP 320 and Tmax 400 sheet film in the future?
I'll be making a Tri-X 320 All About Film video at some point (I've so far never shot it.) When I've had some experience with 320, I may be able to talk about it at that point.
Tmax 3200 is just 400 pushed 3 stops
I found Tri-X to be less grainy and clearer when pushed
The new TMax 3200 is actually an 800 ISO film that can be pushed to 3200 successfully, so it's different than the old stock (and was released after this video.) I also really like Tri-X at 3200, too.
Man, contrast depends on exposure and energy of the development process. TX it is not the same TX from the 50s. Tmax is a way more versatile film.
I'd argue that some films are pre-disposed to being higher contrast that others under identical conditions.
At 5:54 into the video you say, "The LPM for Tri X is some where between 150 and 200 lines..."
I think you meant to say T Max at this point... correct?
Good video.
Thank you!
It's possible I mis-spoke. I don't have my headphones unpacked yet so I can't check, but I may well have said the wrong thing.
Either way, whether TriX or Tmax 400, the lppmm resolution is nowhere near 150-200. The real world “base” resolution (I.e. with line pairs that contrast by about one to two stops) of TriX is around 45 lppmm. That of Tmax 400 I would guess is around 55 lppmm, roughly around Ilford fp4 plus’s base resolution. The 100 iso t-grain films such as Fuji acros etc are around 70 to 80 lppmm base resolution. David Hancock misquotes the manufacturers resolution figures which are measured for line pairs of extremely differing brightness of more than 1000:1 . Such figures , although perhaps technically accurate, are for marketing only - they have no bearing on real world photographs.
Thanks for the video. But with all respect TMax is more contrasty than TRI-X???? Never heard that.
Thank you.
what are your thoughts on ilford emulsions compared to Kodak
Hmm. Good question. I haven't thought about that a lot. I'll add it to the next batch (which will be a long time in coming given the already-filmed backlog.) That's a question I'll have to think about for a while.
Tri X has become incredibly expensive in Europe. It’s more expensive than Tmax and almost twice the price of Ilford HP5. What’s your thoughts on this?
Curious. I wonder if that's just because of import duties or if it's a marketing decision. Sometimes cost is associated with quality and sometimes companies inflate costs to give something an appearance of greater quality than a competitor. It could be either or something I haven't thought of and I'm not certain which.
For BW you definitely go Ilford, Agfa or Orwo in Europe
As a motion picture shooter and darkroom chemist, I am curious whether I can use Tmax developer for other black-and-white films that I have in my refrigerator. Can I use any black and white developer for Plus X, TriX, I think the code is 7231. I looked through some of your videos. Can you make one about reversal flip??? I am really inexperienced and using a scale for the potassium dichromate
The potassium dichromate is for bleach combined with sulfuric acid
I am also unsure which films I can flip to reversal. Some films you can do both negative and positive.
I would like to do videos on that but I don't know enough about the process yet. It's on my list of things to try soon (as I'm going to be using Adox Scala a LOT next year.) But right now, I can't speak intelligently on reversal processing black and white film. You are right in that it works on some films and not others. For instance, Kodak 5222 is a motion stock and designed for reversal processing. A Kodak engineer I talked with about 5222 said that reversal process films need a steeper gamma line to have appropriate image contrast when reversed. So you'd want to look for stocks with a higher contrast. Also, I suspect that a clear base will be useful, too. But, those last parts are hunches.
Notes on TMAX
1: use fixer once
It's gotten better; the fixer definitely needs to rest before being used again. But I try to fix TMax with fixer that's near the end of its life.
@@DavidHancock It seems like this is really environmentally wasteful to shoot tmax. I don't want to make the lab do extra work and use more resources.
There is Tmax 100 and 400 4x5, about $110.00/50.
Yeah, I just opened my box of TMax 100 4X5 last night. Man that stuffs spendy. I loaded up a bunch of film backs with TMax 100 and 400 to use in the next couple of months. It should be fun!
Ya I hate grain I'm my photos, that's why I push tmax400 4 stops, and develope in Rodinal with vigorous agitation.
:D
Tri-x was also reformulated in 2007.
Thank you!
I pushed TMax 400 to 800 and my jaw hit the floor. The grain remained tight and uniform, the blacks were deep and the whites were crisp, and the images were still sharp as a tack. It was everything I was looking for in a B&W film. It instantly became my go-to B&W film. I even sold off my Ilford stock and decided to shoot Kodak exclusively because of it
Oh nice. What developer did you use?
Trix isactually more expensive than tmax here in Australia. Probably because its more popular
Interesting. Thank you!
From iso.org: "Because 'International Organization for Standardization' would have different acronyms in different languages (IOS in English, OIN in French for Organisation Internationale de Normalisation), our founders decided to give it the short form ISO. ISO is derived from the Greek isos, meaning equal. Whatever the country, whatever the language, we are always ISO."
It's a word 'iso', not an acronym 'I-S-O'. Think isometric, isochronal or isosceles.
Yup. You're correct.
no pics?
It's been years since I made these, so I forget for sure, but I'm guessing not based on your question.
That was helpful, but a lot of talking and some examples edited in (pictures please!) would really show what you’re talking about.
Thank you!
I have pushed tri-x to 6400 iso
How did it look?
Do u know if Is it possible to develop tmax 400 and tri-X 400 with c41 process?
They would not produce color images. I suspect that what would happen is you'd have muddy, low-contrast black and white images, likely with some color staining of the film base. Black and white films can't produce color images because they don't have the proper dyes and color-sensitive layers in their structure.
Tri-x is overpriced for an old film even at 100ft roll. Plus expired tri-x has heavy base fog compared to tmax
Old technology and design, sure, but there's still modern R&D and a good content of silver in it. I agree that the old Tri-X does not age well. I'm not a fan of old TMax either, though.
I find Tri-X to be way more contrasty than T-Max
Interesting. In the negative or the finished, edited digital images?
@@DavidHancock I never really compare negatives. In the final image, scanned on V800
Got it. That could be due to the scanning process. Scanners like to have a set contrast when they scan. So if a negative has lower contrast the scanner may compensate and artificially increase the contrast in the scanned images. So the increased contrast you see in Tri-X could be a result of scanner software.
Thank you for the video. Usually I find your videos great. I'm sure you understand all the concepts but this video did not come out correct.
Sharpness and acutance (contrast separation of adjacent tones and edge delineation) have nothing to do with resolution (lines per mm). Fine grain has nothing to do with sharpness either.
Trix is sharper than Tmax (both TMX and TMY-2). Tmax is more detailed and has finer (but uglier) grain than Trix. Tmax (both TMX and TMY-2) have lower acutance and lower midtone contrast compared to Acros and Trix; as a result they look muddy and boring. Also TMX and TMY-2 are slower than box speed; Acros and Trix are spot on (effectively about a stop TMX:50 and TMY:200; Acros:100, Trix:400). Trix cubic grain is beautiful. Acros' grain (although modern in structure) looks more attractive than TMX. If you want me to mail you a controlled study with negatives, scans and prints just email me privately. BTW, Trix is more expensive than Tmax too...
Still Thumbs Up! I appreciate all the effort.
In 2007, TriX was modified to incorporate some of the T-grain technology from Tmax, which is why it developed a reputation for having some of the Tmax characteristics not so popular, but it is still basically a cubic grain film. Not done to improve Trix, but to make it cheaper to manufacture. T-grain manufacture uses significantly less silver content in the film, so is cheaper, which was Kodak's original goal when introducing Tmax. Kodak priced Tmax higher than Trix to capitalize on a represented quality advancement with the goal of shifting customer support to Tmax, then discontinue TriX. People didn't switch films as hoped, so TrixX got cheapened and we now get both.
Put down your d76 and try developing tmax in Ilfosol-3, the results aren’t muddy at all. Wonderful tonality.
Silly rabbit, Tri-X are for kids....
LoL. :D
no photo examples....
Not in this video, no.