Response to Long Scale films

IMHO, John hit the nail on the head. You want some shoulder and some toe, since you're usually trying to compress the brightness range of the scene into the limited range of the paper *AND* maintain the midtone contrast at a reasonable level. If the midtone contrast is too low, the print will be muddy. Thus my intense dislike of TMX. Even though you can "save it in the darkroom", it's too much work on almost every negative. Processing TMX in dilute XTOL works better, but limits the Dmax. That gives something easier to print with an early shoulder, but also takes away any exposure latitude. Call me a luddite, but I'll take a good old fashioned film with a toe and shoulder any day of the week.

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