Best developer for TMax100

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I have processed 35mm TMax 100 in Rodinal 1:50 (superb sharpness, a little grainy), TMax Developer (Good sharpness, a little grainy), and Diafine (good sharpness, excessive grainess). Is there a developer which will preserve the superb sharpness and give finer grain than the Rodinal? Thanks

-- Bill Mitchel (bmitch@home.com), January 25, 2002

Answers

Try D-76/ID-11 1:3.

-- John Hicks (jhicks31@bellsouth.net), January 26, 2002.

You might check out John Hicks' earlier post on Rodinal w/ sodium ascorbate.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edb@unblinkingeye.com), January 26, 2002.

Bill, I love TMX and Xtol (stock). my favourite duo. silky smooth though not as sharp as with Rodinal. TMY in Rodinal just doesn't come close to Xtol, and I wanted a standardized developer for TMax films. you might want to experiment with dilution, but my tests showed little improvements in accutance and not worth enduring increased processing times. report your findings.

-- daniel taylor (lightsmythe@agalis.net), January 26, 2002.

Ilfosol-S 1:14.

-- Sal Santamaura (santamaura@earthlink.net), January 26, 2002.

After much fooling around with this, IMHO, the answer is no. I've tried most of these things and was never satisfied for various reasons. Rodinal gave the best tonal qualities and sharpness, but too much grain. Xtol was really good at 1:3, but I had shelf life problems with it (not the usual Xtol failures though). I haven't tried Rodinal with sodium ascorbate, but wouldn't expect the degree of improvement that it would take to fully solve the problem. I suspect TMX isn't actually a fine grain film, but looks like one if the grain is smooth. That would also explain the lack of edge sharpness with most developers. I was actually questioning the quality of all my lenses (and my sanity) until I started shooting FP4+. There are many avenues to pursue (see Anchell & Troop's books, plus some techniques advocated by John Sexton) but I found TMX to be a tremendous time waster.

-- Conrad Hoffman (choffman@rpa.net), January 26, 2002.


Try a catechol based developer, I use my own formula on TMX 4x5 and it is great, also, ask Ted if he will sell you some of the formula he is creating, he has gotten very nice low grain sharp negatives with Catechol and tmx 35 mm, I have seen some of the prints and they are very nice.....

As opposed to Conrad's experience I have found TMX in LF to be a wonderful film, developed on catechol.

-- Jorge Gasteazoro (jorgegm58@prodigy.net.mx), January 26, 2002.


I like T-Max 100 in Rodinol 1:100, 20 minutes at 68 degrees, with constant agitation the first two minutes, 5 seconds every minute thereafter.

chris

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), January 26, 2002.


I like Microphen 1+1 to 1+3 for TMX, because it makes reasonably sharp images with good shadow separation even when I shoot at EI 100. The grain is not as fine as with D-76H 1+1 or HC-110 1+15 from stock. HC-110 1+15 makes very smooth, fine grain image which I don't like much but sometimes useful. One thing I don't like about Microphen-TMX combination is that it seems to compress midrange.

I'm surprised that no one so far suggested DK-50 or buffered FX-1 type formulae. I'm still doing some experiments, and I'll post my formula and time when my experiments are done.

-- Ryuji Suzuki (rsuzuki@rs.cncdsl.com), January 26, 2002.


Try TMax 100 in XTOL 1:1. I rate the film at EI 50. Very smooth grain & excellent (apparent) sharpness at moderate to high magnifications (11X14 prits from 35mm negs). As a matter of fact I found it difficult to use my grain focuser because the grain edges were very indistinct. The prints, however, have a smoothn roundness, almost 3 dimensional in quality.

-- Robert Orofino (miotaur1949@iopener.net), January 26, 2002.

Original flavor Kool-Aid diluted 1:50 with 5 parts sugar, j/k. I like XTOL full strength or 1:3.

Cheerio

-- floren (flcpge@yahoo.com), January 27, 2002.



TMX has the potential for remarkable sharpness. But more than any film I've tested, it reveals a developer's bias toward sharp grain vs. soft grain; any tendency a developer has toward softening grain will give an image that looks diffused. So the recommendations you've gotten that achieve particularly sharp grain (Rodinal 1:100, or Rodinal with sodium ascorbate, D-76 1:3, FX-1 or FX-2) will give you the sharpness you are looking for.

Tanning developers are ideally suited to this end. I've only very limited experience with TMX in PMK, but you might look for some feedback with this combination. It should be a very sharp match.

I've used catechol based developers extensively with TMX and have found nothing reveals as satisfying a combination of fine grain and high sharpness. DiXactol, Pyrocat-HD, Jorge's catechol formula and my own formula all work great with TMX. The great thing about tanning/staining developers is the stain fills the gaps between grain particles and smooths the tonality, thereby producing the high acutance, etched look of Rodinal without the attendant graininess. For the highest sharpness with fine grain, nothing I've ever seen rivals a well formulated catechol or pyro developer.

With that said, however, if you want something less toxic and easier to use, check out Pat Gainer's vit-c developers (see unblinkingeye.com). I've found his formula the best non-tanning developer for sharpness, fine grain and tonality. I've slightly modified his formula so I can use it as an A+B type (which keeps better and permits adjusting ratios for contrast control) as follows: A - 8.0g ascorbic acid, 0.8g metol + 500ml distilled water; B - 6.8g sodium hydroxide, 24.4g borox + 500ml distilled water (note: Pat has told me he now uses 10% sodium metaborate as his B component.) I use this developer 1:1:14 @ 70, TMX @ 11 min, Delta 100 9 min, Acros 10 min.

-- Ted Kaufman (writercrmp@aol.com), January 27, 2002.


Thanks to everyone for taking the time and interest to answer. I'm gonna give TechPan one more try, and if it doesn't work do the Rodinal/Sodium Ascorbite and then the D-76/1+3 treatment. If that doesn't work, I'm gonna sacrifice one of my last two rolls of Agfa APX25. Thanks again, Bill.

-- (bmitch@home.com), January 27, 2002.

As Ted said, TMX has very high resolution, but very low apparent sharpness if care is not taken. TMX has a thick hardened plain gelatin layer covering emulsion, so it is hard to stain in tanning developers. I think dedicated users of PMK and other tanning developing agents generally prefer FP4+ and HP5+ among other non T-grain films. However, I don't use tanning formulae in regular basis, I can't comment much on it.

Again as Ted said, Gainer's Vitamin C formula is a good one for TMX. I consider Gainer formula a drastically modified version of FX-1 or FX-2. I've been using the following formula, which is also a drastically modified version of buffered FX-1 or ascorbate version of dilute DK-50 suggested in British Journal of Photography, as printed in Anchell and Troop.

L-ascorbic acid 1.0g
metol 0.4g
sodium sulfite 20g
sodium carbonate (monohydrate) 4.0g
sodium bicarbonate 1.0g
water to make 1.0 liter

If you don't have any sodium carbonate, cook baking soda in an enameled pot until the sticky feeling is lost, and use 3g of it instead of 4g, as it is sodium carbonate in anhydrous form. So this is pretty inexpensive and easy-to-make formula, although it's not as cheap or simple as Gainer's.

I haven't tried, but in this formula, sodium ascorbate may be substituted for ascorbic acid without much adjustment in processing time because the developer is rather well buffered. I process TMX for 8.5 min to 9.0 min at 20C at EI 100.

With this formula, TMX gives much sharper images than in D-76Ad 1+1 but without undesirable grain or speed penalty. Shadow separation is excellent, and tonal rendition is pretty good. I think this formula has pretty good potential as a general purpose developer, but I haven't tested much with APX25 or HP5+. Since this shouldn't be too differnt from Ilfosol-S type formula, I also want to try this with Delta 3200 at EI 1600, and with Delta 400 at EI 400 to 800. (inspired by John Hicks' postings here a few weeks back)

My current notes are found at rsuzuki@rs.cncdsl.com), January 27, 2002.


Oh, sorry, my previous posting is screwed up. I have had too much wine tonight. At least I'm not drinking metol solution :-)

My current notes are found at film developer combination note and there's another note on more technical side. I haven't finished the experiments yet, so they frequently get updated a bit.

-- Ryuji Suzuki (rsuzuki@rs.cncdsl.com), January 27, 2002.


Ilfosol-s 1+9 8mins@68deg F, film rated at 80 EI. If you can't get good results out of Tmax100, then you've no chance with Techpan. Leave the Technical pan to what it was intended for; high contrast copying.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), January 28, 2002.


I agree with Conrad Hoffman. I think T-Max is mostly a waste of time. The best way to develop TMX is to develop Ilford Delta Pro 100 in XTOL.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), February 03, 2002.

I disagree with Bob and Conrad :-)

I made 11x14 from 6x6cm TMX neg (cropped) with two lenses. TMX was developed in the developer described above. There's no visible grain on the print, and I could BARELY see the grain in my grain focuser. However, the prints clearly indicate the contrast difference of the two lenses, one for Mamiya 6 and another for Mamiya TLR. They aren't exactly at the same focal length, but Mamiya 6 lens was more contrasty and crispy. I need a magnifier on print to tell the resolution difference, but Mamiya 6 (50mm f/4) lens is superior. However, I like the way bokeh comes out with Mamiya TLR lens (75mm f/2.8). Both were shot at f/11. Again, these are not fair lens comparison, but I'm saying that I can clearly see the difference of the lenses through TMX, on the contrary to what Conrad said above. This difference is hard to see if processed in D-76 1+1, and probably impossible to tell if processed in HC-110! Sorry, I can't comment abotu Rodinal - I never used it regularly.

-- Ryuji Suzuki (rsuzuki@rs.cncdsl.com), February 04, 2002.


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