Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/02/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I finally was able to get a few rolls of the new Kodak Tmax400 film to compare to the older film. Except for the new box, the new film has a black backing instead of the pink/beige backing of the older film. After developing the negatives look the same. I ran my test using two camera bodies and one lens. I loaded my M6 with the old film and my M7 with the newer film. I shot the same photos with each body and transferred the lens between bodies for each shot. The lens was a 50mm Summilux Asph. Each of the duplicate photos from each body was exposed exactly the same. The lens aperture was between f5.6 and f11 for most of the photos. Most of the photos were taken outdoors on an overcast day. Both films were developed in Xtol 1+1 for 8 3/4 minutes at 68 F. Agitation in the developer is constant for the first 30 seconds and then 5 seconds every 30 seconds. The negatives were scanned with a Nikon Coolscan 9000. Except for cropping there was no post processing at all. What you see is how they came out of the scanner. You can see some photos here. There are crops of the full frames. <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/LeonardT/TMax400/> My impression is the new film is nearly identical to the old film. Actually the old film has very slightly higher contrast and resolution. The test charts represent a resolution of 72-80 lpmm for the old film and 64-72 lpmm for the new film. Both films are excellent though. Len