Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/02/02

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Off-topic: what b/w films should I use?
From: "Henning J. Wulff" <henningw@archiphoto.com>
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 22:28:08 -0800

>>wide exposure latitude.  However, it is not as sharp as regular B&W films.
>>Additionally, the processing makes a large difference with this film.  Some
>>procesors know what they are doing with it and the results are quite good.
>>Others muck it up and produce muddy prints.  It can be printed on color or
>b&w
>>paper.  The results look quite different.
>>
>>Tom Shea
>
>"Not as sharp"?  What pray tell does that mean?  Not as sharp as TMX 3200?
>Or APX 25?  Are you refering to resolving power in lines/mm or is there
>perhaps a little confusion between grain, edge acutance and sharpness?   I
>have found it as "sharp" as most 400ASA films.
>Mike Leitheiser

I wrote a long thing about this film before, and why it at times
disappoints. I'll just paste in what I wrote before about the films
apparent sharpness.

'.... The second problem is not as fixable after you buy the film. The negs
have very poor acutance. That is, the graphing of the densities across a
sharp transition from very black subject to very light subject has rounded
corners. In regular B&W, with the right choice of developers, you can round
the corners off as well (solvent developers do this), have them sharp and
close to right angles (D-76), or even enhance them and have a slight
reverse kick (compensating developers such as Rodinal. Lack of acutance, or
rather the lack of possibility of high acutance bothers me; that's why
Kodachrome 64 (if I could find a reasonable place to process it) would
still rank ahead of any of the E-6 film in my estimation. Even though tests
show that many 100 ISO E-6 films resolve as much or more than K64, and
Velvia definitely does, K64 looks just as sharp as Velvia in most
circumstances even though it is not nearly as contrasty and grainier....'

ie, T400CN just looks mushy under some circumstances, and there is not much
you can do about it.


   *            Henning J. Wulff
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