Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/10

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: [Leica] B&W film: Ilford vs. TMax
From: "Jonathan Borden" <jborden@mediaone.net>
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:04:45 -0400

Not to beat a dead horse ... okay *to* beat a dead horse on a slow news
day... viewing Ted Grant's book has given me new inspiration to get back
into available light B&W after a 15 year pause. In the old days I had a
Canon FTb with a 50/1.8 lens and shot Tri-X @ 200 and developed in HC110 Dil
B. Worked pretty great at the time for outdoor photography.

I've recently been doing a bit of T-Max 100,400,3200 in T-Max developer and
printing on Forte Multigrade developed in Ilford film dev. The negs are a
tad thinner than the old Tri-X but perhaps a tad smoother (modulo film
speed). Recently I've been reading about Ilford's 100,400,3200 lineup in
Ilfotech DD-X developer and the consensus of the articles seems to prefer
Ilford. In particular, the October issue of the U.K Practical Photography
compares the films and the Ilford appears a bit sharper than T-MAX. On the
other hand the test setup used of all things a cheap zoom lens (albeit
stopped down and in the center). It seems to me that what I can see as
differences on the test shots are more due to focus, contrast and developing
differences than real film differences. Given that both are about the same
price etc, is there a real difference between the two? Is either sharper or
easier to work with, print etc?

I would and plan to test the two myself but I fear that at this stage in my
regained darkroom experience and differences might be more due to my errors
than real differences. What do people with more experience think about
Delta/DD-X vs. T-MAX/T-MAX using sharp lenses with high local contrast?

Jonathan Borden