Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2011/07/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]That's that quaint expression "There's nothing like a good Tri-X" used with slight irony a wink wink and we wonder what gets communicated. An element of truth in that statement or just whimsy? Tri x film is assumed to be behind the most shots in our collective unconscious the most shots from the cream years of photojournalism and street shooting. Not really in fine art work like this though. Fine art photographers have always had plenty of other options for this kind of subject matter.. Tab grained and slower, filtered and used on a tripod at a 30th of a second at f11. The idea that you can shoot tri x and your shots will hark back to our mystic sensibilities of when a photograph was really a photograph does not hold water. Tri x was drastically re formulated very few years ago when they built a whole new factory for it . They had not anticipated digital when they did that of course. And was reformulated decade or so before that which does not seem that long ago to me I was also very much redone. In the early 70's people were already saying that tri x was not tri x any more. But that's just the first I heard it. Though it only came out 16 years before that Monday, Nov 1, 1954. It like many and most films it changes and evolves. And does not look like itself after a decade or so. They "improve it". And they make it easier to manufacture. So this little "There's nothing like a good Tri-X" gem really gets is a little mouthful. The problem is people don't know to what level we are kidding and I'm sure plenty just take it at face value. As far as shooting people goes it was always oddly red hypersensitive. Did they fix that in the new factory? So it looks like you are shooting with pink filter. Not so great. Of course if you use a light green or yellow green filter that takes care of that. I think the new factory has already been closed down. I have fond myriad preferable options to shooting TRI X an most my work in the previous millennium. The last I used it was in May 1999 I drove the Lewis and Clark route with my Leicas and a brick of tri x. I sure wish to hell I'd have shot something else like Neopan 400 or 1600 or Delta. Which when I switched to that with the new for me Xtol 1:3 my 11x14 fiber darkroom prints seemed to double in quality. Later on I found Neopan 1600 in Xtol 1:3 looks better than your default baseline tri x in d76 1:1 look by a long shot. At 4x the speed. And no they never made Neopan 1600 in 120 or 220 or sheet. And of course there is the myth we just had here a few weeks ago that HCB' s body of work is tri x based. 400 speed film for me then became a "high rez" choice. Nowadays with the control we get in scanning I wonder how much is left over in a film/ developer/ dilution choice. How much "look" is left over from that choice that we see on your monitors 1000 pixels across? As I think in scanning and post balancing we can make anything balance out to look like anything with out even the use of that third party software where we can just hit that "tri ix in Rodinal 1:100" button and it would not matter that it was shot in Neopan Across 100 in Xtol 1:3. I think the look these shots from the Netherlands have are not so much based on their film and soup choice. Unless we were looking at darkroom prints in person. And I'm sure they'd look just fine. I don't think once we scan them and turn them into a screen sized jpeg we know what we are looking at in that sense. Which is one reason I have trouble going out and buying a brick of film. Mark William Rabiner > From: Richard Man <richard at imagecraft.com> > Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org> > Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2011 13:15:10 -0700 > To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org> > Subject: Re: [Leica] IMG: Ten new film images from the Netherlands > > Heresy!!! > > There's nothing like a good Tri-X > > :-) > > Nice job, Nathan! > > On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 7:00 AM, Bob Adler <rgacpa at yahoo.com> wrote: > >> Film >> Digital >> Stone and chisel >> It doesn't matter. >> Your travel images are always intriguing and lovely to see. >> Bob >> Bob Adler >> Palo Alto, CA >> http://www.rgaphoto.com >> >> >> >> >> ________________________________ >> From: Nathan Wajsman <photo at frozenlight.eu> >> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>; Olympus Camera Discussion >> <olympus at thomasclausen.net> >> Sent: Sun, July 3, 2011 4:20:56 AM >> Subject: [Leica] IMG: Ten new film images from the Netherlands >> >> I have added 10 images to my "sometimes I use film gallery": >> >> >> http://www.greatpix.eu/Other/Sometimes-I-use-film/7590141_XFqsu#1365787307_RN >> Wh3gX-O-LB >> >> >> and the next 9. >> >> Some of these are not new, since they were also included in the Texel >> gallery I >> posted yesterday. However, I have taken onboard the comments I received >> about >> the lack of contrast in those images and have improved on this aspect (or >> so I >> hope, anyway). >> >> Cheers, >> Nathan >> >> Nathan Wajsman >> Alicante, Spain >> http://www.frozenlight.eu >> http://www.greatpix.eu >> http://www.nathanfoto.com >> PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws >> Blog: http://www.fotocycle.dk/blog >> >> YNWA >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >> > > > > -- > // richard <http://www.imagecraft.com/> > // icc blog: <http://imagecraft.com/blog/> > // richard's personal photo blog: <http://www.5pmlight.com> > [ For technical support on ImageCraft products, please include all previous > replies in your msgs. ] > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information