Tmax100 w/ Tmax pro dev too grainy?

[jaimiepeeters]

hi guys

Here I have some results shot with Tmax 100 in a Leica M6 w/ Zeiss Planar 50 f2. Developed in Tmax Pro dev for 7.5 min 20Celcius, S10 for 1 min and Tmax pro fix for 6 min, both also on 20C. Camera settings were S1/50, F11 or F16 iso100.

I expected the film to be less grainy and perhaps a tad sharper?
What do you rekon?

The negatives were scanned with Plustek 7400 Silverfast 8 and I have used the Silverfast sharpener set to 100.

[sevo]

How long did you wait between exposure and development? In general, T-Max 100 is a very low grain film (the lowest grain available short of technical films), and I found it to be quite robust concerning exceeded expiration and bad storage conditions. But grain and sharpness of any film will suffer visibly if you let weeks or even months pass between exposure and development, or if it is stored hot in exposed state.

Seemingly high grain and low detail can also be a result of "grain aliasing" - i.e. interaction between grain and scanner pitch. In that case, silver prints or microscope inspection of the film will show less (or different) grain than the scans. It gets markedly worse if the film is underexposed or underdeveloped - sometimes it may be better to make a silver print and scan that if you need to rescue very thin negatives...

[jaimiepeeters]

I developed it the same evening.

[DominikDUK]

The film is very sharp but due to the T-Grain seems sometimes less sharp than classic cubic crystal films. The combination of T-max 100 +Tmax is not grainless. T-max dev. tends to push the filmspeed a little. Try to rescan the picture with less sharpening and less contrast, the graininess looks a little like noise but I am known to be wrong. I also believe that the scanner wasn't able to handle the negatives contrast but again I can be wrong.

Dominik

[jaimiepeeters]

is there a different developer that would work better with Tmax 100 or would you suggest TX of Fuji Across is a better film to work with several developers?

[Freakscene]

Originally Posted by jaimiepeeters

is there a different developer that would work better with Tmax 100 or would you suggest TX of Fuji Across is a better film to work with several developers?

Several developers will give finer grain, but from looking at your photos the sharpening applied by your scanner is much more likely to have caused the grainy look in your scans.

The RMS (grain index) of Acros (7) is slightly lower than that of TMX (8)*, but not enough to make a huge difference. TX is much grainier.

Marty

* Note that the methods used to measure the RMS by Kodak and Fuji are not the same.

[charjohncarter]

Originally Posted by DominikDUK

The film is very sharp but due to the T-Grain seems sometimes less sharp than classic cubic crystal films. The combination of T-max 100 +Tmax is not grainless. T-max dev. tends to push the filmspeed a little. Try to rescan the picture with less sharpening and less contrast, the graininess looks a little like noise but I am known to be wrong. I also believe that the scanner wasn't able to handle the negatives contrast but again I can be wrong.

Dominik

I'm with you on this, some of my TriX look just as sharp as TMax100. The T grain does, (I've read in Thornton's books), cause a weak acutance which even though it is fine grained gives the impression of weak sharpness. Scanner aliasing may also contribute.