Tmax in ID-11

Yebisu · Joined: 13 Feb 2011 Posts: 1299

Hi everyone. I shot my first roll of tmax 100 (Nikon FE with various Nikkors) and home developed in ID-11.

I'm a little disappointed by the results. Sad

I'm especially disappointed by the close ups of the rice seedlings. They are a lot grainier than I expected. The negatives of the seedling pictures appear dense and I'm not sure what this means (over exposure or over development or something else). All comments, criticism and advice gratefully appreciated.

First the disappointing seedling pictures ( I edited them a little in CS):

Some other Rice field shots which are better but still seem a little flat:

Thanks for looking Very Happy

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

One common mistake is to expect that a negative delivers great result per se.
It doesn't work that way. The best that a negative can do is to be correct.
I.e. to carry as much information as possible.
Negative is only an intermediate step. The final step is the print.
Therefore, a negative that looks "flat" is not necessarily wrong. Contrast must be added at printing stage.
The contrary also works: a negative that looks contrasted is not necessarily a better negative.
What may look good at first sight when inspecting the frames might turn out unprintable, or printable with difficulty.
For people doing only digital workflow, the equivalent of printing is the post-processing (for web publication or
for digital print).
So if your workflow is all digital, it is correct to take your "flat" negative and enhance it in post-processing.

Räbenfluch · Joined: 18 Mar 2013 Posts: 112

So, I had grainy results on Kodak cn400 because it was developed normal, but I think one stop underexposed. The negatives came out flat and thin, scanning was not easy. But it got better with some multipassscanning. It reduced the grain a bit, but took some time.
I hope that this helped you out a bit Smile

Cheers,
Timo

Yebisu · Joined: 13 Feb 2011 Posts: 1299

Thanks for the comments guys.

It's the amount of grain in the first two shots that surprised me most. I've never had that much grain with Fuji acros 100 or presto 400. The negatives for the first two seedling shots are quite dense. Do thick or dense negatives usually mean grainy prints/scans?

Thanks.

Räbenfluch · Joined: 18 Mar 2013 Posts: 112

I feel free, to post a link with some pictures I took at a concert with Tmax 400 developed in Tetenal Ultrafin.
I critically underdeveloped it (12 insted of something between 18-20 minutes Confused

) and some of them came out very grainy. The negatives are nearly clear :/.
http://forum.mflenses.com/my-not-so-well-developed-film-t58335.html
You can see how grainy some of them came out, even though it was 120 film.
So, grainy pictures can come out grainy by underdeveloping or underexposing, I think.
Cheers,
Timo