T-Max 400 w/ Gradual ST 20 - Bologna

[Orio]

Saturday streets and markets in Bologna, photographed with ZI camera and Biogon 2/35 lens.
These photos were taken only a few hours before the earthquake that happened a few kilometers near.
Film is T-Max 400, developer is Ornano Gradual ST 20.
Clicking on images will bring up some enlargement:


01 - Internal courtyard of a museum




02 - Nuns chat




03- Saturday market in the historical centre




04




05




06 - Flowers and Café




07- Historical centre streets




08




09




10




11




12




13 - A talk with the police




14 - Students. This small downtown courtyard is a popular meeting, conversation and flirting place for university students.




15 - Cafés in Bologna often have the tables along the arcades




16




17 - Temptation of gluttony




18 - The cathedrals of Santo Stefano and the piazza




19




20




21 - A café worker




22 - Old barber shop (since 1922)...




23 - ... but the times are changing.




24 - Vegetables market




25




26 - A "head turner"




27 - Crowd in piazza Maggiore waiting for the historical cars of the Mille Miglia to pass



I need to find a way to modify the film holders of the Reflecta scanner by removing the plastic bars that separate the frames.
They do help keeping the film flat, but at the same time they cause the unpleasing brighter bars in the scan that you can see, which eat up precious frame estate.

[iangreenhalgh1]

I like 1 and 26 most. 1 for the composition and forms and 26 because it could be a still from a 1960s movie.

Do you find that people don't pay as much attention to you if you are shooting a film camera? I seem to have discovered that if I'm shooting an old camera people don't care much but if I'm shooting a modern digital, many don't like it and try to avoid being shot or tell me not to point at them.

[Orio]

Thanks Ian.
With people, I came to the conclusion that a lot depends on your confidence. If you approach the situation with a shy, hesitant attitude,
if you stay distant (using tele), but with an insisting gaze, people becomes defensive.
If instead you approach the place with confidence, brightly, and just capturing what you want once without insisting, people reacts better.
A smile helps a lot also to ease possible frictions.
By paradox, I think that people reacts better if you get close (but not too close to invade private space - i.e. not closer than 3-4 meters) using a wide angle lens,
than if you stay distant (more than 10 meters) but clearly aiming at them.
It's like normal life relations: bodily close presence can be annoying, but too distant attention generates suspicion and unease.
A normal distance for human detached relation - call it talking distance if you like, from 5 to 6-7 meters - is usually what works best, provided that you don't act like a freak that is

[iangreenhalgh1]

Cheers, I also find using wide angles seems to bother people less. It's kids I have problems with, I nearly got into a scuffle with three boys about 14 the other week, they ran after me shouting abuse because they thought I'd taken their picture, I must have been 70 metres from them using my Kiev with J-8, I stopped and made it quite clear they could shout all they wanted, i didn't care.

I had some young girls on bicycles, maybe 10yrs old shouting at me a couple of days ago and all I was doing was taking light meter readings, the camera was round my neck.

Young people here seem very paranoid about being caught in a photograph and they are very offensive these days. Old people don't seem to care much.

[Orio]

100% crop from the first image (scan was performed at original 24x36mm size in 1800 DPI resolution, which is half of scanner's optical res)
No grain reduction was performed - grain is exactly as delivered by the film+developer:



I think that the Gradual ST 20 kept a good balance of acutance, grain and contrast, not exceeding in any, providing good quantity of all.
Especially good is the shadow detail I think, obtained while keeping pure black and white at the extremes.
This in spite that it's not a T-grain dedicated developer (the Nucleol was, but sadly Ornano has discontinued it).
I am impressed by the quality of the T-Max 400 film. I am very familiar with the 100 ISO, not so with the 400. Well, it's a world class film for sure. I hope that Kodak will not abandon it.

[Katastrofo]

I think this crop says it all for the Reflecta. I would be happy with that if it was 6x9 from my 4490!

Really like this set, results with TMAX, and the new scanner!

[iangreenhalgh1]

I really like TMAX too, the 100 version in Paterson FX-39 has given me the least grain of all the films I've tried so far.

New scanner seems to be good.

[David]

TMax mostly gets gruff because it's the industry standard, IMO. But it's a very fine film and the third-best 400 ISO film I've ever used (behind Ilford P4 and Adox). It returns good results with minimal grain and has a fairly decent push capacity, if I remember correctly. And it's super fast. Your results show that it's a good film. This is a really solid roll with a number if images to be proud of.

[Orio]

Thanks guys, I like a lot Tmax 100 but I am impressed by TMax 400. So little grain! It feels almost like a 100 ISO film. Or if you prefer, like a 400 ISO medium format film.
And like you say David, I am of the impression that it is a real 400 ISO film, not just a wannabe.
It comes first now in my list of 400 ISO film, price is nearly the same as Tri-X but much less grain, and contrary to Tri-X, it does not curl at all.
I plan to try out all the other 400 ISO film that are available, next in line is Ilford Delta 400, after it I will buy a roll of Adox.
400 ISO is perfect for my style of photography, in cities with the buildings masking much skylight it is often difficult to get enough speed for snapshots from a 100 ISO.
Snapshots require a minimum of 1/125 s.t. to stay on the (relatively) safe side, and you need to stop down to at least f/5.6 to get a decent partial hyperfocal,
even when I use my "adaptive hyperfocal" technique.
Of the other 400 ISO I tried also HP5 but it did not impress me to be honest.
I want to try also Efke KB 400 but it's almost impossible to find here.

I am very happy with this roll, thank you! it contains some photo that have entered my favorites list and my to-print list, which is:
1, 2, 6, 13, 17, 18, 21, 22, 24
WIll have to do quite some sky burning but that's part of the fun
I very rarely get so many printables from one roll!

[Gurdie]

Great series!

Orio, have You read Italo Calvino´s book Invisible Cities - La cittá invisibili?

Heres´a passage from chapter "Cities and Rememberance 3":

“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”

You pictures remind me of the book, somehow.

[Orio]

[Yebisu]

Great series. 24 and 27 work very well for me.

[ForenSeil]

Grain is very good indeed. Many if not most ISO100 b/w films have more grain. Tonal range and sharpness is also not bad at all.
I will buy a large portion Tmax 400 or Ilford Delta 400 next time. I've haven't decided yet which one is better

Where are these horizontal stripes you can see especially on #4 coming from?
Are these from developing or from scanning?

[poilu]

great rendering of the T-Max and Biogon, my favs #1#2#4#19#22#24#25
#4 for the busy atmosphere, #19 I like the depth given by the columns, #25 it render well the narrow street

[erkie]

Orio, I have not heard mention of the "Mille Miglia" in a very long time
My uncle owned one of four hand built all aluminum Alfa Romeo built just for the Mille Miglia . If the fool had only kept it It was beautiful !

[Orio]

Erkie, I have seen some of the cars passing and indeed they are a work of art in their own. Beautiful objects.