This is a shot that I took of the tech wunderkid founder of digg.com and revision3.com, Kevin Rose, when he was in Beijing a couple of months back.

I am not going to upload it here for publishing, but I will show it for a while (before I send off to him) as an example of wonderful grain and my new formula for it.

TMAX 400 shot at 1600 and then developed in ILFORD DDX at 1+4.

It has the size and roundness of a delta 3200 - but maintains the smoothness of TRI-X at 400/800. Given that TMAX/DELTA films loose a little bit of accutance due to their finer and more rigid grain arrangement - the pushing adds that accutance back and does so without ruining the fall off of the lens into blur.

I developed some TMAX 400 shot at 3200 and the results are more like the 3200 films - but IMHO cleaner, nicer and with a better tone curve keeping more shades of grey in there.

The second shot is TMAX 400 @ 400 in DDX - I got the same digital clean disease and ended up there and it jsut doesn't look nice. I am going to stick to TRI-X in D76 now for 400 speed shooting and only shoot TMAX because I can do so at 1600 and 3200 and it is just sooooo nice. Kills TRI-X when you look at that at 1600 and even more so at 3200.

Anyway - you guys know who you are. I have shot a lot like this and it is repeatable each and every time. It is just so nice and nicer than the DELTA 3200 grain which is the last shot - which is a film uses traditionally because one wants the accutance and volume of a harsh grain reproduction.

Takes my breath away. So beautiful.

TMAX 400 @ 1600 in DDX 1+5

TMAX 400 @ 400 in DDX 1+5

TMAX 400 @ 400 in D76 Straight or 1+1 - I forget)

DELTA 3200 @ 3200 in DDX 1+5 (Though medium format so not really comparable)

Cheers,
RF.

I like it.

I like the look of the third one too.

B

Third one is so razor sharp and clean. That is a modern (2007 invention) film with 50-60 year old developer formula. That is a good thing for people that want to shoot at 400 and have it look like 100. No argument. I just realised that part of the reason for shooting 400 was the different look that it gave you over 100. So for now in this brave new world - 1600 is the new 400. ;-)

MInd you though - for that 3rd shot - had it been a real 100 film - then the shadow under the brim of the hat would have been much darker....