Drastic changes in T-max100?

[scott_eaton]

As much as I hate Kodak and their Wall Street approach to everything, I simply can't believe that TMX has made a radical change in Dmax, in of all things the positive direction.

 

I won't argue that it's contrast curve has been altered somewhat to facilitate different manufacturing. TMX has always been a bit twitchy in 4x5, which is why you buy a ton of it at a time.

 

Ditto on Acros 100. Very much in the same family 'look' as TMX 100, and actually a bit easier to work with.

[zoeica images]

Newsflash......Kodak had to change TMAX, TRI-X and PLUS-X. When the new factory opened, the film process was not the same. A retiree left something out maybe? They basically had to start over. That's a inside story, true I was told.

[sal_santamaura]

Finally made time to process the 120 test roll of "new" TMX I exposed a few weeks ago. My standard for the old flavor was 6 minutes 15 seconds in a Jobo CPE-2+ (runs at 75 rpm) at 75 degrees F using Ilfosol-S 1:14. Not wanting to shorten the time, since perfectly even results were always unachievable much under 6 minutes, I ran the new stuff through an identical process. Here are my results:

 

Old: EI 100

 

New: EI 125

 

Zone VII density old: 0.89

 

Zone VII density new: 0.84

 

So it appears a slight increase in time is called for, perhaps around 15 seconds. Grain and sharpness seem about the same under a 15x magnifier. One difference concerns color of the negatives. "Old" 120 TMX in this developer was fairly neutral until about 0.95, while the new stuff gets yellow down at 0.8. Could have an effect, one way or the other, depending on whether graded or VC papers are used. I haven't printed any yet, so can't say for sure. It's a *lot* less yellow than "old" TMX in Xtol was.

 

Bottom line: 1/3 stop faster and a slightly lower gamma.