Kodak Tri-X 400 35mm in D76 and Diafine

I have read a lot of information on the developers used with Kodak Tri-X 400 on the photo.net B&W Photo - Film & Processing Forum. Two of the most popular are D76 and Diafine. To see just what each can do I decided to test for myself.

All shots were from a Canon Elan 7ne with a 70-200 2.8 L IS. The lighting was from an Alien Bees 800 monolight. Exposure was at f9.5, 1/100 for a given ISO rating, the lens was set to 135mm. All film was from the same 35 mm 100 foot roll. For comparison, I am including some shots from my Canon 5D to see what a Full Frame digital camera can deliver.

Please note: Even though I loaded no more then 15 frames per roll for this test, the D76 1 to 1 development included 8 fluid ounces of D76 Full Strength and 8 fluid ounces of water. This is importand on full rolls to ensure that you don't exhaust the developer. I followed this practice here to ensure proper development.

All times were sourced from the Massive Dev Chart on digitaltruth.com.

Scanning was done with a Nikon Coolscan V ED. Settings were 4000 dpi, 16 bit gray, to a .tiff file.

Here is the full scene


Here are the crops

D76, Full Strength @ 400


D76, Diluted 1 to 1 @ 400


D76, Full Strength @ 1600


Diafine @ 1600


5D @ 1600


Conclusion:

If you are going to shoot Tri-X at ISO 400, then D76 1 to 1 is great. I think the image has more clarity then at full strength. If you want to shoot Tri-X at 1600, although the D76 negative looks pretty good, to me the Diafine image has a more gritty, B&W look.

It is interesting to see that the 5D can pull such detail out of a 1600 ISO image. Although a great camera, it does lack the dynamic range that film can deliver. Hopefully they will start looking to improve DR in the future instead of more megapixels.

And don't forget! If you want to have great film like this available 20 years from now buy some today and create some art!

Film is Dead. Long Live Film!!!

Sadly, Polaroid has decided to stop production of its instant film. Edwin Land must be turning in his grave. First patented in 1929, it appears that 2009 will be its last year in production. I doubt that the consumer market was buying all that much, and that most was used by professional photographers who used it as a preview of their exposure before exposing their normal film.

I wonder what this means for portrait photographers such as Elsa Dorfman?

But all is not so bleak for those of us who shoot film (now known as Analog Photography!). Kodak's Chief Executive Antonio Perez had some good things to say about the future of Film still photography, stating film was on their road map for the next 4 years since it still generates good revenue, article can be found here.

Additionally, Kodak has not only released new, improved emulsions for some of its Portra professional negative film, but they have also released a new emulsion for their T-Max 400 black and white negative print film as well! Who would have thought they would still be looking at black and white film!

Fuji is not standing still, either! They have recently released a new version of their iconic transparency Velvia 50. They also released new Pro films in 2005.

Even more impressive is Fuji's release of the Fuji GF670, a new 120 film, 6x7 folding rangefinder with a bellows!

Now if there was only some way to convince Kodak to make a new master roll of Kodachrome when the current batch runs out...

Well, there is one sure way to ensure that Kodak, Fuji, Ilford and all of the other film manufactures still make film 50 years from now - Buy it, shoot it, love it. Digital capture is awesome, but film is forever (especially if it is Kodachrome!).