New Roll Developed
A Park in Scottsdale, AZ, July 2008
One of the things I really like about film are the differences in the ‘look’ of one film to another. While there certainly are Lightroom presets that mimic film types, to my eye the differences go beyond the contrast curve and the response to color and the grain. I’ve collected Lightroom presets galore, but sometimes (like today) an image just pops out of the scanner and hits me upside the head.
This is TMAX 400. It was developed by the local lab. When I shot this last summer, I hadn’t yet mastered by development techniques (not that they are mastered yet) but I was especially nervous about TMAX. This roll came out so lovely that I am going to ask them what time/temp/developer combination they used.
This image isn’t anything award-winning, but the overall tonality just caught my eye. The Lightroom Preset conversions for TMAX just don’t do it justice. I’m going to have to get more of this film and experiment. I wouldn’t use it for the same things as HP5 (street photography), but more for landscapes, I think. I have a roll of TMAX 100 that I developed in FG7 that is waiting to be scanned. We’ll see how that came out.
Chris, this is really very nice. The white clouds in the reflection took my eye right up the scene to the “beach” and tress. Very nice contrast as well.
P.S. Sorry, I forgot. I used Nik Silver Pro for a trial and whilst I think it’s a good program I didn’t think it really captured the look of tri-x, so I tend to agree with what you write about above.