Well, I must come crawling on my knees to ask for forgiveness. I erred in
a grand way this time. I had previously posted my initial analysis on
T400CN and was so far out in left field that I wasn't even in the ballgame.
And it was all because of something so incredibly stupid I hesitate to
even share my boneheaded mistake. Oh, well, here goes.
First of all, my mistake: The negatives had been sleeved with a plastic
skin that was nearly impossible to see and remove. I know how to spot
sleeves, but I was royally fooled this time. I only discovered the plastic
on one side when I was trying to remove a dust speck. This incredibly thin
film of plastic was glued to the negative and was statically charged to not
be removable. Well, it took me nearly ten minutes to remove it from a
five-frame segment and then another ten minutes to find and remove the
other side! When I had looked at the negative in the enlarger I was also
viewing this plastic and it was what had cut down on the resolution of the
negative. That said, now I will go on with a real analysis based on actual
enlargments in a quality controlled manner.
The photograph was a portrait taken with the Zuiko 100/2.8 (SC) lens and
lit with a single studio strobe in an umbrella. The lighting of my subject
(sister -inlaw) was smooth, although it did emphasise a bit from the right.
I enlarged a picture that had been taken at F5.6 and looked about a full
stop overexposed compared to other 400 speed B&W emulsions. With the
massive exposure latitude of this film, I wouldn't concern myself with
exact exposures as this film can be over and under exposed by a whole stop
with little to no difference in the final print.
I would have suspected that the color of the film base would throw the
Ilford polycontrast paper up a paper grade. (Kodak claims that the film
base color has no affect on paper grading) This particular print didn't
require any contrast adjustment and was a straight shoot through my
enlarger for an 8x10 of 20 seconds at F11. I'm using an Omega condensor
enlarger with a single sheet of diffusion material in the filter drawer
which softens the prints about a half-grade and takes a 1-stop hit in
exposure time. To preserve shadow detail a little better I probably would
have gone down an additional half-grade--if I really cared to. Even so,
the texture in her black blazer was apparent in the final print and the
weave of the fabric is discernable. At the same time the white blouse
retained tonal detail and never washed out. Kodak claims that this film
prints best at a grade 3-3.5 paper. I suspect that people not satisfied
with print densities are probably starting a grade low.
The critical focus point in the print was the rim of the glasses. The eyes
were still in focus, but the detail in the glasses was astonishing. You
can actually make out some of the microscratches in the gold frames. It
renewed my faith in the Zuiko lens--that's for sure. Eyelashes are sharp
and the hair resolved so well that two stray hairs are almost distracting.
I did a test strip at the 11x14 print size and was even more impressed.
Absolutely no grain is evident at all. The dyes do lack some of the
edginess of a grain film, but the dyes seem more continous tone than a
grain film which really varies tonal value by size/position more than
actual tone. The sharpness of the film and sensitivity to tonal variance
is evident by even making faint facial hair visible in the 11x14 print.
Contrary to my previous analysis, the highlights proved to be sharper than
the shadows. This is confirmed by Kodak which says "Overexposure produces
more dense negatives that require longer printing times. Tone reproduction
remains excellent with overexposure. Progressively more overexposure also
produces progressively finer grain while maintaining high sharpness."
So what about the highlights? Well, the reflection of the strobe/umbrella
in the eyeball is quite clear with the "vignetting" look of the umbrella
visible. Not quite enough resolution to see the water stains, but far more
detail/tonal range than any other film ever tested. After all, I did
overexpose this shot by a whole stop. Had I gone down a stop I probably
would have captured the umbrella's water stains (which are rather faint) in
the eye reflection. TMX would have just given me a round blob for the
umbrella reflection. The eyeglasses just caught the bottom part of the
umbrella, but the wrinkles in the fabric are visible.
The sweat pores in the face are visible in the print, but hardly a problem.
The tonal smoothness of the film makes them look right, but it is apparant
that good makup is important if you wre interested in the "perfect" portrait.
So what are my thoughts on this film as an "all-purpose" B&W film? Well,
this portrait had the sharpness, tonality and smoothness of what you would
expect in medium format with Plus-X. I would closely compare T400CN with
Ilford Pan-F as far as sharpness/resolution is concerned, but would say
that Pan-F edges out T400CN in tonal detail by a very slight margin. Most
importantly, though, is that T400CN achieves the same sharpness/resolution
as the Pan-F without the grain.
I also printed up my ADITL3 shot which was taken with HP-5. The grain is
so apparent that an 8x10 is almost too much. I did have to go up to grade
3-4 in paper contrast which enhanced the grain, but still the differences
were so great that I actually would insist that the portrait was not taken
with a 35mm but a medium format camera. In fact, this portrait was sharper
than ANY picture I've ever taken in 645 and is only matched by a shot taken
with my 6x7. This, of course, is a terrific testiment to the Zuiko
100/2.8. I'm excited to try this film in my 6x7!
Kodak's website contains a bunch of various curves on this film along with
the other professional emulsions. The spectral curve of the T400CN is a
little shorter than TMX as TMX will go down to 700nm. But the T400CN is
substantially more sensitive in the exposure extremes than either TMX or
TMY and possesses much more latitude and flatness of response than those
emulsions.
Oh, just for comparison purposes: The T400CN has a rms Granularity of 9
which also is that of Kodachrome 25.
Ken (up to my armpits in developer) Norton
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