I think P3200 T-Max really shines when you meter for the shadows, especially in low light. And since it's such a high-contrast film, it has a way of brutally demonstrating how much dimmer the ground is than the sky, which reflected metering is trying to bring to a gray. I usually aim away from the sky when metering with this stock, or use incident metering. But that's only when I'm using this film during the daytime, which is almost never. This film is at it's best in very low light situations. I've shot a dozen or so rolls of it, almost entirely at night and at box speed (metering, again, for the shadows) and that's when I get my favorite results.
hmmm... admittedly shooting this during the day is a little silly, but I didn't want to use a tripod. totally valid point. if you meter for the shadows, I'm not sure if you can say it's "at 3200." it's a bit philosophical even, but I do consider "shooting at 3200" to mean the average 18% luminance or whatever is exposed properly for EI 3200 -- or maybe excluding the sky (this is how I normally meter - just point the camera down a bit to exclude the sky). Effectively, if you meter for the shadows, you're overexposing by something like 1-2 stops, which would make for great results; I liked TMZ at 1600 and 800 and would shoot again at around 1000-1250. I guess saying "expose for the shadows at 3200" is fair advice, but you can't e.g. follow it with many point and shoots that allow exposure comp but not manual exposure, and if I did the tests that way, people would say it's unfair in that way, haha. I guess it's hard to do a fair test.
@@karl1137 the lab I normally use (photolaboratory in berkeley) typically uses XTOL, which should be good at retaining film speed / is one of the faster developers out there. given that TMZ is effectively a push process film, I can't guarantee they used XTOL - they may have chosen a push-oriented developer - but it's likely XTOL.
@@atomikpi I am in the process of getting equipment to do my own developing film for the first time. I did process one roll in the mid 1980s when I was a teenager, but none since then. I got back into film photography at the end of 2017 and have shot 20 to 30 rolls since then in quite a few different events/places and I thoroughly enjoy the process. I use Vuescan to digitize it all and use Gimp to create contact sheets and make prints.
Wait I'm sure you have to commit an entire roll to the pushing. So a more accurate test would be one roll at 800 one at 1600 and one at 3200. Simply changing your meter is bracketing of sorts.
Yeah here it's developed at 3200 (pushed about 2 stops). So agreed that 3 rolls would be better but you can see here that 800-1600 tends to look better despite being "developed incorrectly."
@@atomikpi The reason 800 looks better is because it was overdeveloped, 3200 shots were underexposed and the lab underdeveloped them. Been shooting this film a long time and have never seen results like this.
@@thomaspopple2291 hi, replied to your other comment. I don't follow - if overdeveloping just looked better, why wouldn't kodak change their recommended dev times? I had the lab develop for 3200, so should be "fair" for the 3200 shots and unfair for 800/1600.
@@atomikpi So, we never shot at the declared ISO (ASA in to hide days, or even DIN (liking at you, Agfa 😁) and ALWAYS pushed the processing a bit. Our ideal was exposing for a Zone V match and developing for Zone I and Zone IX to differentiate from complete black or white (Zones 0 and X). We'd regularly test batches of film, we bought in bricks of 24 (I think) from the same batch number. We'd test one roll to verify our "normal" exposure matched previous batches or determine what exposure and development adjustments were required and then retest at the "new normal." Then we'd run another test roll for a 2-stop push or higher. I regularly shot Tri-X at 320 ISO by my meters and added 7%-10% developing time in Rodinal. HP5 I could shoot at 400, but I added 15%-20% developing time. A true push on Tri-X would be shooting at 1600 and adding developing time (I forget how much, it's been awhile). Using this we would get negatives that carried the full range of tones and had a negative density that worked with our enlargers and papers (this was newspaper). We had a specific light meter we used for calibration and then calibrated our other meters to that so we had consistency across the group.
@@atomikpi how does your negative look like? It appears to me all iso 3200 shots are either underexposed or under developed in your scans. If they look thin in the negative (which I believe so), either you were exposing it incorrectly or the lab was doing a poor job.
I've used this film a couple of times. It's fine. The trick (really with any negative film) is to intentionally expose for the number of stops of density you want to record for that frame. Set the camera for 3200 ISO. If the intent is to record just 5 or 7 stops, meter on the mid-tone as usual; you plan to crush the shadows and have huge tonal difference everywhere else. If the intent is to record 12+ stops of density, meter on the darkest shadow of the scene. This is much faster and importantly, much less prone to oops than fiddling with the camera ISO knob. Think of it as shooting the zone system for cameras without interchangeable backs. It gets you 95% of the zone system goodness.
Yeah, that is a reasonable way to see it. I do like the zone system in concept from what I've read but am very into being present/intuitive when shooting so never used it formally. (I also get obsessive about stuff so have intentionally avoided getting into large format.) Unless you're really blowing the exposure, the effects of overexposure on negative film have always been pretty mild - especially for color negative. (Yes, grain is slightly increased and sharpness maybe a little reduced in B&W, but it's marginal.) So I mostly think about what amount of shadow detail I want and set my exposure based on that. Letting shadows clip as you mentioned can be a nice look and is a lot of what people are getting at when they say stuff like "pushed hp5 looks better than box speed" or whatever.
Nice shot but wrong understanding... As I can see in this video, you take in different iso but you develop them same with each other. Because at 800 I can see it look a bit flat but at 3200 quite constrasty (like a real Tmax look) so I think this film was developed at EI3200. To make your test become more correct, I think next time you should take them and develop them seprately.
Hi! You’re correct and this was intentional since shooting the same roll 3x with equivalent light would have been very hard. (Other comments here discussing.) Results for the 800-1600 shots are better IMO despite “incorrect” development. So of course you could also develop them less to reduce contrast - the iso 800 shots in particular have an overdeveloped look.
This test makes no sense. The only way you could test this is either to shoot 3 rolls, 1 at each iso and develop for that iso or do stand develop. These results are nowhere near what i get when i shoot this film and I have shot it at all three of those iso's and also at 6400. Plus having the lab do the developing and scanning also skews the results as we don't know what settings the lab applied to the scans or what developer they used. At 3200 they should be contrasty and punchy and at 800 they would be rather flat. You have just the opposite. Please don't take offense but this video is giving very misleading and incorrect info.
hi - feel free to post your scans here :) I had them develop for 3200. most people don't do their own development. so the 3200 images are being treated "fairly" and the 1600 and 800 are overdeveloped. despite that, they look better. for me, that makes a strong case for 800/1600. it's possible the lab messed up here - I generally do my own scans nowadays. I have talked to plenty of people who prefer tmz at 800 or 1600. i could re-shoot this with my own scans, but shooting three separate rolls in the same spots would be a bit too much time to invest. again, feel free to do the test yourself, and if you shoot me a link, I'll watch it ;)
@@atomikpi First of all I apologize if I came off a bit strong. I am just a very logical methodical type person. If you shoot it at 800 and develop at 3200 than you are overdeveloping, hence the contrasty look. Shooting at 1600 and developing at 3200 means underexposing and overdeveloping hence the middle of the road contrast. Shot at 3200 and developed at 3200 you are underexposing alot and overdeveloping a lot resulting in negatives that should be very contrasty as the developer exhausts itself fast on the highlights and slowly builds the shadows. I do believe your lab has made a mistake from what I see as your results. Plus it looks like they did some post curves adjustments as well. The shots at 3200 are way to flat. Either you underexposed the shots at 3200 or the lab underdeveloped or both. Happens with some labs when they don't keep their chems fresh. They develop for the right time but the exhausted chems result in underdevelopment. That is why I develop and scan myself. Labs can't be trusted these days. In general. There are some good ones but many try to save money by using the chems longer than they should. Sorry to write a book here. lol. Thanks for helping keep film alive.
@@thomaspopple2291 no worries and fair points. thanks for watching. i have a few rolls in my fridge, so will probably try shooting one at 3200 "properly" and one at 1600. also moved to scanning my own to keep things consistent - I don't trust lab scan techs either.
800 asa looks really good indeed I think maybe shooting at 800 and developing for 1600 maybe will look even better I don't know how much you can pull this film to be honest that might be an interesting test too would love to see that! Great video btw! I don't shoot a lot of kodak black and white stuff personally to expensive for what it is ilford gives a lot bang for les bucks
yeah, shooting 800 and "pulling" would be pretty nice I think. I have a few more rolls and think I'll shoot around 1000-1250 and develop normally. (my lab charges extra for push/pull and I'm too lazy to develop myself.)
@@atomikpi you should really do it yourself you have way more creative control in how you want your negative to look and it's a lot cheaper you should also try some darkroom printing if you have the chance to it's a lot of fun in my opinion it's the most fun shooting film that way it's nice not sitting in front of a computer while I'm editing my photos it's a really refreshing experience but you do need a lot of patience haha
@@benjaminvleugels5609 yeah haha I have come very close a few times. same with venturing into LF (would be cheaper if I developed myself). I learned photography in a high school darkroom class, so I've done that whole thing a fair bit.
Been a while. They’re all quite grainy, don’t recall huge differences. Theoretically, b&w should be grainier if overexposed and overdeveloped, like the EI 800 shots here arguably are.
yes, that's literally what I've done. developed at 3200 to try to give the 3200 shots the advantage. so we're seeing if the film looks better "overexposed"
yeah I've heard various claims from about 800-1250. official data sheet says 800 + 2-stop push by default - imaging.kodakalaris.com/sites/default/files/files/products/P3200_FAQs.pdf
Thanks! Your experience and the few viewer comments have given me a much better idea on how to shoot this film. Very cool.
thank you :)
I think P3200 T-Max really shines when you meter for the shadows, especially in low light. And since it's such a high-contrast film, it has a way of brutally demonstrating how much dimmer the ground is than the sky, which reflected metering is trying to bring to a gray.
I usually aim away from the sky when metering with this stock, or use incident metering. But that's only when I'm using this film during the daytime, which is almost never. This film is at it's best in very low light situations. I've shot a dozen or so rolls of it, almost entirely at night and at box speed (metering, again, for the shadows) and that's when I get my favorite results.
hmmm... admittedly shooting this during the day is a little silly, but I didn't want to use a tripod. totally valid point.
if you meter for the shadows, I'm not sure if you can say it's "at 3200." it's a bit philosophical even, but I do consider "shooting at 3200" to mean the average 18% luminance or whatever is exposed properly for EI 3200 -- or maybe excluding the sky (this is how I normally meter - just point the camera down a bit to exclude the sky). Effectively, if you meter for the shadows, you're overexposing by something like 1-2 stops, which would make for great results; I liked TMZ at 1600 and 800 and would shoot again at around 1000-1250.
I guess saying "expose for the shadows at 3200" is fair advice, but you can't e.g. follow it with many point and shoots that allow exposure comp but not manual exposure, and if I did the tests that way, people would say it's unfair in that way, haha. I guess it's hard to do a fair test.
Another unknown is the type of developer (ie., xtol, D76, Dektol, etc) the lab used and if that would matter.
@@karl1137 the lab I normally use (photolaboratory in berkeley) typically uses XTOL, which should be good at retaining film speed / is one of the faster developers out there. given that TMZ is effectively a push process film, I can't guarantee they used XTOL - they may have chosen a push-oriented developer - but it's likely XTOL.
@@atomikpi I am in the process of getting equipment to do my own developing film for the first time. I did process one roll in the mid 1980s when I was a teenager, but none since then. I got back into film photography at the end of 2017 and have shot 20 to 30 rolls since then in quite a few different events/places and I thoroughly enjoy the process. I use Vuescan to digitize it all and use Gimp to create contact sheets and make prints.
Wait I'm sure you have to commit an entire roll to the pushing. So a more accurate test would be one roll at 800 one at 1600 and one at 3200. Simply changing your meter is bracketing of sorts.
Yeah here it's developed at 3200 (pushed about 2 stops). So agreed that 3 rolls would be better but you can see here that 800-1600 tends to look better despite being "developed incorrectly."
@@atomikpi The reason 800 looks better is because it was overdeveloped, 3200 shots were underexposed and the lab underdeveloped them. Been shooting this film a long time and have never seen results like this.
@@thomaspopple2291 hi, replied to your other comment. I don't follow - if overdeveloping just looked better, why wouldn't kodak change their recommended dev times? I had the lab develop for 3200, so should be "fair" for the 3200 shots and unfair for 800/1600.
@@atomikpi So, we never shot at the declared ISO (ASA in to hide days, or even DIN (liking at you, Agfa 😁) and ALWAYS pushed the processing a bit. Our ideal was exposing for a Zone V match and developing for Zone I and Zone IX to differentiate from complete black or white (Zones 0 and X).
We'd regularly test batches of film, we bought in bricks of 24 (I think) from the same batch number. We'd test one roll to verify our "normal" exposure matched previous batches or determine what exposure and development adjustments were required and then retest at the "new normal." Then we'd run another test roll for a 2-stop push or higher.
I regularly shot Tri-X at 320 ISO by my meters and added 7%-10% developing time in Rodinal. HP5 I could shoot at 400, but I added 15%-20% developing time. A true push on Tri-X would be shooting at 1600 and adding developing time (I forget how much, it's been awhile).
Using this we would get negatives that carried the full range of tones and had a negative density that worked with our enlargers and papers (this was newspaper). We had a specific light meter we used for calibration and then calibrated our other meters to that so we had consistency across the group.
@@atomikpi how does your negative look like? It appears to me all iso 3200 shots are either underexposed or under developed in your scans. If they look thin in the negative (which I believe so), either you were exposing it incorrectly or the lab was doing a poor job.
I've used this film a couple of times. It's fine. The trick (really with any negative film) is to intentionally expose for the number of stops of density you want to record for that frame.
Set the camera for 3200 ISO. If the intent is to record just 5 or 7 stops, meter on the mid-tone as usual; you plan to crush the shadows and have huge tonal difference everywhere else. If the intent is to record 12+ stops of density, meter on the darkest shadow of the scene. This is much faster and importantly, much less prone to oops than fiddling with the camera ISO knob.
Think of it as shooting the zone system for cameras without interchangeable backs. It gets you 95% of the zone system goodness.
Yeah, that is a reasonable way to see it. I do like the zone system in concept from what I've read but am very into being present/intuitive when shooting so never used it formally. (I also get obsessive about stuff so have intentionally avoided getting into large format.)
Unless you're really blowing the exposure, the effects of overexposure on negative film have always been pretty mild - especially for color negative. (Yes, grain is slightly increased and sharpness maybe a little reduced in B&W, but it's marginal.) So I mostly think about what amount of shadow detail I want and set my exposure based on that. Letting shadows clip as you mentioned can be a nice look and is a lot of what people are getting at when they say stuff like "pushed hp5 looks better than box speed" or whatever.
Great video and info. Thank you
Very helpful but also my guy with the My Bloody Valentine desktop 👌🏾
greetings fellow vacuum cleaner enthusiast!
Nice shot but wrong understanding... As I can see in this video, you take in different iso but you develop them same with each other. Because at 800 I can see it look a bit flat but at 3200 quite constrasty (like a real Tmax look) so I think this film was developed at EI3200. To make your test become more correct, I think next time you should take them and develop them seprately.
Hi! You’re correct and this was intentional since shooting the same roll 3x with equivalent light would have been very hard. (Other comments here discussing.) Results for the 800-1600 shots are better IMO despite “incorrect” development. So of course you could also develop them less to reduce contrast - the iso 800 shots in particular have an overdeveloped look.
Great video!
thank you!
This test makes no sense. The only way you could test this is either to shoot 3 rolls, 1 at each iso and develop for that iso or do stand develop. These results are nowhere near what i get when i shoot this film and I have shot it at all three of those iso's and also at 6400. Plus having the lab do the developing and scanning also skews the results as we don't know what settings the lab applied to the scans or what developer they used. At 3200 they should be contrasty and punchy and at 800 they would be rather flat. You have just the opposite. Please don't take offense but this video is giving very misleading and incorrect info.
hi - feel free to post your scans here :)
I had them develop for 3200. most people don't do their own development. so the 3200 images are being treated "fairly" and the 1600 and 800 are overdeveloped. despite that, they look better. for me, that makes a strong case for 800/1600.
it's possible the lab messed up here - I generally do my own scans nowadays. I have talked to plenty of people who prefer tmz at 800 or 1600. i could re-shoot this with my own scans, but shooting three separate rolls in the same spots would be a bit too much time to invest. again, feel free to do the test yourself, and if you shoot me a link, I'll watch it ;)
@@atomikpi First of all I apologize if I came off a bit strong. I am just a very logical methodical type person. If you shoot it at 800 and develop at 3200 than you are overdeveloping, hence the contrasty look. Shooting at 1600 and developing at 3200 means underexposing and overdeveloping hence the middle of the road contrast. Shot at 3200 and developed at 3200 you are underexposing alot and overdeveloping a lot resulting in negatives that should be very contrasty as the developer exhausts itself fast on the highlights and slowly builds the shadows. I do believe your lab has made a mistake from what I see as your results. Plus it looks like they did some post curves adjustments as well. The shots at 3200 are way to flat. Either you underexposed the shots at 3200 or the lab underdeveloped or both. Happens with some labs when they don't keep their chems fresh. They develop for the right time but the exhausted chems result in underdevelopment. That is why I develop and scan myself. Labs can't be trusted these days. In general. There are some good ones but many try to save money by using the chems longer than they should. Sorry to write a book here. lol. Thanks for helping keep film alive.
@@thomaspopple2291 no worries and fair points. thanks for watching.
i have a few rolls in my fridge, so will probably try shooting one at 3200 "properly" and one at 1600. also moved to scanning my own to keep things consistent - I don't trust lab scan techs either.
Thanks for the video.
thanks for watching!
800 asa looks really good indeed I think maybe shooting at 800 and developing for 1600 maybe will look even better I don't know how much you can pull this film to be honest that might be an interesting test too would love to see that! Great video btw! I don't shoot a lot of kodak black and white stuff personally to expensive for what it is ilford gives a lot bang for les bucks
yeah, shooting 800 and "pulling" would be pretty nice I think. I have a few more rolls and think I'll shoot around 1000-1250 and develop normally. (my lab charges extra for push/pull and I'm too lazy to develop myself.)
@@atomikpi you should really do it yourself you have way more creative control in how you want your negative to look and it's a lot cheaper you should also try some darkroom printing if you have the chance to it's a lot of fun in my opinion it's the most fun shooting film that way it's nice not sitting in front of a computer while I'm editing my photos it's a really refreshing experience but you do need a lot of patience haha
@@benjaminvleugels5609 yeah haha I have come very close a few times. same with venturing into LF (would be cheaper if I developed myself). I learned photography in a high school darkroom class, so I've done that whole thing a fair bit.
Incredible video. Thank you. 😗
Thanks!
What about any differences in grain between the speeds?
Been a while. They’re all quite grainy, don’t recall huge differences. Theoretically, b&w should be grainier if overexposed and overdeveloped, like the EI 800 shots here arguably are.
Is that a modular synthesizer in the back?? Respect, if so. Analog photos and analog jams lol
nice eyesight ;)
Hey. I think what you’ve done here is bracketed the shots and not developed according to the EVs.
yes, that's literally what I've done. developed at 3200 to try to give the 3200 shots the advantage. so we're seeing if the film looks better "overexposed"
Very useful!
It’s true speed is near 800-1000
yeah, hopefully remembered to say this in the video. of course, since it's developed for 3200 the 800 shots are a bit overdeveloped / over contrasty
I heard the true ISO is 1250.
yeah I've heard various claims from about 800-1250. official data sheet says 800 + 2-stop push by default - imaging.kodakalaris.com/sites/default/files/files/products/P3200_FAQs.pdf
A former Kodak sales rep and youtuber, who ought to know, agrees, it is a 1250 film.
Best ISO for the P3200 is 1250iso... so between 800 and 1600. ;)
Agreed!
LOVELESS
great album or greatest album?
i would shoot at 400
Bold move