Today's film IS better.

[David_A]

Hang on??? whats happening???
Its gone all monochrome in here all of a sudden, where has all the colour gone

David

[df cardwell]

where has all the colour gone ?

Color was discontinued when David moved the thread.

Sorry.

[SuzanneR]

Of course charts and graphs don't give you any clue to a film's juju, and I just love the juju of Tri-x. I don't know... something about the grain, I just like better than the Tmax films. Of course, I've used TMY infrequently, so there may well be some juju that I would like about it, but ignorance prevents me from knowing.

Only way to learn about it, would be to use it more frequently. Honestly, there isn't a film on the planet I don't like!!

[df cardwell]

juju of Tri-x

Oh. Yes. There is a LOT of 'this works, I'm not changing', too.

I happened to have run out of VP and TX at the same time back in the early '80s, and got hold of a bunch of beta TMax. So the transition was quick and easy... and necessary !

[Bruce Watson]

Yes but Kodak can put all their B&W research into the few films they manufacture, they gave up on papers.

True enough. But the topic *is* film, not papers.

[Andrew O'Neill]

However much fun it is to mourn the old films we have lost,
the the films which replaced them are better.

Which film has replaced HIE and is better? Nothing.

[Alan Johnson]

Crawley called the old times,60's, the "acutance era".
With films like Adox kb17 (now Adox/Efke 50) ,Panatomic-X and Plus-X,using an acutance developer like the Beutler, FX-1, FX-2, Rodinal,and only agitating every two or three minutes,edge effects are produced which give an appearance of sharpness.
I have tried it quite a few times and T-max 100 just does not produce these edge effects. It has a higher resolution though and that is why TMX, Delta and Acros IMO are better but it would be more accurate to say modern and acutance era films convey the impression of sharpness in a different way.

[2F/2F]

The third question is, "Do raw technical specifications really mean 'better', period, to me?"

It is good to have this information for technical knowledge. However, without criteria listed, no film can be called "better" than any other. Better for this, or better for that, or better in this or that way, but not simply "better".

SO, if higher MTF performance is the criterion for the comparison, then today's films are better in that way.

...but we all knew that already (at least I hope we knew, just by using them and seeing the results on our prints)!

[BetterSense]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me like TMY2 has the same MTF as Panatomic X. So, I take that as evidence that Panatomic X was some really good stuff and we just now caught up to it. How fast was panatomic X?

[2F/2F]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me like TMY2 has the same MTF as Panatomic X. So, I take that as evidence that Panatomic X was some really good stuff and we just now caught up to it. How fast was panatomic X?

What this really means is that TMY2 is some really good stuff, on a purely technical level. That it has the same MTF performance at Panatomic X is simply amazing, since it is over two full speeds faster.