Submitter's name:	Tris Schuler
Title:	Lunch at the Beach
Gear used:	OM-4T, Zuiko 35-70mm F3.5 (@~40mm), B+W 022 2x Multi Resistant, Motor Drive 2
Diaphragm:	f5.6
Shutter speed:	1/15
Film used:	Kodak T-MAX 100
Technical information:	My wife, Katie, as she ponders her lunch (slight tint added in Photoshop v6.0). I don't use the T-MAX film stocks a whole lot, preferring to shoot with Tri-X in most situations. Of the two T-MAX emulsions I'm familiar with, the ISO-100 variety strikes me as the most capable. I've tried hard to find good use for the p3200; as I shoot in the street a lot after dark higher film speed is always something I'm after; so far I've come up croppers with that stuff. My main problem with T-MAX 100 is this film's inability to hold good highlight detail in scenes with considerable dynamic range. I'd guess this particular light setting runs some eight to nine stops from the highlights on my wife's right (as the viewer looks at the image left) cheek and forehead to the shadow area on her dark-colored top. I exposed using the OM-4T's spot function, taking one reading off my wife's brightly-lit cheek/forehead and two or three (I forget now and neglected to make a note on site) from various shadow areas (my wife's sweater and top, the shadowed (left) area of her face, and if I recall I even took a reading from the far background shadows). The result is an about-right exposure of her facial features, okay shadow detail on part of her shadowed sweater, but blown-out cheek/forehead details on the right side of her face. On balance, I'm not impressed. The grain structure of the T-MAX films is not all unattractive, but these films completely fail to afford the distinctive in-your-face look one associates with Tri-X. There's no "pow!" to them, and precious little sense of that "pictorial depth" which Tri-X so ably transmits to the viewer. Indeed, to my eye the T-MAX emulsions have an almost "blah" look about them. Maybe I just don't get it, but if these films represent progress then I think I'll continue to hang around somewhere back in film-stock history. I still have a few rolls of T-MAX 100 left in the freezer and will shoot them off as I get around to it, but unless I suddenly learn how better to hold this emulsion's extreme highlights in Photoshop then from now on it'll be business as usual for me (PLUS-X, Technical Pan) when I want and/or need the look and resolution of finer (in the case of Tech Pan virtually invisible) grain.
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Comment left by: Wayne Harridge (no e-mail specified)

Certainly a lot of contrast to deal with. I might have gone with getting the highlights correct and letting everything else drift towards black.

Comment left by: Chris (ftog@threeshoes.co.uk)

I don't know: the tones seem pretty soft and well spread but for the highlights. Are you sure that this was not exactly as it looked in real life? I wish my wife would let me take photos of her...

Comment left by: Tris (tristanjohn@mindspring.com)

Chris: it is pretty much what it looked like in real life . . . except of course it isn't at the same time. Pictures never are. In real life my eyes had no trouble picking up details on my wife's right cheek, for instance, or seeing the thread detail in her black sweater (much of which did show up in the larger TIFF image but was lost when I interpolated down to 640 pixels--shadow detail always suffers in that regard). Wayne: your approach would have been another method, though as a rule I expose negative stock for shadows and midtones, not highlights. It just could be that the dynamic range in this scene was too much, though I think Tri-X would have made a better job of it.

Comment left by: Joel Wilcox (no e-mail specified)

Methinks he doth protest too much. Seriously, a lot to like -- very interesting tonal range. It does look like a classic Tri-X/N-1/80% development situation. I'm not sure whether there is a solution like that with T-Max (or even with Tri-X such as it is now).

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