I'm shooting T-max 400 and need help choosing a new developer.

I'm using D-76 right now. My negatives are very low in contrast (I have to use 3.5 filter to get something I like). When I develope longer to get the contrast that I like, I start to get HUGE obtrusive grain. I orginally got this film because of its advertised resolving power. So I took it by Wolf Camera to see what they could do. Bad news...super high contrast (me likie) but super huge grain (me hate it). So I went to the Kodak website and started looking for a new developer.

Anyone have any experience with XTOL with TMAX 400? I like to print on 8x10 and 11x14 so sharpness is the most important thing to me. I also like to have true blacks and clean whites in every print. If not XTOL, then I may try T-MAX developer. What do you guys think?

By the way, the chemicals I use are mixed by students in the school darkroom. So they could be at fault.

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Originally Posted by niteschaos

I'm using D-76 right now. My negatives are very low in contrast (I have to use 3.5 filter to get something I like). When I develope longer to get the contrast that I like, I start to get HUGE obtrusive grain. I orginally got this film because of its advertised resolving power. So I took it by Wolf Camera to see what they could do. Bad news...super high contrast (me likie) but super huge grain (me hate it). So I went to the Kodak website and started looking for a new developer.

Anyone have any experience with XTOL with TMAX 400? I like to print on 8x10 and 11x14 so sharpness is the most important thing to me. I also like to have true blacks and clean whites in every print. If not XTOL, then I may try T-MAX developer. What do you guys think?

By the way, the chemicals I use are mixed by students in the school darkroom. So they could be at fault.

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I'm pretty happy with the results I get from D-76, but I'm pretty new to the developing process. I know that the University that I took my photo class thru switched from Kodak chemistry to Sprint. That seemed to work fine too. That's my 2 cents....

Try T-Max developer, it's (supposedly) designed to work with T-Max films. It's also a concentrate so mixing it is much easier.

I use Sprint on T-max 400 and it can usually get those really crisp blacks and sharp whites. No complaints from my experience using it for over 3 years. (I switched over to Fuji BW 400 to help get a finer grain and it helped, maybe try a different film?). -Justin K.

What do you recommend to develope Neopan 400 with? There wasn't a chart, that I saw anyways, on Fuji's website recommending a particular developer for certain results.

When I took b&w photography (3 semesters!) I shot the 100 and 400 T-Max a lot. I We used the T-Max developer that AV mentioned. I had no problem with contrast control. Try developing normally and using a smaller aperture when shooting, and use paper designed for high contrast, combined with the heavy filter on the enlarger. I experimented with extreme contrast using only the enlarger filters: multigrade Ilford RC paper and a standard multigrade head enlarging both 100 and 400 I could get enough contrast to make the image a mess of pure black and pure white with very little midtone and everyone guessing as to what subject was. I wonder if you got some bad film or if the chemistry is getting compromised somehow? We used a lot of the matte "art" paper as the prof. called it, and the contrast was lower on that stuff. The glossy (eccch!) mulitgrade RC paper had higher contrast, if I recall. All in all, you're shooting B&W, which is known to have a wide range of tones. Supressing the midtones is kind of like backtracking, I think. Maybe some high contrast film?
Hope this helps a bit. Good luck and post some of your pics when you get a few you like! :)

Forgot to post a link to "The Massive Dev Chart". Lots of info here...

http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.html