Lomography

Kodak T-MAX (35mm, 3200 iso) User-Review
written by altprocess on April 4th, 2009 , 5 comments (6 votes)

Need fast film, the fastest film available to the public? Turn to Kodak T-MAX 3200, a Black and White marvel of speed and versatility. I have used this film on a number of occasions when I need to shoot indoors or in any poorly lighted area. Most films that claim to be ISO 3200 top out at about 1250 speed at best. Only T-MAX, of the films I have used, appears to genuinely be 3200. Others films claiming to rate at that speed need to pushed to 3200 which creates larger grain. While pushing may not be an issue in slower films, it is a huge problem in fast black and white films which have more silver and thus more grain. I like grain but I also like to be able to see detail in my subjects. I don’t need to have it by pushing a film claiming to be 3200.

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Processing the film can be a little trickier, although any lab processing black and white film should be able to do an adequate job. I like to develop my own black and white to ensure quality control. While I normally use Sprint products for developing most films I always buy a new bottle of T-MAX developer when I shoot this film. First of all, this developer was concocted with TMAX in mind, thus the name. It achieves rich blacks and vibrant whites. Secondly it develops the film a bit faster. In many developers it takes 15 minutes to process because of all the silver. However, in TMAX developer it can be processed in about 10 minutes (for the developing part). You could speed up time with other developing agents by mixing a stronger batch, but this is all trial and error.

I used this film to shoot a series of dog shows held indoors under poor fluorescent light. Subjects were moving, yet my shots turned out blur free because the film allowed me to shoot at 1/200th of a second at f/5.6, plenty fast enough considering the conditions. Of course, this film would be great at sporting events, even those held outside if your camera shoots fast enough. It works great at parties too and night-time. In fact the chunkier grain at night gives an added spooky effect.