If you recall this discussion started because Kodak recently claimed that their newer technology film TMAX 400, offered same image quality at 3 times the speed as their old one PLUS-X. SAME QUALITY, but faster speed. That is not a hypothetical, that is the real world situation that has occurred over and over again for decades as film/processing technology improved both color and BW.
Secondly are you claiming the more than 2-3 times you wish you had a slower film was because the film you were using was too fast for your camera's shutter or because the you wished could have used a slower film to get better quality? I use slow films most of the time now, but for only one reason, better image quality, not because the faster films were too fast for the shutter. There is only one advantage to a slower film compared to a faster of same quality, SLOWER SHUTTER SPEEDS when needed. But that is very seldom needed and when not needed it is a actually a distinct disadvantge. That is the point I am trying to make. JCO -----Original Message----- From: D. Glenn Arthur Jr. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2004 2:37 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: B&W developers and Tri-x ?? JCO emphasized: > I think you are arguing that slow and fast films are different and > they are as it is today but I what I am saying is if the fast ones had > exact same image quality as the slow ones the slow ones > would be obsolete because slower is worse from a practical > standpoint nearly all the time. You're right ... _nearly_ all the time. But not quite nearly enough, in my book, to stop using 'em entirely. I *have* run into situations where I've wanted a slower film than I had with me. More than two or three times. Not _often_, I'll grant you that much; and like you I find myself wishing for more speed more often than less. But it does come up. One problem here is that you're making an emphatic case based on a hypothetical -- the big if-identical-in-all-other-respects angle. And that makes the Overwhelming and Obvious Superiority of faster films itself a hypothetical proposition ... ... and folks who are more interested in real-world film choices than in mathemagical hypotheses (well, enough more interested that the real world keeps distracting them when they stumble into an argument about hypothetical cases so far from actual experience) are going to look at the _question_ just differently enough for you to annoy each other. Another problem is that word "nearly" -- with your emphatic tone it _sounds_ like you mean "effectively always [handwave at obscure special cases]". I'm not sure whether that's really what you mean, but it comes across that way, and anyone who's had at least half as many "I need slower film, how odd" moments as I have is going to react to that with something alongs the lines of, "But that _does_ come up in the real world, and not just in obscure once-in-a-lifetime situations!" If you _didn't_ mean that -- if you meant merely, "in the majority of cases" *without* the implication that the small number of times it goes the other way can be disregarded out of hand as statisticaly insignificant -- then you're sending a slightly different message than you intend, and the degree to which you seem to be worked up over this is then rather confusing. Hoping to clarify communication, -- Glenn
