B&W imaging history ~ Tri-X film

Here is another in a series of blog posts attempting to preserve a few obscure and minor details of knowledge from the silver halide film days.

Something occurred to me while looking through the latest Reporters Sans Frontières journal titled "Regards sur le Japon."  

Reviewing the works of Ken Domon, Daido Moriyama, Masahisa Fukase, Ishiuchi Miyako, and Hitomi Watanabe I saw many of the images had something in common.  All show strong contrast with promenant film grain.  The way they used the grain, to me, enhances the mood/feeling of their works.  Grain, in these cases, separate the viewer ever so slightly from the reality of the scene.  It acts as an artistic veil.

It was easy to guess the film type and processing technique.  Working in LA at Samy's photolab on Sunset Boulevard back in the day we would make prints from 35mm Tri-X that showed strong grain structure, empty shadows, and bright highlights when what we used to call being processed "hard", just like these images from Japan. Normally, to avoid harsh grain structures, we would process Tri-X in D-76 straight, no dilution.

Sony A6000
Picture Style ~ High Contrast Monochrome
Gimp G'Mic ~ Tri-X 1600
Blend Mode ~ Soft Light

Here is a website that talks about how Moriyama works, including providing most of a recipe for processing Kodak Tri-X film. 

Daido Moriyama's Tri-X film recipe (from) -

• Tri-X ASA 400 35mm film
• Rated at 1600 ASA
• Processed in D-76
• High temperature (unspecified)
• Rough agitation (periodicity unspecified, though I know agitation every 30 seconds was common)
  
• Processing time not noted

Surprisingly, Robert Randall, the Lord and Taylor fashion photographer from the 1950's and '60's used a similar technique.  There is a wiki page on Mr. Randall.  Here are two examples of his work - example 1, example 2

I took a class from him when he was teaching at Orange Coast Community College in southern California.  Here's what I remember of his film processing technique.

• Tri-X ASA 400 35mm film
• Rated at 800 ASA (which gave a deep, dense negative under the following conditions)
  
• Processed in D-76
• 85 degrees F température
• Agitation every 30 seconds
  
• 7.5 minutes processing time

 

Sony A6000
Picture Style ~ High Contrast Monochrome
Gimp G'Mic ~ Tri-X 1600
Blend Mode ~ Soft Light

Thinking about this a bit further, I begin to understand a little of why people worked in this style of photography.  Japan's post-WWII experience was one of occupation by American military forces.  Times were rough.  With strong grain structure and dark/deep shadows viewers might experience a bit of that roughness of life.

Coming at things from a different direction and trying to retain a sense of elegance, Robert Randall's work tried to emulate pencil/charcoal drawing. If you look at Lord and Taylor's ad campaigns from the '50's and '60's you can see what Randall was striving for photographically.

In total, we had two different driving forces, roughness and elegance, using a common technique, each giving their intended result.

Moving into the present, the old Tri-X process is rather easy to emulate digitally.  Sony has a Picture Effect called High Contrast Mono that proves interesting/useful.  Here's a very simple recipe.

• Sony Picture Effect
  
• High Contrast Mono
  
• Processing
• Generate a strong grain field in a layer over the base image
  
• Overlay or Soft Light blend mode to mimic film grain
  (Note: no other blend modes works correctly ~ and if you don't understand why, ask and I'll explain)
  

Other camera systems might require creating a high contrast B&W image during processing, though Ricoh cameras seem to come with an in-camera High Contrast Mono-like "film emulation" setting.

 

Sony A6000
Picture Style ~ High Contrast Monochrome
Gimp Hand-Rolled Grain Layer
Blend Mode ~ Soft Light

------------ additional resources ---------------

Here is an article about Daido Moriyama's use of a Ricoh GR1 digital camera