Response to Tri-X or Tmax for beginning photo students?

Being that I took "Visual Communications I" this past year in high school, I can give a first hand opinion. We used TMAX 400 exclusively, rolling it ourselves from bulk loaders. We developed it in D-76 and at least I got pretty good results. Nothing "outstanding," but it isn't that hard to develop. I'm guessing this is a college level course judging from your e-mail address, so you will expect more from them. If you watch your clock well, and have them develop at 68 degrees (F), you shouldn't have problems. It's only when you start developing at about 75 degrees when there's a time issue with TMAX in D-76. At 68 degrees, 30 seconds or so never made a big difference for anyone. Just keep your fixer good, because I've seen many strips of film come out of the process quite purple because of lack of fixing time. To correct that problem, you can throw it in the darkroom fixer to eliminate some of the purple. As for the darkroom, we used plain Kodak B&W paper and Dektol. Hope that helps.

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