Response to Best developer for TMax100

After much fooling around with this, IMHO, the answer is no. I've tried most of these things and was never satisfied for various reasons. Rodinal gave the best tonal qualities and sharpness, but too much grain. Xtol was really good at 1:3, but I had shelf life problems with it (not the usual Xtol failures though). I haven't tried Rodinal with sodium ascorbate, but wouldn't expect the degree of improvement that it would take to fully solve the problem. I suspect TMX isn't actually a fine grain film, but looks like one if the grain is smooth. That would also explain the lack of edge sharpness with most developers. I was actually questioning the quality of all my lenses (and my sanity) until I started shooting FP4+. There are many avenues to pursue (see Anchell & Troop's books, plus some techniques advocated by John Sexton) but I found TMX to be a tremendous time waster.

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