Kodak T-Max P3200: My First Roll

A notification from 35mmc today with Hamish Gill’s review of Kodak’s re-released P3200 reminded me that I, too, recently shot my first roll of P3200 – I just hadn’t gotten around to sharing my results.  I’m a little bit late to the game, given that the film was re-released in mid-March – but it takes two to three weeks to get film shipped to Madagascar, so there are a few other reviews with which I can compare my results – for example, here and here.

I was (and still am) admittedly a bit confused about exactly what this film is.  I initially thought this was simply a counterpart to Ilford’s Delta 3200, which I’ve recently experimented with.  But Alaris’s website says this film is actually rated 800, and the “P” in P3200 stands for “push.”  So that’s what I decided to do.  My Nikon F100 reads this film as ISO 3200, but it’s ISO 800, so I was unsure whether shooting at 3200 was “pushing” or not.  Comparing the datasheet times and the Massive Development Chart, I opted to shoot it as ISO 1600 and push one stop in development.

Given what I had read about the film, I thought it might be fun to bring this along to South Africa.  We’d be doing a self-drive safari into Addo National Park, entering at 6 am, nearly an hour before sunrise.  It’s supposed to work well in low light, and I thought elephants (textures!), zebras and Cape buffalo at dawn sounded like a fun use of this black and white film.  Results were as expected – super grainy – though about a third of the shots were either slightly overexposed…or out of focus – probably because of camera shake and slow shutter speeds.  I have one more roll, and I plan to go the other direction – pulling one stop.

Kudu

Bull Elephant

Cape Buffalo

Zebra

Baby Elephant

Old Bull

This entry was posted in film processing, Other Places, Photography, general, Wildlife and Nature and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.