Tri-X and the Pentax 17

I’m more comfortable with Tri-X than any other film. I shot thousands of rolls of 35mm Tri-X as a photojournalist, plus 120 Tri-X through medium format cameras like my Pentax 6x7, and even 4x5 sheets of Tri-X in giant wooden field cameras. So I put this roll through the Pentax 17 right away; it would tell me a lot about the camera and how to shoot with it. You can see the highlights blowing out here, and its quite grainy. The HP5 looked better. After this I shot all the other film with the Pentax 17 set to underexpose by 1/3 of a stop, and got much better results. I think Tri-X would benefit a lot from that same adjustment. It would certainly fix the highlights, and I think it would tame the grain, too.