The Trouble With Xtol

I have seen a number of comments in this forum about the so called Xtol failure. I have experienced it a couple of times in the past, but it wasn't something that I was watching for and I attributed it to something that I might have overlooked - overuse of the developer or maybe it wouldn't last as long as Kodak said. I stopped using it for a while. The problem is that is can be a nice developer and I wanted to give it another try. I decided to buy enough 1 litre packages that it would come still in the carton as shipped from Kodak. I ordered a dozen packages which arrived as a full box ( 10 Pkgs ) and 2 loose units. I felt that I would have control over the product that way. It would be fairly fresh and not sitting around on someone's shelf for a year or so. The first package worked perfectly. I thought I might be on to a system of control and my confidence was building. On the weekend I shot a couple of rolls of film and mixed a fresh litre of developer. The film was so under developed that the negatives were unprintable. I was shocked. I developed the second film in some ID-11 and it was perfect. I threw the rest of the Xtol ( the remaining full box ) in the garbage. I don't have any films that I want to take another chance on. I am convinced that there is a problem with the product. Too bad. When it works, it works well. I'm going back to and sticking with Ilford's product. I hope Kodak reads this.

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