In spite of Kodak's removal of times for XTol dilutions higher than 1:1, I've had success with XTol 1:3 with 35mm TMax 100 (at EI 64), and have no plan to change this combination for normal contrast range subjects.(posted 8571 days ago)Question: To control the density range of high contrast subjects while retaining good shadow detail, have you used higher dilutions of XTol (eg. 1:5) for use as a compensating developer? I want to test higher dilutions of Xtol to see if I can get a compensating effect without the increased grain of Rodinal 1:100, and am interested in any general comments on your results, and any specific times, temp's and agitation recommendations.
I'm also testing TMX with TMax/RS developer to try John Sexton's recommendation for 1:15 TMax/RS as a compensating developer, and to see if TMax/RS will give higher edge sharpness while retaining the tonal range and smoothness of XTol. Haven't tried the 1:15 dilution yet, but processing TMX in 1:9 TMax/RS to establish a baseline has resulted in the expected trade-off of higher sharpness for increased granularity - first results indicate this combination gives about the same sharpness and grainularity as Delta 100 in XTol 1:3, but with more speed (EI 100) than TMX in XTol 1:3.