Hi everyone, I just bought a packet of Kodak x-tol developer and went to Digitaltruth to get proccessing times. My question is what is the benifit of dilluting it to such long developing times? Is there an increase in grain and contrast or does this control that somehow? Thanks!!

-- Justin Fullmer (provo.jfullmer@state.ut.us), May 23, 2001

Answers

I can't speak for all films, but I've had really good results with HP5+ developed in Xtol 1:3, better than in stock Xtol or 1:1. The grain is really fine, but the sharpness is excellent, too.

-- Chuck Albertson (chucko@siteconnect.com), May 23, 2001.

Beware that you should use at least 100ml stock Xtol per roll no matter what dilution you use.

-- John Hicks (jbh@magicnet.net), May 23, 2001.

Technically spoken, XTOL is a fine grain developer, and a mediocre acutance developer. You can change things by adding dilution, grain will increase (a little bit) but acutance will get A LOT better. I have had the shapest results on XTOL 1:3 with Delta 100. Even with higher dilutions might be expermented with, for low contrast and compensating development on document films as Tech Pan. Also a little bit increase of real speed will be observed, and last but not least it's very economical !

-- Marc Leest (mmm@n2photography.com), May 24, 2001.

There seems to be a consensus developing that Xtol's tendency to "fail" (lose potency suddenly and unpredictably) has been ironed out. Would higher dilutions increase the chances of the failure?

-- Ed Hurst (BullMoo@hotmail.com), May 24, 2001.

Xtol diluted 1+2 and 75F is my favorite compromise for speed, grain, acutance and development time.

-- Tim Brown (brownt@flash.net), May 24, 2001.

I would highly encourage you to go to Kodak's website and read the data posted there regarding X-tol, dilutions, storage. Many of the above concerns are addressed there. Developing times are posted for many of the common films, including Ilford, Agfa and others.

-- Paul Swenson (paulphoto@humboldt1.com), May 24, 2001.

Greetings,

The information of Kodak's WEB site no longer gives data for dillutions above 1:1. Older data on their site used to list data for 1:3 dillutions, but they removed it because people were complaining of under development. I believe Kodak now recommends a minimum of 200 ml per roll (36x35) or 4 sheets of 4x5. At 1:3 that's a total of 800 ml of solution which is quite a bit for most 35 mm tanks.

Regards,

-- Pete Caluori (pcaluori@hotmail.com), May 24, 2001.

Ed, yours is only the second post I've seem that claims rectification of Xtol's "failure" problems. Where's the concensus?

-- Sal Santamaura (bc_hill@qwestinternet.net), May 24, 2001.

Kodak states _you must_ use at least 100mls of stock XTOL per 80 square inches of film (one roll of 35mm or 120). I use at least 125mls of stock. Since XTOL was released I've probably processed enough film to have used 50 5 Liter packages of the developer. And none of those packages have caused me any grief! I still use 1+3 dilutions as often as I can. I dilute because of increased sharpness, increased film speed and economy! Maybe my sucess is due to the fact that I'm using _at least_ 125mls. of stock per unit, or that the stock is never more then a few weeks old, maybe it's the 5 Liter packages or it could be it's the good mountain water up here in Vancouver that I use to mix the developer with. Regardless I'll continue to use dilute XTOL following the spec's in Kodak's April 1998 Technical Data Sheet...jim

-- Jim Vanson (p645n@hotmail.com), May 24, 2001.

X-tol: When I develop PanFplus I use only 75ml/film. Excellent result.

-- Anders Ocklind (miramax@algonet.se), May 31, 2001.