Why would I use Kodak Xtol?

[phototone]

I see we don't have an actual "chemical" darkroom section, just a "digital" darkroom section, so I am posting this in the General Discussion forum.

I like and use D-76 1 to 1 dilution for my b/w RFDR negative processing, using Ilford, Fuji, Agfa and Kodak films. I am relatively pleased with this combination, which I have been using for 30 years, even though currrent versions of films look somewhat different now, than they did years ago.

FWIW, I do not like Tmax films and developer, and choose not to use them, after a lengthy trial some years ago.

I know nothing about Xtol, but I see that some people prefer to use it.

What is it, and why would I want to use it?

I do small tank processing of my 35mm and 120 sized films. (Nikkor reels and tanks)

Gene McCluney (Phototone)

 

[RayPA]

I've not used XTOL myself, but have read up on it some. It is the state-of-the-art in solvent developers, and according to Stephen Anchell, "may also be ... swansong for black and white chemistry at Kodak." While those are not reasons to use it, supposedly, it is environmentally safer (uses ascorbic acid) there is a speed increase (~60%, 2/3 stop), which is fairly typical of phenidone developers, it has better pushability than D76, and finer grain and sharpness than both D76 and T-max developers, and supposedly works great with T-max films (I've read somewhere that Kodak may now even be recommending it [?]).

I'd love to get around to trying it out, but I'm having too much fun mixing my own developers and trying out published recipes. I've seen some great examples in the gallery from films souped in XTOL. 😀

BTW, I think we've discussed the chemical process in the digital darkroom forum.

 

[Solinar]

Gene, if you like D76 stick with it. I used D76 for decades and now use XTOL mainly to rate Tri-X at 800 and 1600. The extra speed buys me some wiggle room to use a reasonable hand-held shutter speed with either a long lens or in low light.

 

[RayPA]

Gene, if you like D76 stick with it.

I guess I'm of a different ilk. 🙂 I say if you're questioning "why" then you should try Xtol. It would be great to hear your impressions of it. D76 is the standard upon which most developer innovations have been based. That doesn't mean it is the best for every situation and film (is there such a thing?). It is just the most popular. There are a bunch of developer out there that are improvements over D76, offering better speed, grain, acutance, convenience, etc. A lot has happened sinced Kodak introduced D76 in 1927. Anyway, my $.02. 😀 😀

 

[peter_n]

Gene I don't do my own development (yet) but the two labs I use both happen to use XTOL. I spoke with a development tech at one of the labs (A&I in LA) and he told me that they moved on from D-76 for environmental, latitude and reliability reasons. All I can tell you is that the Fuji Neopan films that I use just love XTOL... 🙂

 

[ijonas]

I use Fuji's three B&W films with XTol and its superb. Totally reliable. I expose each film at their rated ASA, using recipes from digitaltruth.com. Neopan 1600 is developed using XTOL 1+1, Neopan 400 and Acros is developed in stock solution.

The most notable thing I find with the Fuji + Xtol combination is the lack of "Photoshopping" needed once scanned in. Great solid blacks, nice range, and lovely highlights.

Worth a try,
Ijonas.

 

[matu]

Hi Gene, recently I've started making my own delopement, and for that I've been trying different developers and films, I can tell you that compared to D-76 and TMax Xtol is very cheap, easy to mix and friendly, has some latitude forgiveness, and what is the best very fine grain and great sharpness, before Xtol I thought my scanner wasn´t good enough, now I think it was a developer problem.
But there are still many other developers out there I havn't tried and some seem to be very appealing, like Rodinal and Diafine, that I would certainly use if they where sold here in Chile.
Agfa APX400 that has great tones on Xtol is very good because grain tends to be smaller.
But my favorite combination is with glorius Tri-X 400 rated @320.

Pablo

 

[Marc Jutras]

All my B&W work shown in my gallery has been processed at my local lab using X-Tol. Films used were Tri-X, T-Max 3200 and lately, Delta 3200 (shot at 6400 and processed at 12500). Next will be Neopan 1600.

What Ijonas said about scanning is probably true. I get my negs scanned by the lab on their Noritsu machine and the scans are beautiful. Pretty much nothing to do in PS unless I want to save an underexposed shot to get deep blacks.

 

[RayPA]

The most notable thing I find with the Fuji + Xtol combination is the lack of "Photoshopping" needed once scanned in. Great solid blacks, nice range, and lovely highlights.

Worth a try,
Ijonas.

This is a good determinent, and one I use too. It used to be that you'd process your film to match the enlarger type and printing process, now, with the digital darkroom, the scanner and Photoshop combination takes its place. 😎

 

[phototone]

Well....quite a variety of opinion. Just what I wanted. I have been developing my own film since about 1966. I have tried a lot of developers over time, even mixing my own from scratch, such as divided D-76, and H2D2 Pyro.

I have used Rodinal, but prefer it for medium format due to its grain enhancement qualities.

When T-max films and T-max developer came out, I gave it a try, for both my professional work and for my personal work, and I hated, hated, hated it. I got blocked highlights, inconsistencies, and just all kinda bad stuff, resulting in negatives that were hardly salvagable, and so I went back to conventional films and developers.

I learned from a Kodak rep, that unlike D-76 and other standard developers, the published developing times for T-max were "STARTING POINTS" AND each photographer was supposed to test and arrive at their own standard. I say "bollocks" One should be able to expose at the manufacturers ISO, and develop in the manufacturers developer for manufacturers published times and get standard quality negatives.

So, keep the opinions coming. It is great.

Gene McCluney (phototone)

 

[Roman]

Hmm, do I have to be the naysayer here?
I tried XTOL some time ago (with Neopan 400 and with HP5+), and was less than pleased - OK, it gives relatively fine grain and good film-speed, but sharpness is not good at all; also I know quite a few people here that had bad experiences with the XTOL stock suddenly going bad, without any visual clues (like changes in color); this seems to be common with ascorbate-based developers (happened to me with the only bottle of Ilfosol-S I tried), with certain types of tap water (high iron content, IIRC); this is made worse by the fact that Kodak stopped selling 1l packages, and only offers 5l packages (at least in Europe), so you'll have to shoot a lot of film fast before the stock goes bad... (this is not relevant for professional labs, of course).

If you like D76, then why change? It is a quite good developer, a classic. If you want more sharpness (at the cost of grain and film-speed) try Rodinal, if you want good film-speed and fine-grain (at the cost of sharpness), you might try Calbe A49/Adox ATM49 (available from JandC in the US), and there are many other choices. If you do your own developing, you can fine-tune your film&dev. combo, and don't have to rely on something that works reasonably well with many different films from different customers.

Roman

 

[phototone]

Ahh...there is always a desire to see what is new.

 

[Roman]

If you really desire something new that works very well (whenever I get around to mixing it), you might want to try Barry Thornton's Metol 2-bath developer:

Bath A:
6.5 g Metol
80 g Sodium Sulphite
1 l water

Bath B:
12 g Sodium Metaborate (I personally use 17 g, since I have an enlarger with very soft light and need a bit of extra contrast in my negs)
1 l water

- works well with most films at nominal speed, 20°C/68°F, 4 min. in bath A (I agitate 3x every full minute, so this is not so important with 2-bath devs.), 4 min. in bath B (only 1 inversion after 2 min. Solutions are good for at least 15 rolls of film.
I once went to the trouble of testing Neopan 400 in Rodinal 1+50, PyrocatHD and this 2-bath developer, and found that the 2-bath gives the best results: finer grain than Rodinal,
full box film speed, best resolution, only concerning apparent sharpness Rodinal had a very slight edge; PyrocatHD only shone when it came to contrast control, but was inferior to the two-bath in every other aspect.
Unfortunately, since I moved to my new apartment, I have misplaced my scales for chemicals, otherwise I would be working all the time with that developer - I'll have to get new scales eventually....

Roman

 

[Solinar]

I've read anecdotal accounts of XTOL pooping out, but in a year and a half of using it, I haven't experienced this. For years, I used D76 because I could mix it up 1 liter at a time, but D76 isn't ideally suited for push processing. I dabble with Ilford DDX for about a year and then migrated to XTOL in spite of its storage routine.

A little off topic, any transition to a new developer requires some experimentation. In my view, it takes time to get to know a new developer. I believe that Merciful has shown that anything is possible even with an old line developer, which in his case is Rodinal. He definitely knows his favorite developer.

The small packets of XTOL makes 5 liters of stock solution. Air tight storage is highly recommended. I use a couple of 2 liter diet soda bottles, in addition to a dedicated 1 liter, 500ml and two 250ml peroxide bottles. When using stock solution from the 2 liter soda bottle, I transfer the left over solution to smaller peroxide bottles and top off each with what is usually 10 to 20ml of filtered water and make sure all caps are tight. The secret is to pour in a measured amount to each bottle and top of with filtered water.

It looks like we have some solid Neopan users here. I may have to try Neopan 1600, as I usually push Tri-X when I need a 1600 film.