[Leica] Free: unopened packets of Xtol

[freakscene at weirdness.com (Marty Deveney)]

I wasn't going to mention this until I had everything set up, but we have 
experienced several delays in unpacking our new house, so I'll announce it 
now.  I feel slightly conspiratorial in having recommended Xtol to Brian, 
because after having abandoned his darkroom, he packed it up and sent it to 
me a couple of weeks ago.  In its entirity, gratis.  He is much too modest 
to let you all know that he gave it to a LuGger as a gift, so I figure I'd 
better jump in here: it was a really extraordinary thing to do, generous 
beyond reasonable expectation.  I am sufficiently grateful to him that I am 
trying to figure out what to do to express my gratitude and feel worthy of 
this present.

Years ago, while traveling, I met an interesting character in Paris.  I was 
in a particularly angsty phase of my life and he told me "feel bad while you 
can, tomorrow you might be fine".  David Vestal wrote that it's good to be 
old enough to be able to feel bad without feeling additionally bad about 
feeling bad.  As a general philosophy, I try to keep these ideas in mind 
most of the time.  Sometimes I fail: as someone who is enthusiastic about 
Xtol and was enthusiastic about it to Brian, I find myself feeling somewhat 
bad about that.

But about Xtol, I should explain:

I live in Adelaide, South Australia, where for a long time international 
shipping would not take on drinking water - the only city in the developed 
world to hold that distinction.  It's a city of a million people on the edge 
of a desert whose water supply relies on a river that gets most of its water 
1000-2000km away and loses most of its flow to crop irrigation between the 
source and extraction point for Adelaide.  There are current discussions 
about building a desalination plant for the city, which makes sense, but 
that will have other impacts on energy use and the environment that need to 
be managed.  The tap water here kills Xtol dead, almost instantly.  I don't 
even consider tap water quality for photographic processes (I don't drink 
it, so why would I mix chemistry for my precious photos with it!?) so I 
often mention only in passing that you really should use deionised or 
distilled water for mixing and diluting Xtol.  If you use Xtol, please do 
this, if only to stop me from feeling bad when you complain to the LuG about 
spots, dead developer and other weirdness...

It's all about dissolved minerals.  I am increasingly thinking that someone 
should commercialise the late John Black's JB9 - simply because it has an 
extremely long shelf life and is also highly resistant to water quality 
problems.  The reason for this is that its a 3-solution mixture (developing 
agents, alkali and sulfite are kept separately until just prior to use) and 
that the alkali is a proprietary formula that is very good at forming 
complexes with ions in the dilution water, because the alkali itself is an 
EDTA complex.

Xtol can need special treatment to get good results.  That's probably 
nothing for those of us who espouse its virtues to feel bad about, but I do 
wish that Kodak had done some more testing and warned us.

Marty

Gallery:
http://gallery.leica-users.org/main.php?g2_itemId=7617

'Maintained inside, I lost my range, feel estranged, weren't you invited?'
        J Mascis - 'Out There'


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