[Leica] Xtol recomended dilutions

Thu Jun 15 07:40:21 PDT 2017

Mark,

Thank you for useful information, very interesting to learn it! You mention Delta 400, yes it is a great film, I’ve not use it after a while and just the past days I was in the darkroom enlarging, the pics with this one was very fine.

Your recomendation about testing dilution is also very interesting to follow. 

Thank you
Lluis

> El 15 juny 2017, a les 14:25, Mark Rabiner <mark at rabinergroup.com> va escriure:
> 
> If you Bing it or Google it for 15 minutes you’ll see the top, smart, nice, funny spiritual people are all at 1:3. The ones whose prints sold for the most money and who dressed better.
> Diluting Xtol 1:3 instead of 1:2 ads a couple of more minutes to it its way worth it. With that you get better edge caracteristics which is directly linked to higher dilution. And other advantages I was using 1:2 for a while and my prints were obviously worse. 
> 
> By the way in my college in the early 70’s in St. Louis, we did us students who were always in the darkroom an unusual thing which I’d never heard of other places. We all ran our film in D76 1:2 instead of 1:1. The students who came in in the beginning of the year and ran the recommended 1:1 and universal default had prints you could spot across the room as being way less sharp. Way less edge. And way less sharp grain. But a tad less grain. And they were not very nice people who told bad jokes. It looked like they were shooting with Spiratone lenes.
> A good policy is to dilute until you hit a point when you’re seeing uneven development in your negs. Washed out areas. Then you back up a notch. But you’ll ahead of time see what everyone else is doing.
> Neopan Acros 100	Xtol 1:3 16’ minutes 70 degrees’ agitation every minute and the first full minute.
> All film listed here is 1:3 70 degrees F, agitation every minute 10 seconds and the first full minute.
> Delta 100    14’
> Delta 3200  16’
> Delta 400     14’ Neopan 1600 RIP my main film when out and about shooting for myself. Even with a Noctilux.   12 minutes and looks like an iso 100 film. And here you are shooting it on the street. No tripod. I used it for on location commercial jobs no flash or tripod. The 100 with the studio strobes in the studio. Delta 100 from Ilford as just about as good.
> Neopan Acros 100 16 ‘ as high a rez film anyone would ever want or need in Xtol 1:3
> Get a tank so you can develop 8 rolls at a time or I can see your point and wanting to keep shorter times.
> You’ll shoot more with a big boy tank.
> Pan F 50, they still make it.  12’
> Tri X 400  11’
> Tri X Pro 320 in 120 or 220 format, 15’
> All the other times here is for 35mm format. Times are different for different formats why no one knows.
> 
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> -- 
> 
> Mark William Rabiner
> Photographer
> 
> On 6/15/17, 7:32 AM, "LUG on behalf of lluisripollphotography" <lug-bounces+mark=rabinergroup.com at leica-users.org on behalf of lluisripollphotography at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>    Chris, Dan
> 
>    I will do 1+1 on my next two films, I want avoid long develping times. I’ve used HC110 many years ago, but I liked better ID11/D76
> 
>    Cheers
>    Lluis
> 
> 
> 
>> El 15 juny 2017, a les 11:49, Christopher Crawford <chris at chriscrawfordphoto.com> va escriure:
>> 
>> Its been years since I used Xtol. I never really liked the tonality as
>> much as D-76, though Xtol does give finer grain. I got best results
>> diluted 1+1.
>> 
>> Be careful with higher dilutions. Kodak, when it first came out, listed
>> times for 1+2 and 1+3 dilutions. A lot of photographers got severely
>> underdeveloped negs with those dilutions, using Kodak’s times. Turns out,
>> Xtol cannot stand being diluted that much unless you develop the film in a
>> much larger tank than you normally need. I think there had to be 200ml of
>> stock in the diluted developer for each roll, so for 1+3 developing, you
>> could do only one roll in a 32ox tank that could hold four rolls!
>> 
>> Kodak published the minimum stock quantity needed but a lot of people
>> ignored it and complained, so they just stopped publishing the times for
>> the higher dilutions!
>> 
>> I actually have a copy in PDF format of the original Xtol info booklet,
>> but the times would be off for Kodak films now since Kodak reformulated
>> Tri-X and the Tmax films since then. They did publish times for Ilford
>> films, which might still work if you’re interested in seeing it.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Chris Crawford
>> Fine Art Photography
>> Fort Wayne, Indiana
>> 260-437-8990
>> 
>> http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com  My portfolio
>> 
>> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Christopher-Crawford/48229272798
>> Become a fan on Facebook
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 6/15/17, 5:15 AM, "LUG on behalf of lluisripollphotography"
>> <lug-bounces+chris=chriscrawfordphoto.com at leica-users.org on behalf of
>> lluisripollphotography at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> I don’t have a large experience with Xtol, I’ve used for years ID11/D76.
>>> I’ve developed my two last films of Bergger Pancro 400 in Xtol Stock at
>>> the recomended time, but I’m unhappy with the results. I’ve used it in
>>> stock to get the shortest developing time and minimize the grain effect.
>>> 
>>> I would like hear your experiences with Xtol, I mainly use FP4 and HP5.
>>> 
>>> Thanks in advance
>>> 
>>> Lluis
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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