RE: [Leica] Tech Pan and XTol

[Paul Roark <proark@silcom.com>]

Leica Users digest      Wednesday, January 5 2000      Volume 14 : Number 057
- ------------------------------

At 10:29 PM 1/5/2000 -0800, Jean-Claude Berger wrote: 

>Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 00:04:27 +0100
>From: "Jean-Claude Berger" <jcberger@jcberger.com>
>Subject: RE: [Leica] tech pan and XTol

>I develop Tech Pan with Xtol and I'm very satisfied with that process. No
>special agitation, XTol makes Tech Pan like any other film.. except it will
>bring it only to 10 "ISO". After all, it's only one stop less than with
>Technidol :-).

I agree that Xtol 1:5 makes TP almost like any other film with respect to
handling, at least in a small tank and agitated by inversion.

While Xtol gives very even development with amazingly fine grain, I miss
the sharpness that the old POTA developers were able to get.  At first,I
hand mixed POTA; later I used Kodak's version (dry power Technidol), now
discontinued.  Of course, with the much higher sharpness -- from adjacency
effect -- than the liquid developers (including liquid Technidol) also came
more grain and rather bad problems with evenness of development.
Nonetheless, the only 35 mm display prints (16x20) that are on my walls
next to the medium format prints are ones done with TP and dry POTA (or
Kodak's dry equivalent).  The lens that made the grade was the Canon's
mechanical L series 85 f 1.2.

Have you done a side-by-side comparison of TP's grain and sharpness when
developed in Xtol as opposed to liquid Technidol?  I'd guess Xtol wins on
grain. 

Note that although I prefer the sharpness of the old type developers for
direct printing, today I'm opting more for finer grain.  With high
resolution scanning and Photoshop, the computer can now do the sharpening
that I used to do via adjacency.  Moreover, the computer can do its
sharpening selectively -- you get the best of both worlds.

Happy shooting.

Paul Roark
http://www.silcom.com/~proark/photos.html