[Leica] Tri-X in divided Xtol (!)

[John Brownlow <deadman@jukebox.demon.co.uk>]

Some of you may know of my fondness for pseudo-divided D76. For those of you
who don't, it's a bastardised version of properly divided D76, or D76-D. In
this and most divided developers, the first bath is the developing agent,
the second the alkali (accelerator).

Pseudo-divided D76 uses straight D76 stock as the first bath, followed by an
alkali (typically 1.5% sodium metaborate or 'Kodalk', though some people
swear by borax). The effect is very similar, except the negs are a bit
snappier, which is a good thing in my experience.

I won't go into the advantages here, but they are legion -- especially for
street photography or 'challenging' lighting situations where a whole roll
of 35mm film is exposed under different conditions -- and I will fill anyone
in who's interested by private email (I posted a long description to the LUG
about this about six months ago).

This was my standard process until I went over to Xtol. It doesn't work with
thin-emulsion films, so Tri-X is kind of mandatory. Results with TMY in
particular are horrible.

For a long while I've wondered what would happen if Xtol, which is a great
developer, was pseudo-divided, so today I tried the following, all @ 68F. I
don't know anyone else who has tried this... maybe I'm the first. Anyway:

Xtol    stock   3'
Kodalk  1.5%    3'      (transferred without rinsing)

stop/fix as normal

I exposed a couple of rolls of Tri-X @ every EI from 100 to 1600, and dunked
them as above.

I kind of thought it couldn't possibly work, but it does. In fact it works
perfectly. Gives me an EI somewhere between 400-600, which is about what I
get from Xtol anyway. But all the negs from 100-1600 were printable, with
*no* blocked highlights. Gradation in both highlights and shadows looks good
and grain is what you would expect from Xtol stock (very fine).

There is probably some slight sacrifice of sharpness, but I'd say it's a
fair exchange for the very marked compensating effect and printability.

Maybe someone else would like to try this and give their comments?


- -- 
John Brownlow

       photos:    http://www.pinkheadedbug.com
        music:    http://www.jukebox.demon.co.uk