Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/01/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> > The image of running 1 or 2 rolls of 35mm film in the bottom in a full > metal liter 4 roll tank just gives me the giggles. > Does anyone really do that? Life's too short and in practice there's no > reason for it. > > Kodak is constantly coming out with revised literature on Xtol. > Xtol is their final black and white chemical product. > They closed down the whole black and white lab now that Xtol has come out. Over the last 48 hours I've read literally thousands of emails, tech bulletins, discussion forum entries, magazine articles, testimonials, and condemnations about Xtol. One thing that is abundantly clear is that different things happen to different people with Xtol. Some swear by it; some swear at it. I have not noticed this to be true with other developer formulations; you don't see people ranting about D-76. My own experience with Xtol is that it did not do for me what it has been demonstrated to do for others. I am a careful darkroom technician; I measure everything, monitor everything, agitate by the timer, and so forth. From this I am drawing the conclusion that there is something about Xtol that is sensitive to some factor that can vary from darkroom to darkroom, person to person. The only thing I can think of that this could be would be the composition of the water. There just aren't that many variables. If there is some factor that is present in water to varying degrees, it would stand to reason that it would be more of a factor in high dilutions and less of a factor in low dilutions. So the people who would experience it first would be those who are trying to do 1:3 dilution but whose water has a lot of whatever this is. Kodak's goal is consistency. They want their products to behave the same for everyone. Removing 1:2 and 1:3 directions from their data sheets says, to me, that they have also seen a lot of data that people have been getting inconsistent results with Xtol at those dilutions. I'm going to mix my next batch of Xtol in distilled water. I'm waiting for the 250ml bottles to arrive before I mix it. We shall see what happens. Brian Reid - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html