Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/05/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 10:57 AM 5/22/2002 -0400, olivier nguyen wrote: >hi, >I mix the xtol and i found nothing . it just clear as normal water. no >condensation of any kind. >Olivier A while back, there were some bad 1 liter Xtol packages. Is it possible that you got one of these? There is a lot of us that use Xtol with perfect results. I have ALWAYS, for the past 50 years, used distilled or deionized water to mix ALL film developers and stabilizers/photoflo solutions. Because of this, my processes remain stable over the years regardless of what the city/county/state does to our water. I have a deionizer in my darkroom that gives me water equal to triple distilled water. I recently mixed a two year old 5 liter package of Xtol. It took six hours plus, with a magnetic mixer, to get the packets into solution. The developer works perfectly. When mixing Xtol, package A will turn a color (wine color or a dirty color) and package B will cause it to go perfectly clear. This is a clue that the mix is OK. Finally, I NEVER EVER just take a bottle of fresh mixed developer, or a bottle that has been sitting for a month or so, and just use it. This is film developing suicide. I take a piece of film, the leader from 35mm film, cut a strip from some 4x5 B&W film, whatever you have (LUGgers will always have that curved cut leader from the 35mm film you are about to develop,) pour a few cc's of the developer you are about to use into a small beaker, water glass, whatever... and put the film scrap into it. Swish it around occasionally over the next ten minutes. You can load your reels while this is sitting. Remember to cut off and save ALL of your 35mm film leaders for future use. The piece of film in the developer should turn black or have the appearance of turning black around the edges. This tells you that your developer is developing the film. You know it's safe to use on your film. That's it for now. Jim - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html