Recent content by photonaro

Hmmm... I suppose if neither of my attempts (different bottles, distilled water, higher mixing temperature) resolve the issue, I'll be going back to x-tol..

Yeah, best would be to resolve this in the process and avoid needing the filtering. Once the sparkles are there it's kind of a no-win situation.. I've had specks on the negatives due to them. It seems to work for Denis with filtering, though. I am still determined to try out the other three...

Thanks, John. I will try warmer temperatures and distilled water. Crossing my fingers one of them will solve the issue.

Do you notice these sparkles also in x-tol? I used to use x-tol and never noticed anything..

And it doesn't impact your films? Unfortunately in my case when I didn't filter it first, the sparkles caused irremovable flecks on the films...

Thanks for replying, Denis! So it seems like it's not an absolutely clear answer on what worked for you, but it was one of those steps or a combination. The problem I had was that the little sparkles/needles/crystals - when not filtered through pantyhose - actually left permanent marks on the...

I think XT-3 is supposed to be borate-free (I'm not a chemist, but a quick google search says borax to be a type of borate). The temperature range noted on the XT-3 packages is 20-27/29c, so I'm suppose to be within the range, and most people don't have issue with this.. so I'm guessing it must...

Hi Denis, I know it's been a while since your original post & updates, but I've been having the exact same problem that you described with various batches of XT-3 and was wondering - does the solution you found with the distilled water still work well? Thanks in advance!

Thanks a lot for your replies and for the link to the other thread. What the OP there describes is precisely the same phenomenon that I'm encountering, in all details but the water - I use tap water. I will try changing the water and if that doesn't work then I'll change bottles and see. I...

I started using XT-3 (1 liter) a couple of years ago after having used X-tol (5 liters) for many years regularly. I never had issues with X-tol, but switched because of the convenience of the 1 liter solutions. Every time I mix a fresh solution of XT-3 I notice already 1 day later tiny...

Compared with color editing. It's all relative, my friend, as much as it is subjective :-)

That's what I was thinking too.. Besides, b&w editing is pretty much brightness and contrast only, so that's not an awful lot of work compared to any necessary color editing. A couple of tracing light boxes that I have have three color temperatures, the neutral on one of them is pretty neutral...

Do I understand you correctly - are you saying that color temperature or CRI of the light source should not have an impact on the contrast of an image with DSLR copies?

Ok, got it. I think ☺️. Thanks for the explanation!

Thanks koraks! Are you saying that CRI in itself doesn't matter for color films either, but that it's multi-channel capture that determines the resemblance to real life colors?