Development time for Ilford Delta 3200 in replenished XTOL in a Jobo Processor

Five minutes at 75°F produced very underdeveloped results. I am going to start wit Adrian's times. When I developed HP5+ and FP4+ with replenished XTOL in the Jobo processor I had to add one minute to the 68°F time to get good results.

Ilford is quoting stock XTOL, not replenished XTOL. Replenished XTOL behaves totally differently.

Sirius Glass said:

Five minutes at 75°F produced very underdeveloped results. I am going to start wit Adrian's times. When I developed HP5+ and FP4+ with replenished XTOL in the Jobo processor I had to add one minute to the 68°F time to get good results.

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I generally start around the 68 1+1 for my Jobo replenished time at 75, do a measurement, then adjust up or down depending on what gamma I’m going for. With Ilford films it’s usually adjust the time up

Adrian Bacon said:

I generally start around the 68 1+1 for my Jobo replenished time at 75, do a measurement, then adjust up or down depending on what gamma I’m going for. With Ilford films it’s usually adjust the time up

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What do you mean about "1+1"? Replenished XTOL is stock XTOL that as it is used has more stock added using most of the replenished XTOL up to one liter. No dilution going on here. Are you diluting XTOL to 1:1 and using that as "replenished"?

Adrian Bacon said:

Ilford is quoting stock XTOL, not replenished XTOL. Replenished XTOL behaves totally differently.

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I have seen several threads/posts about replenished Xtol and I read so much that my recall may be faulty but I was never aware of this different behaviour. No-one seemed to stress that it behaved totally differently. Can you say what these different ways are?

Steve, I am not surprised at the appreciably under-developed result at 5 mins but I must admit that at the time I read Ilford's suggestion something in my brain said that maybe a film company could not have got it so wrong. Something to do with belief in figures of authority despite what your own experience and analysis of what the figure(s) say.

History says that such belief can be dangerous for our well being

pentaxuser

Sirius Glass said:

What do you mean about "1+1"? Replenished XTOL is stock XTOL that as it is used has more stock added using most of the replenished XTOL up to one liter. No dilution going on here. Are you diluting XTOL to 1:1 and using that as "replenished"?

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I use the published time for stock diluted at 1+1 at 68 for my starting time for replenished at 75 in the Jobo as a starting point. Usually I have to adjust up by some amount.

pentaxuser said:

I have seen several threads/posts about replenished Xtol and I read so much that my recall may be faulty but I was never aware of this different behaviour. No-one seemed to stress that it behaved totally differently. Can you say what these different ways are?

Steve, I am not surprised at the appreciably under-developed result at 5 mins but I must admit that at the time I read Ilford's suggestion something in my brain said that maybe a film company could not have got it so wrong. Something to do with belief in figures of authority despite what your own experience and analysis of what the figure(s) say.

History says that such belief can be dangerous for our well being

pentaxuser

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Yes, you have to develop it for a lot longer to get the same gamma as stock. There is no stock to replenished multiplier that you can generally apply when going to replenished. Every film responds differently. Keep in mind, the time Ilford is quoting is for what gamma? Mine is for 0.82, which is totally in grade 0 paper territory. If you’re going to print, it’s aggressive, but that’s OK because you’re pushing to get as much shadow density as possible.

I talked to my advisor at FreeStyle who recommends 7' 50" stock XTOL in a Jobo processor for Delta 3200 at ISO 3200 at 75 degrees F. So replenished XTOL would be even longer. I will have to shoot a roll of film to get a better idea.

Thanks Adrian for explanation. I now think I know how I came to believe that replenished Xtol was virtually the same as using stock. I had another look at page 2 of the Kodak Xtol information and on there it says that 1 L of stock will develop 15 rolls after which it is discarded so my thinking was that each roll in effect uses up i.e. exhausts about 67 mls of stock ( 1 L divided by 15).

In most replenishment regimes I had thought that about 70 ml of stock is replaced per roll so the figure above of 67ml and 70ml are roughly equal. However if you use 1 L of stock for 15 rolls then the first 5 rolls have the same development time but for rolls 6-15 you add 15 % so averaging this over all 15 rolls this is about 10% to be added on

There may be flaws in my above logic but it is this that would lead me to using the time for the next speed up plus 10% to be added on.

Using Ilford's figures for D3200 at 6400 the times is 10 mins plus 10% so 11mins. Against Ilford's graph for 11mins you are up to about 0.7 G bar. I am not sure if Gbar and average gradient are the same thing but a 2011 thread covers this subject with a large contribution from Stephen Benskin where I think he is saying that Gbar and average gradient are the same but Stephen's explanation may have lost me

It might be that my arrival at 11 mins is flawed, based as it is on an assumption( wrong?) that replenished Xtol with an addition 10% is equivalent to stock Xtol .

Steve, maybe try 11mins on a clip test then Adrian's 3 dev times and see which you prefer. I have a gut feeling that my 11 mins may still be too short but a clip test will indicate.

pentaxuser

As Steve is aware, in a replenishment regime the working solution contains a mixture of both partially exhausted (used up) developing agents and development byproducts that serve as development restrainers. As such, it is less active than one-shot fresh developer, and usually requires longer development times in order to build necessary contrast.
Once you get the system up and running, the working solution is in a sort of steady state - it isn't as active as fresh developer, but it also is far from fully exhausted.
The act of replenishment is a two part action - yes you are adding fresh developer to increase activity, but you are also removing partially exhausted and development byproduct laden developer. Both parts of that action serve to maintain the required activity, and are equally important when one considers the differences between a replenishment regime and the procedure in the data sheet for re-use of an un-replenished volume of developer - gradual increase of development time as you develop more films.
One of the reasons people refer to the published times for using X-Tol 1+1 in a one shot regime when they are discussing using it in a replenishment regime is that the 1+1 times are a decent starting point when you start fine tuning your own personal development times for replenished X-Tol.
I'm just guessing here, but I expect that when you use X-Tol with a film like Ilford Delta 3200 that is designed to be inherently low in contrast, in order to make it perform better when push processed, that the build up of development byproducts in a replenishment regime working solution may have greater affect on the pushability of that film than on more standard emulsions.

Delta3200 will develop more grain when it is overdeveloped, but it will not turn into some unprintable dense mess if one pushes by one or two stops. Therefore it is a safe bet to add some minutes to its development time regardless of development regime. Many experienced Delta 3200 do the "expose for EI 3200 and develop for EI 6400" thing, and it works.

Since "replenished XTol" does not exactly sound like casual "once every few months" development, I recommend the OP forgoes all this scientific analysis, simply adds 50% from previous development time to get decent negatives for once. Only if these negs are too contrasty and/or way too grainy, only in this unlikely case I would start messing with precise timing and optimizing.

Update:

I used 68°F [20°C] 10.5 minutes at 75‚F [24°C] 7 minutes and the negatives were still too thick. that is a 40% increase in time.

Sirius Glass said:

Update:

I used 68°F [20°C] 10.5 minutes at 75‚F [24°C] 7 minutes and the negatives were still too think.

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I expect you mean that the "negatives were still too thick".
Have you tried printing them optically?
I ask, because if my recollection of my relatively dated experience with films of this sort is accurate, the appearance of "good" negatives is quite different than the appearance of "good" negatives from more typical films.

I shot half a roll of film, then reshot the same subjects, cut the roll in half, then developed one half for 10 minutes and the other half for 15 minutes. At 10 minutes it was still too thin and low contrast. At 15 minutes it was still thin, but getting near to reasonable, and also too low contrast for the evenly lit scenes. I will take the negatives to the Yosemite workshop and have the density measured so that I can get to the solution sooner. I am thinking that 20 minutes will be needed for processing but even more for a contrast boost.

Sirius Glass said:

I will take the negatives to the Yosemite workshop and have the density measured so that I can get to the solution sooner. I am thinking that 20 minutes will be needed for processing but even more for a contrast boost.

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If that still doesn't work, do not jump off El Capitan in frustration. At least not without posting scans of the negatives on Photrio first

Seriously you are getting close now. I feel it in my water and that's not the water that the mad General Jack D Ripper drank that the commies had poisoned in Dr Strangelove.

pentaxuser

Sirius Glass said:

I shot half a roll of film, then reshot the same subjects, cut the roll in half, then developed one half for 10 minutes and the other half for 15 minutes. At 10 minutes it was still too thin and low contrast. At 15 minutes it was still thin, but getting near to reasonable, and also too low contrast for the evenly lit scenes. I will take the negatives to the Yosemite workshop and have the density measured so that I can get to the solution sooner. I am thinking that 20 minutes will be needed for processing but even more for a contrast boost.

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You most likely will end up in the 20-23 minute range that I originally posted. 20 to 25 minutes at 75 with replenished XTOL is not too much time and will put you you in the ~0.82 gamma range.

pentaxuser said:

Thanks Adrian for explanation. I now think I know how I came to believe that replenished Xtol was virtually the same as using stock. I had another look at page 2 of the Kodak Xtol information and on there it says that 1 L of stock will develop 15 rolls after which it is discarded so my thinking was that each roll in effect uses up i.e. exhausts about 67 mls of stock ( 1 L divided by 15).

In most replenishment regimes I had thought that about 70 ml of stock is replaced per roll so the figure above of 67ml and 70ml are roughly equal. However if you use 1 L of stock for 15 rolls then the first 5 rolls have the same development time but for rolls 6-15 you add 15 % so averaging this over all 15 rolls this is about 10% to be added on

There may be flaws in my above logic but it is this that would lead me to using the time for the next speed up plus 10% to be added on.

Using Ilford's figures for D3200 at 6400 the times is 10 mins plus 10% so 11mins. Against Ilford's graph for 11mins you are up to about 0.7 G bar. I am not sure if Gbar and average gradient are the same thing but a 2011 thread covers this subject with a large contribution from Stephen Benskin where I think he is saying that Gbar and average gradient are the same but Stephen's explanation may have lost me

It might be that my arrival at 11 mins is flawed, based as it is on an assumption( wrong?) that replenished Xtol with an addition 10% is equivalent to stock Xtol .

Steve, maybe try 11mins on a clip test then Adrian's 3 dev times and see which you prefer. I have a gut feeling that my 11 mins may still be too short but a clip test will indicate.

pentaxuser

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Adding 10% is way too conservative. Just look at Kodak’s J109. The time difference from stock to replenished is usually quite a bit more than 10%, and, as I stated before, there is no stock to replenished multiplier that you can generically apply to all films. J109 bears this out. If you calculate the multiplier from stock to replenished for all the films listed, they are all different.

As Matt posted, the difference is the combination of partially depleted developer and having restraining by products in the developer. Every film I’ve processed with replenished XTOL responds differently in terms of how much extra time you have to give it. J109 is a great place to start, but my experience for non-Kodak films is that I still have to shoot and measure.

Thanks Adrian.

pentaxuser