How's AdoXTOL coming along, Team Adox?

[pentaxuser]

So around 50% higher than the last Xtol I bought -.

Just checked 2 U.K. stockists. One is more expensive for Xtol than the current price of XT and the other about the same

All we need now is for the EU and U.K to try and resolve the paperwork difficulties when exporting/importing and I suspect that in European /U.K. markets, Adox XT will be a very serious rival to Xtol .

It remains to be seen of course how quickly Adox can "ramp up" ( a new expression beloved of our new breed of politicians here in the U.K as it sounds more macho than increase) its production of XT. I note that it has cleverly packaged aluminium bags, cut the dust and possibly made it easier to dissolve

pentaxuser

 

[Sal Santamaura]

Can't wait to see the marketing for this.

Easy to predict:

• "Works like XTOL used to"
• "Consistent"
• "Uses ADOX CAPTURA dust binding technology."

Uh yeah, right. Whatever you say.

...Xtol is a registred trademark so I don't think you can use it in your marketing. But you can ofcourse say "works how the ascorbic acid from Rochester was designed"

Looks like there's a placeholder listing on fotoimpex already
https://www.fotoimpex.com/chemistry/adox-xt-developer-to-mix-1000-ml.html

OK, except for literal use of the word "consistent," Jonathon F's post reveals that I nailed it exactly. Thanks, Jonathon! ADOX will do quite well with XT, especially since it's to be available in both one- and five-liter packages.

I continue to be as impressed with ADOX as I am unimpressed by DHL.

 

[m00dawg]

Adox you're teasing us! I mean I like it but it's still a tease! And I just ordered like $270 of stuff from FotoImpex two days ago haha. Oh well, looking forward to this! Excited to see some datasheets and availability estimates!

For others following along with the greater XTOL discussion, I was also looking at Mytol yesterday as an XTOL option. It is not meant for replenishment (it has fast falloff) but it seems to provide all the other XTOL benefits (although replenishment was my fav feature). Price-wise I was able to get it down to the price of real XTOL, but not any cheaper. I don't have the means to mix my own chems yet and definitely would prefer the consistency and quality of a brand (especially with Mytol since the purity of the chemicals and mixing vessels seems to relate to how well it keeps) so AdoXtol is still my #1 option at this point. I love their films, I love their paper (miss you, MCC!), I love their vision, I love their spirit.

Of note, I did see updated estimates from Freestyle and FotoImpex on the real XTOL availability and those seem to be mid-to-late March. I don't know where they came up with that info since the Kodak recall page still shows early Feb and I have yet to hear back from Kodak or Sino Promise (despite bothering them nearly every day).

 

[Sal Santamaura]

...you know it will do as well as XTOL with respect to image structure/DQE?

No need to answer.

I'll answer anyway. No hard data available yet, but I'd wager a month's pension it'll do at least as well as "trade concern" XTOL with respect to any performance parameters one evaluates.

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

I will try to catch all questions asked here.
We have not tested any replenishing yet. Our focus was on creating a quality product which has identical curves to the product formerly sold as XTOL in aluminum compound bags until about the mid of 2019.
This was achieved 100%. On top we reduced the banned old buffer and replaced it by a newly synthesized product. This is the main price driving factor. BUT you get a better product in return. When dissolving ADOX XT the consumer can immediatley see the quality advantage because the liquid will look like lemonade instead of honey. It also keeps better, dissolves faster and stays fresh longer. We only have four months of data so there is possibly more to come on this.
Apart from this we added CAPTURA for a dust free mixing. We are working on further improvements but we decided to come with Version III now while there is a lack in the market. Version IV will be presented in the summer.
Once the consumers see/expirience the quality differences we do not fear a slight increase of cost per film. We also expect the new "original" to go up in price since there were price increases along the line of raw products in the meantime.
About our production power we just increased the powder production line by the factor of seven. It will hopefully go live in about 4-6 weeks. Until then we are limited.

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

An we expect first product to ship by the end of next week.

 

[urnem57]

Any idea on when it will arrive to The U.S. stores? Can you send us some more ADONAL too? There isn’t a bottle to be found within 200 miles of Los Angeles, which I would guess is a pretty big market. I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that it’s a COVID-related shipping issue and not a manufacturing one. The problem for the end user is that stores can’t ship it between states in The U.S. Thanks!

 

[Auer]

An we expect first product to ship by the end of next week.

To the U.S.?

 

[m00dawg]

First all this is wonderful news and thank you for the updates and working hard on this developer and all you do!!! I think the price is just fine (and expect Kodak will increase theirs as well given how much it'd cost me to make up some Mytol).

...We have not tested any replenishing yet... we reduced the banned old buffer and replaced it by a newly synthesized product...It also keeps better, dissolves faster and stays fresh longer. We only have four months of data so there is possibly more to come on this.

I quoted this because, this sounds like it means replenishment should be easily attainable if it has better keeping properties (that's the main metric, as I understand it anyway, for successful replenishment). But I understand that is not the main requirement for most people so not having this out of the gates is totally understandable. Definitely my fav feature of XTOL but if it has keeping properties then I know at least that's something I can experiment with.

For the interim, I'm ok going back to one-shot for a while too. I'm just excited to give this a try and again, kudos for all ya'll do! This easily made my day, probably my weekend and maybe even made next week!

 

[Sirius Glass]

My XTOL s good and I got a good supply for now. I will stick with replenished XTOL.

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

Any idea on when it will arrive to The U.S. stores? Can you send us some more ADONAL too? There isn’t a bottle to be found within 200 miles of Los Angeles, which I would guess is a pretty big market. I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that it’s a COVID-related shipping issue and not a manufacturing one. The problem for the end user is that stores can’t ship it between states in The U.S. Thanks!

A shippment to Freestyle is on its way. They moved from Sunset BLVD to Santa Fe Springs in November and som things got held up. But now all is working again.

 

[m00dawg]

Any idea on when it will arrive to The U.S. stores? Can you send us some more ADONAL too? There isn’t a bottle to be found within 200 miles of Los Angeles, which I would guess is a pretty big market. I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that it’s a COVID-related shipping issue and not a manufacturing one. The problem for the end user is that stores can’t ship it between states in The U.S. Thanks!

ADONAL is unfortunate because you can't buy that from FotoImpex and ship to US (I guess because of the potassium? Not sure) but I order Adox products from FotoImpex directly usually (from the US). If you order enough, it ends up being cheaper (even with that annoying DHL Covid tax) than ordering domestically. Just something to consider! You do have to spend enough though.

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

ADONAL is unfortunate because you can't buy that from FotoImpex and ship to US (I guess because of the potassium? Not sure) but I order Adox products from FotoImpex directly usually (from the US). If you order enough, it ends up being cheaper (even with that annoying DHL Covid tax) than ordering domestically. Just something to consider! You do have to spend enough though.

Well this was also asked in another thread. We use DHL because they were bought by German Post. Actually we used German Postal before they bought DHL and rebranded but thats another story. In any event using postal (Germany/US) has the advantage of using postal customs procedures which are simplified for private persons. This is all based on the world postal contract which dates back to the 19th century. Unfortunately the same contract prohibits any hazmat items to be shipped in a postal parcel. This is why we cannot ship Rodinal (and is btw. the reason why we researched so long on the new ADOX Scala Kit to be a non hazmat item). If we were to use any other courier only the paperwork fees are 45 USD. On top of any freight. Possibly with additional fees on the customers side. This is why we are not doing this. We are aware of the delays caused by the customs center in New Jersey. But there really is ot much to change on our side. Its also not really DHL´s fault. Its the american government who is responsible for this chaos as they demand all postal shippments to be routed through New Jersey. But Benjamin is busy on offering an alternative @ the respective costs. He just told me yesterday.

 

[urnem57]

Thanks Adox! I was there on Thursday. They are actually in the process of moving their retail store down the street a few blocks on Sunset Boulevard. They are moving all of their offices to Santa Fe Springs, as well. The store has been in the same location over 50 years, which is pretty rare for anything to last 50 years in LA. Good to know there is more on the way. I know the arrival date was pushed back once already. I have enough to last until this next shipment arrives. Are Adox Films in the shipment, too? They are out of those (at least 4x5) as well. I am ready to ditch. The big K entirely. I have been quite happy with every Adox Product that I have tried so far.

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

To the U.S.?

No, Ex our doors :-/

 

[urnem57]

This is so encouraging that a manufacturer actually understands and cares about their customers.

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

This is so encouraging that a manufacturer actually understands and cares about their customers.

Any manufacturer should do this. There have been hard times in this market and not all was always perfect in the past. But I am hopefull for the future. Here in Germany we have a lot of family owned businesses which often think in generations rather than in quarters. Jobo is also one of them. If we were not listening to our customers, we would not have lasted 10 years ;-)

 

[urnem57]

Agreed, but without mentioning names there is one who has gone silent after promising to replace a defective product 2 months ago.
Moving forward, will this new developer work well across the 4x5 b/w Adox Film Products?

 

[MattKing]

Self-replenishment is by far and away the biggest reason I have moved to X-Tol. It is also probably the biggest reason that commercial users choose X-Tol.

 

[urnem57]

Where/how can I learn about how self-replenishment works in dumbed-down terms that I can understand? I get the concept, but don’t understand the application.

 

[Ernst-Jan]

An we expect first product to ship by the end of next week.

Ah good, I think I'll place an order next week anyhow, so I will give XT a try.
The longer shelf life of the stock solution has made me choose ID-11 until now, but if this new Adox XT lasts for at least four months, that's fine for me.

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

Self-replenishment is by far and away the biggest reason I have moved to X-Tol. It is also probably the biggest reason that commercial users choose X-Tol.

Matt, you should not have a problem with our product but we will look into this and probably make a dedicated replenisher.

 

[MattKing]

Matt, you should not have a problem with our product but we will look into this and probably make a dedicated replenisher.

A dedicated replenisher would be okay, but not nearly as useful and attractive as being able to use the developer as its own replenisher.
I still have some HC-110 replenisher, and its use is complex and relatively difficult.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I expect ADOX would be happy if Sino Promise fixed all the problems and got back into the market with reliable Kodak branded black and white photo chemicals.

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

Agreed, but without mentioning names there is one who has gone silent after promising to replace a defective product 2 months ago.
Moving forward, will this new developer work well across the 4x5 b/w Adox Film Products?

Ofcourse. XTOL is very well balanced developer for any B/W emulsion.

 

[Ernst-Jan]

As you are here now anyway, will you be selling Photoklasik II.2021?

That's actually the reason I haven't placed my order this week.