Looks like you have never done detailed side-by-side tests
You would be wrong. I have been shooting E6 for decades, and had it processed by numerous different labs over the years before starting to do it myself. I still send out 35mm on occasion if I want the slides to be mounted. I probably have close to 10,000 frames of professionally processed E6. I have done many "detailed side-by-side tests" and the results from the Tetenal are always as good or better than any pro lab.
I know of several large format photographers who have switched to the 6/7 bath Fuji kit because of the better stabiliser (smears with 3-bath kit).
I can't speak for the technique or care employed by others, but I have never seen any issues with the Tetenal stabilizer. It is hard to envision how this would manifest itself with LF and not MF or 35mm. Since the newly CLA'd shutter for my Graphic is on its way back as we speak, I will let you know what I see with 4x5.
I feel the need to point out that there is a whole lot of "doth protest too much" going on here in an attempt to trash the Tetenal kits. This thread started with the classic "someone said once that Blix was no good, so I choose to blindly believe one random comment rather than actually trying things for myself". It has now morphed to shelf life and streaky stabilizer. Well I heard that a guy from Tetenal once kicked a dog! So they suck! (it works best if you imagine a Kyle Broflovski voice)
BLIX is not BLIX. There were many valid arguments against BLIX several years ago, and the all boiled down to "but Tetenal's BLIX is a good BLIX, it works". Tetenal uses a proper bleach accelerator, and they use Ammonium Ferric EDTA, not Sodium Ferric EDTA. They do many things right which some other makers didn't.
+10000
This is really the key point. People talk about Blix as if it is some monolithic constant, like H2O. There can be many different formulations and some will perform and "work" differently from others. My experience is with Tetenal and very limited with Arista. The Tetenal and Arista Blixes are different formulations, but both are quite effective.
So the Tetenal kit does not have to be fully mixed at the beginning, like the Hunt kit? You can mix it for amount needed, per batch, for the film that is going to be developed?
If this is true, does this allow a longer shelf life, for the remaining chemicals, as they are not fully mixed together yet?
thanks p.
The Tetenal 2.5 liter three bath kit consists of 3 liters of concentrate and four baths. You gotta love marketing. Apparently, the stabilizer is not a bath, as the developing is complete at that point. Maybe the 2.5 liters comes from five batches of 500ml mix, but that is just a guess.
So you use 100ml of each of the concentrates for each batch. As noted, that is five batches. Ten rolls takes me from six weeks to two months to shoot, so that is how long each batch sits before it is dumped and a new one is mixed. Taking the worst case, four batches at two months per batch is eight months between when the kit is first opened and the fifth (last) batch is mixed. By aliquoting the concentrate into 100ml bottles when mixing the first batch, I have had no problems with shelf life. This also makes it very easy to mix the subsequent batches as everything is pre-measured.