What's so great about XTOL?

Example of TriX in Xtol, at box speed and stock solution is (there was a url link here which no longer exists)
I've used Xtol for 5 years and am very happy with the results. Personal choice I guess. Good luck.

iserious said:

I used a milligram scale to separate both parts into halves & quarters. It's a lot easier to mix a 1.25 or 2.5L batch.

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Not a good idea if you value consistency. There is a thread going on here now that runs for many pages about the problems that can happen by splitting a package of dry powders. Another consideration is that once opened, the ingredients will oxidize, maybe even more quickly than a well stopped up bottle of stock solution.

See this thread: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

When it 1st came out, I was working in NYC, living in CT. This made it easy to stop by B&H and pick up a 1ltr bag, and as I was going through Tri-X fairly quickly back then, the 1ltr option was nice. Didn't have to worry too much about temp when combining the 2, etc.

I always used it straight, and back then shooting with a Nikon N90s + MF26 back, the results were as expected. These days I'd go back and reshoot everything with Zeiss glass, but also process in HC-110 1:50 for a look which seems more timeless.

What does mean when they say "XTOL is a speed increasing developer"?

I've used XTOL for quite a bit. Almost always 1+1, but occasionally 1+0 (which I find just wastes developer rather than offer anything useful). Rarely I use 1+2 or 1+3 when I have a single roll to develop. I, of course, one-shot it all. The only thing I don't one-shot is fixer.

It's never let me down - even literally down to the last 250ml of XTOL in my storage tank, shown here (except for the last 2):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kediwah/archives/date-posted/2008/11/21/

I covered a protest w/ Neopan 1600@3200, developed entirely with XTOL, once again, zero issues and did quite well with that moderate +1 push in low light:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kediwah/sets/72157608874350670/

It's my main developer, quite easy to mix up (it takes maybe 10 minutes, it's really not that big a deal) as it dissolves fairly easy, and I've never worried about failure as I use those bellows style plastic containers to store it. I usually get through 5L in less than 3 months. When I want something different, I use D-76, which to me has a slightly different feel, and am now just starting to play around with Rodinal. I've got the XTOL+Rodinal thing on the list to try, but as of now I haven't gotten to it. Want to try PMK eventually as well.

It really is a wonderful developer and I can't see why anyone would have any issues with it.

One should be aware that the "standard" b/w film developer that all others are compared to is D-76. When making comparisons, it is important to have a standard, and compare others to this industry standard developer. All chemical vendors have a D-76 clone. It is used worldwide. It can be purchased as a commercial powder, or made from "scratch" in your darkroom from component chemicals. Now that we are on that page (D-76) and you know what your negatives look like developed in D-76, how does X-tol differ? I don't know, as I haven't used X-tol, BUT I DO KNOW that Rodinal is for sure a "specialty" developer that gives a very characteristic "Rodinal" look to film processed in it. I have used Rodinal, I like it for some things, but it is not a "universal" developer that gives optimum results for all films. If your "standard" of comparison is a Rodinal-type developer, and that is what you have worked your exposure and development techniques to achieve a "look" you like, then you will not be happy with X-tol, which is a more "conventional" working developer. For those of us who grew up on D-76 and like what we get, then X-tol is possibly a good choice. By your own admission, you are using (among others) Rodinal with stand development for a very extended developing time. This further moves the performance away from any standard, but in a direction you like.

And don't kid yourself, ALL scanners manipulate and adjust the scanned image. If you take the results from several different brands of scanners and view the scanned files in P-shop, you will find differences in the visual appearance of the scans. ALL scans need optimizing in some image-editing software (such as Photoshop) to be great. Even when amateurs take their color neg film to a one-hour lab for printing, the scanning process allows for operator override to adjust density and color, and is done on a frame by frame basis working from a video monitor on the scanner.

Xtol diluted 1+1 is great with TMY (EI 250) and HP5 (EI 250). I've been using Xtol since it first came out.

PHOTOTONE said:

And don't kid yourself, ALL scanners manipulate and adjust the scanned image. If you take the results from several different brands of scanners and view the scanned files in P-shop, you will find differences in the visual appearance of the scans. ALL scans need optimizing in some image-editing software (such as Photoshop) to be great. Even when amateurs take their color neg film to a one-hour lab for printing, the scanning process allows for operator override to adjust density and color, and is done on a frame by frame basis working from a video monitor on the scanner.

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I don't think many one hour lab operators do much overriding, in a pro lab where they have been properly trained on the equipment, and probably have some photographic experience, then yes. The pimple faced teenager at wally world who's photographic experience is a couple of snaps with a camera-phone, who was shown by another pimple faced teenager how to use the machine, unlikely. For most non-lab scanners, the important variable is the scanner driver, some are completely automatic, some are completely manual, most are in between. If the driver allows adjustments to be made, it's easy to get a scan where you don't need to edit the image after.

I do need to start scanning again, now that winter, after leaving late last spring, came early this year

Brandon D. said:

What does mean when they say "XTOL is a speed increasing developer"?

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Great question!

Brandon D. said:

What does mean when they say "XTOL is a speed increasing developer"?

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It means that if you expose two films identical and develop the first in D76 (the standard) and the second in XTOL for the same contrast the second film will have more shadow details.
Or, vice versa, you can set a (slightly) higher film speed when using XTOL and get the same shadow detail as with D76.

ath said:

It means that if you expose two films identical and develop the first in D76 (the standard) and the second in XTOL for the same contrast the second film will have more shadow details.
Or, vice versa, you can set a (slightly) higher film speed when using XTOL and get the same shadow detail as with D76.

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Wow! That's cool!

Thanks for the explanation!

Scanning, even scanning Tri X in Rodinal, cannot record much of the data the film holds.
You can't record the grain of Tri-X in Rodinal
and you can't begin to see what Xtol does.

Its like a $20,000 audio system playing though old $20 speakers.

You might try Dektol 1+10 instead of Rodinal, which will make much more pronounced grain,
and reduce the aliasing problems any scanner that any of us can afford is bound to have.
I think - honestly - you've overestimated how much detail a scanner can see, which isn't much.

If you ever find yourself learning to print, you will be able to see the difference between Xtol and Rodinal.

df cardwell said:

Scanning, even scanning Tri X in Rodinal, cannot record much of the data the film holds.
You can't record the grain of Tri-X in Rodinal
and you can't begin to see what Xtol does.

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Here's the thing: I can see the difference by simply going to 100% and looking at it. I'm also not the only person to be able to see grain character and detail from a scan. Scanners have been able to capture this level of detail for quite a while now. We're not talking 300dpi, we're talking 4000dpi.

Regardless, I'd love to make optical prints and realize that a scanner is inherently digital - but for right now it's more than capable of capturing the intent and subtleties for me - and the "hybrid" workflow is still a hell of alot better than shooting with a digital camera.

Weren't we talking about XTOL?

Scanners have been able to capture this level of detail for quite a while now

Gentle, and polite, but profound, disagreement. You THINK you see detail, but you don't.
If you had an 8x10 in your hand made from a good, not great, enlarger (and lens) from tri X in Rodinal,
you would see an impossibly mushy mess from you scanner... until you are using a honest-to-goodness DRUM SCANNER you can't begin to resolve film grain. Really.

Resolving grain - that IS the real trick. People often forget that analog technology has the propensity for infinite resolution. You need some very exotic scanners to get close to infinity. Of course things like lens resolution stands in your way, but you get the drift. You have optics in scanners too that pose the same restrictions.

Besides a 100% stable enlarger, there isn't much else that stands in the way of fully resolving grain when printing optically.

With a scanner, there are more obstacles than I care to count. Noise is one, for instance. Poor optics is another. A stable transport... It goes on and on.

It is my opinion, and I have done a lot of scanning (with a SciTex Eversmart at a lab and Epson V700 at home - I know, it's sub par) and darkroom printing, I can't understand developer variances until I print them, no matter how I try with the scan. I think it's because my paper, my enlarger, and my method in the darkroom is a constant, while every time I scan a negative, I can't seem to develop a feel for how much I adjust the negatives before they look right. And that doesn't help me one iota when trying to understand what goes on with film development. And I'm not talking about grain. I'm talking about something infinitely more important - tonality.

df cardwell said:

Scanners have been able to capture this level of detail for quite a while now

Gentle, and polite, but profound, disagreement. You THINK you see detail, but you don't.
If you had an 8x10 in your hand made from a good, not great, enlarger (and lens) from tri X in Rodinal,
you would see an impossibly mushy mess from you scanner... until you are using a honest-to-goodness DRUM SCANNER you can't begin to resolve film grain. Really.

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You're being ridiculous about it. The difference is not "fully resolved film grain" vs "impossibly mushy mess."

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=tri-x+rodinal&ss=1&ct=6&z=t <-- plenty of tx+rodinal shots.

Would you prefer I just crush the scanner, print every single thing optically, and use the pony express to share my photography with others? When a photographer hands you a print, do you break out a loupe to examine the grain? You're fighting the wrong battle here and honestly it feels like you have an axe to grind about scanning. It's a means to an end, the main medium (film) and it's response to light and quality is still upheld.

Which scanner do you own or have a large amount of scans on?

clayne said:

<snip>

the main medium (film) and it's response to light and quality is still upheld.

<snip>

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Hi,
I think that you are overlooking that, for many people, the main medium is not the film. The film is simply a (flawed) intermediate step on the way to a fine print.
Celac

pelerin said:

Hi,
I think that you are overlooking that, for many people, the main medium is not the film. The film is simply a (flawed) intermediate step on the way to a fine print.
Celac

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Sure, of course. Agreed.

But I think we started down this road because someone was inferring that one couldn't tell the difference between Rodinal, D-76, and XTOL from scans. That's just bunk.

Koda 64,
Being, as I am, a traditionalist (read dinosaur), for me the only test of a neg is the kinds of prints it makes. To me, at this juncture, a scanned negative is just not "there."
I have noticed, and commented before, that the vast majority of the scans that I see which look to me like they may make a decent print are, very often, from Trix-X and D-76. Since I am from the generation in which "digitals" applied to things like amidol stained-fingers (vbg) I do not know if the constant parade of mediocre-looking images posted here are because the negs just don't scan well or because some of these new woopty-doo film developers are just hype.
Don't get me wrong: I am not some neo-luddite. But I do have a fondness for a black and white image which visually sings it message when that is intended by the photographer. Much of the stuff I see now is as flat as Roseanne Barr singing the Star Spangled Banner.

clayne, please

calm down. I don't mean to offend, and i'm not saying a scanner isn't wonderful

but the question arose over developers, which led to optical printing and scanning

if you scan on a high quality, pro-sumer scanner (like you are using, and like the one i own)
there isn't much difference between developers, in fact, some film/developer combinations which produce less than admirable optical prints do wonderfully well for scanners .. and vice versa

i brought up 'rodinal and tri-x and grain'... because it is about the coarsest grain stucture going,
and yet it is unscannable while it is very easy to print sharply...(it looks like 0000 rapidograph stippling, and now you know how old i am !) if you can't resolve the incredibly coarse grain from rodinal and tri-x, how can you resolve the remarkable fine and smooth grain of xtol ? the scanner can't resolve it because it can't see it.

again, it was not to offend, but to offer that how a film prints and how it scans are different.. and looking at a scan has no bearing on how it will print !

the point of THAT was to suggest that what is so good about XTOL, and other developers, and films for that matter,
is normally taken to mean how well they print optically. For scanning, it is hard to beat Ilford XP2, but for stuff you do your self, you should see Sandy King's article, and discussions about Diafine. Really great for scanning.


As for my OWN experience, well, that is not germane to the discussion.

I think scanners are wonderful. Otherwise, we'd never be able to see images shot on film on the internet. And everything we'd be looking at on the net would be DSLR images.

I mean, printing at the highest possible output isn't necessarily the only end for photography. Photography is meant for books, magazines, newspapers, stock images, web site designs/layouts, and etc. And those aren't necessarily the best mediums for reproducing photography either. But they all have their purpose, and they all yield lower quality to an extent. But, so what? People appreciate magazines, newspapers, the internet, and etc. Limiting [film] photography to the darkroom print is still pretty limiting even if it yields the best quality and control.

But the discussion is not about limitation - it's about being able to tell the difference of what a developer does to your film, and what that difference is, to understand what happens.
In my humble opinion - I only get part of the story with a scanner. It's not until I go into the darkroom that I fully understand what a certain film developer does.

Example. I use two developers currently. HC-110 and Rodinal. The HC-110 negatives scan like crap, literally. They look really bad without any real life to them. When I print them in the darkroom, I get very beautiful highlights all of a sudden. Highlights full of air, crispness, and beautiful tone. When I use Rodinal, both the scan and the print look good. If I was to rely on scanning only, to determine how my negatives would print, I would have never understood what HC-110 does to my negs!
That is a real difference, and one that I think is important! It means that if you rely on your scanner to analyze developer qualities, and you plan on printing them in a darkroom later on, you may cheat yourself of some truly good results. You can use a developer to develop your negs so they look good on the scanner. Sometimes those negs will look good printed in silver too. Sometimes they will not. Or negs that look good printed in silver will not look good on the scanner. That is the problem.

- Thomas

I like Xtol, but I don't like powder developers (especially those with "sudden death"). Is there a liquid equivalent?

XTOL doesn't really have any serious sudden death issues other than being attentive to not let it become grossly exposed to air. This horse has been beaten to death over and over and people still think it will fail on them in 2 weeks.

There is no liquid XTOL. There is Ilford DD-X that will cost you twice as much for the same amount of working solution. This is fairly stupid as you only need a bucket, water, and 10 minutes to make liquid XTOL from powder. After that you put it in containers and it's a done deal.

clayne said:

XTOL doesn't really have any serious sudden death issues other than being attentive to not let it become grossly exposed to air. This horse has been beaten to death over and over and people still think it will fail on them in 2 weeks.

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Thank you, that is so true... you can identify untalented craftsmen easily: they complain about tools and material instead of improving their methods.

Every time someone has a problem developing a film properly with one developer he will try the next film and/or developer.

But if he used XTol the first thing he does is posting a new question "did my XTol turn bad?" in several forums, and then people who never used it repeat that nonsense.

Maybe he were better off by contemplating about questions like:

- "What is a thermometer good for?"
- "Why should I read the datasheets?"

As the newspaper people say: you can not print excuses instead of a great photo.

But so many people are easy prey for providers that promise heaven on earth with their miracle films and miracle developers. Even the CEOs of such companies put their trousers on one leg at a time and offer other companies' products with a lot more marketing bla, new labels and twice the price. Only the customer's self-deception helps them getting away with it.

May I suggest: buy original films from the manufacturers and don't fall for false labeling, use the recommended chemistry, RTFM and work exactly as described. If the results are not good, don't blame it on the manufacturer in the first line.

clayne said:

There is no liquid XTOL. There is Ilford DD-X that will cost you twice as much for the same amount of working solution. This is fairly stupid as you only need a bucket, water, and 10 minutes to make liquid XTOL from powder. After that you put it in containers and it's a done deal.

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Exactly. Liquid XTol is what you make yourself. It's reliable, dirt cheap, more eco-friendly than most other developers, and it's great for pushing.