Now that I bought the 50 liter Xtol by mistake...

[Darin Boville]

...can I shake it really well and then mix it in batches? Or best just to send it back?

It was sooooo much cheaper to buy it this way. I misunderstood and thought I was buying 10 5 liter packs, not one 50 liter pack....

Whoops!

--Darin

[Henry Ambrose]

You need to shoot a bunch of 8X10.
The only answer.

[BarryS]

Some of the components in the XTOL mixture are present in very small quantities, so it's going to be very hard to get a homogeneous mix. Stock solutions of XTOL have a limited life, so it wouldn't make sense to mix it all. I'd return it.

[John Bowen]

Come on Darin, let's make lemonade out of this lemon....may I suggest you invite every user of xtol to your place to have one very large film developing party. I can see the posters now "BYOF"

Seriously, a return looks to be in order. Good Luck!

[MIke Sherck]

I don't use Xtol so don't know why it doesn't "keep" very well, but I shoot Tmax films in 4x5 and they *demand* fresh D-76... OR ELSE! I mix my D-76 in gallon jugs and decant it to quart bottles, filling them all the way up. It keeps that way for months and still makes Tmax films happy. Perhaps it would work for you?

Of course, that's a *lot* of 1 liter bottles...

Mike

[Darin Boville]

You need to shoot a bunch of 8X10.
The only answer.

Oh, such a good, tempting idea. But that little voice in my head keeps saying "don't do it!"...

So tempting....

--Darin

[Darin Boville]

O.K., back it goes (and it is amazing, by the way, how much a small quantity of chemicals costs--$65 for something like a box of pancake mix...)

Thanks,

--Darin

[William McEwen]

O.K., back it goes (and it is amazing, by the way, how much a small quantity of chemicals costs--$65 for something like a box of pancake mix...)

Thanks,

--Darin

Who did you order it from? Many mail-order places will not accept returns of film and darkroom stuff.

[Darin Boville]

Who did you order it from? Many mail-order places will not accept returns of film and darkroom stuff.

Well, the good news is I bought it from B&H and they didn't hesitate to send me an return authorization number.

The bad news is that the post office wants $15 to mail it back. Seems like a complete rip-off to me. My plan now is to offer to any locals for $15 off or maybe to just divide it up and see what happens....

Hey, if works we'll all have a much cheaper source of Xtol...

--Darin

[William McEwen]

I just talked to a friend of mine who shoots medium format Delta 400 film and processes everything in Xtol. I asked if he was interested in taking this off your hands. He said "No, that's more than I would use in a lifetime."

(His stuff is at: http://www.ddonovan.net)