developing with x-tol - agitation and Films

[BLATT LAB]

Im basically at a Point where I only use X-tol 1:1 for my Black and White Film developing. (Sometimes I also use Adox Silverman Developer but only for the Silverman Film)

The Films I use are:
Tri-X 400 in 35mm / 120
Tri-X 320 in 4x5 / 8x10
Adox CHS 100 II in 35mm / 120 ( at least what I have left in 120, I hope adox get their 120 production back on track ) / 4x5 / 8x10

(maybe someone has a good idea for someone who likes Tri-X but sometimes wants a 100 iso Film, I still have a fair stock of Plus-X Frozen so that's a Film I also like. I just hope the CHS will not just disappear )


From what I remember Kodak recommends agitating for the first 30 sec. and then every 30 sec. for 5 sec.
Does anybody use this method ? Whats your experience ?

As I said I use Xtol 1:1 as one shot.
I agitate for the first minute and after that every minute one agitation. My agitations are fairly "slow" I would say it takes around 4 seconds.
There isn't a real reason why I use this method, I just get the results im happy with.

what method are you using and why ?

[koraks]

With sheet film in trays I use the kodak agitation scheme. Works fine. For roll film I just use a Jobo with continuous agitation. Works fine too. Don't overthink it.

[peter schrager]

for 120 film I use !+2 developed semi with TMY400 till 13minutes

[Bruce Watson]

I'm basically at a Point where I only use X-tol 1:1 for my Black and White Film developing.

Same here.


What method are you using and why?

Years ago I exchanged some emails with Silvia Zawadski and Dick Dickerson (creators of XTOL for Kodak). They said they created XTOL using a Jobo rotary processor; that it's optimized for continuous agitation. The film they used initially was one of the t-max films, I don't remember which one.

Sadly, Ms. Zawadski died just two weeks ago on 8-Dec-2020. She was an out of the box thinker who made seriously good contributions to her field. Kodak was lucky to have her.

The best results I ever got developing my own film was TMY-2 in XTOL 1:3 in a Jobo 3010 tank, running at 30 rpm or so. Fairly slow for rotary processing. This gave me excellent results, excellent linear response, short but predictable toe, tremendously long straight line section (if there was any shouldering it was so dense that I never found it), perfectly smooth and even skies, all that. Very easy to scan with excellent results. Since I optimized my work for scanning, it probably would have been a little too thin for the easiest of darkroom printing -- probably mostly on an #3 paper. But I never found that out for sure.