I am trying to nail down the correct ASA and normal development time for Ilford Delta 100 in XTOL 1:3 @68F for my exp. & dev. system (msll tank / manual agitation @30 seconds). Following the XTOL tech info, I did the first round at 15.5 minutes for 100 ASA. That resutled in a seriously overdeveloped negative. I was doing a test strip of only about 6 inches (cut small pieces off of a 24 exp roll with 24 identical frames of a test subject). Subsequent time tests of +20%, +30% & +40% it goes without saying were also seriously overdeveloped (done before I checked the first test strip). I thought maybe that the small amount of film in relation to the amount of developer caused the overdevelopment, but a full 24 exp roll done with XTOL at 1:3 also showed overdevelopment in the higher zones. Any suggestions? I read in a PHOTO TECHNIQUES review that the combo of D-400 & developer yields good results so I would like to assess D-100 & XTOL. Anybody have any suggestions for development times or what I might otherwise change?

-- Brian Parsley (bparsley@columbiaenergygroup.com), February 08, 1999

Answers

Reduce your development time, plain and simple. How are you agitating? How accurate is you thermometer? I use a diffuse enlarger and have settled on development times about 10% longer than what Kodak recommends. I used to dilute 1+3 but have switched to 1+2 for shorter times, around 10 min. @ 75F.

-- Tim Brown (brownt@ase.com), February 09, 1999.

Hi, I have found by testing that if your thermometer is accurate, and you follow a normal agitation pattern of 5 secs every 30 secs that the times listed by Kodak are very very close. Check your thermometer in a glass of water and ice for calibration, I had one once that was reading 1.5 degrees lower than the actual temperature. Good luck Art Nichols

-- arthur nichols (artnichols@syda.org), March 22, 1999.