Response to Shelf life of XTOL

Xtol and its 'sudden failure' is a problem that some of us hit. Some don't & there seems to be no rational explanation to date. It hit me in the form of negatives so underexposed as to be ghost images on the film. This from freshly mixed Xtol, using distilled water, with two 5 litre packets in a 2 1/2 gallon holding tank. The developer was used the day after mixing, which is what I have found works best for me. Put in the negs after diluting 1:1 and... failure. The old line of "it can't really happen if it didn't happen to me" doesn't work here. I have never been bitten by a shark but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen to others. Even careful swimmers, divers & surfers get bit. So do careful darkroom workers... by Xtol. It can be a marvelous developer but there is a problem somewhere and it strikes without any discernable pattern. It happens in both 1 litre and 5 litre packages. I don't know about the bigger sizes as I don't mix them. I do suspect, and this is ONLY a W-A-G on my part, that somehow in the mixing, some of the chemical components don't get into the packaging in the right proportions. It is the only explanation I can come up with. I do like the developer but there is no way I can use it freshly mixed without a test development neg before committing my real negs to it. As to how long it keeps? I don't really know either, but if Sylvia is reading this maybe she can come into the discussion. Xtol is her baby and if The Yellow Peril can get its act together it should be around forever, if not a bit longer. It is an excellent product that is suffering from The Yellow Godfathers lack of attention to detail.

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