Ilford SFX and XTOL

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I was looking for the best fine grain developer usable with Ilford's SFX200. My standard developer is XTOL dilution 1:1 but don't have any development times as the massive dev. chart doesn't list XTOL for SFX200. Any suggestions about development times with XTOL or other fine grain developers?

-- Marc Leest (mmm@n2photography.com), July 24, 2001

Answers

I have recently developed a roll of SFX 200 in XTOL. I used my normal development times for 400 Delta ie 20% less than recommended. Negatives were very slightly heavy for my printing setup. Next time I will reduce development by another 20%. (BTW I rated the film at 200ei per recomendations.)

-- Robert Orofino (minotaur1949@iopener.net), July 24, 2001.

Xtol 1:1 EI 200 15 mins, EI 400 19 mins; Xtol straight EI 200 11 mins, 400 15 mins. Taken from Ilford Processing Chart.

-- Wolfram Kollig (kollig@ipfdd.de), July 26, 2001.

I dare say you are going to have to run your own tests to find the right time. I have found my processing times for XTOL can vary wildly from what developing tables have reccomended (I'm speaking particularly of Kodak's). At other times they are right on. I too use XTOL 1:1 as my standard developer, in a Jobo processor. I carefully metered some SFX @ 200 and found that a developing time of about nine minutes was about right. I also have a client who loves to shoot this film. He does use a red filter, (which I did not use in my test). The highlight detail in his film when developed at nine minutes is extremely dense. I do believe he is metering accurately. So I need to do more testing on my own with a red filter. Very interesting. I was wondering if anybody else has noticed density differences with this film when used with or without a red filter?

-- Paul Swenson (paulphoto@humboldt1.com), July 27, 2001.

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