This is going to be a short blog post.
So a quick recap of what has happened so far in the XTOL story:
Xtol was and is a beloved film developer with great tonality and grain
Kodak sold their chem dept to a Chinese firm called SinoPromise
The Chinese fucked up something and put the two parts into bags not air tight
People bought bags of the developer which then turned out to have oxidized so you got lumps of chemicals that was hard to dissolve, or didn’t dissolve at all
People got thin negatives and complained, Sino Promise promised replacements which most people still have not gotten
Adox looked at the situation from the sidelines and noticed that the “new” Xtol was different from “old” Xtol that people liked
They decided to make their own version with Captura dust-free technology and with ingredients that were up to modern standards to reduce health hazards
They matched the curves exactly to old Xtol which they had at hand, released it and called it XT-3
So, development times are exactly like Xtol times, and results are exactly like Xtol. No point in me showing example pictures. What is different however is that with the Captura dust binding tecnhology you will no longer taste Xtol in your mouth after mixing a batch. It is quite cool actually, how everything just slides out from the bag with zero dust.
I also found that it was easier to dissolve, it didn’t take as long to mix into the developer liquid.
After developing a couple of rolls I will confirm that the negatives look exactly as the used to do with Xtol.
Alright, I can’t think of anything else to say about this.
