[Leica] Neopan-Xtol Xpert-Tease Sought

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 10:53 PM -0600 2/28/07, bob palmieri wrote:
>Folks -
>
>I seem to recall that some Luminary Lug-gers have worked out the 
>details of Neopan 1600 in Xtol 1:3.
>
>I shot 2 rolls at 1600 and sent it to my Usual Guy who did the Xtol 
>thing at 1:3, although I didn't get his time/temp specs.  They both 
>looked pretty thin, but otherwise very impressive in terms of grain 
>structure.  So. I'm wondering:
>
>Should I try 800 ISO next round and have him do whatever he did 
>(seeing as how the web and the mags are full of folks who claim that 
>this stuff really ain't anywhere near 1600), or
>
>Should I try 1600 again and specify some percentage of increase in 
>development time (if so how much, d'ya think, without being able to 
>see the negs)?
>
>For what it's worth, here's a shot from each of the rolls (after I 
>beat on them a bit with levels & curves in Photoshop)- the first is 
>from my new(!!??!) Nikon F (??!!?) with a 50 1.4 cropped close to 
>the field of an 85:
>
>http://www.pbase.com/bobsworld/image/74860346
>
>And this one, shot with my CL and 35 4th gen 'cron:
>
>http://www.pbase.com/bobsworld/image/74896881
>
>Or I s'ppose I could shoot another coupla rolls and try both...  I 
>gotta say, under the 30X mag the grain structure looked more 
>appealing to me than anything I've ever shot above 400.
>
>Bob Palmieri

Neopan 1600 is one of the few films that works better for me in Xtol 
1:1 than 1:3, but the I develop in Nikor tanks with minimal fluid. 
While the 1:3 solution has enough oomph for Delta 100 or HP5+ or 
Acros, Neopan 1600 needs more.

I tried just putting half as much film in the tank, but that didn't 
work as well either.

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    *            Henning J. Wulff
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