New developing times for 5234, Xtol 1+3

It's been a minute, but I'm back for my first non-introductory post, and I've made a monstrosity of a list for developing Kodak Eastman 5234 in many developers and dilutions, so this is one of those developer and dilution combos I've tested, Xtol 1+3.

"Immature", Eastman 5234, Xtol 1+3

I wish I could remember how I came to the development time of 27 minutes and 27 seconds (Massive Dev Chart removed the 27 seconds from my submission, which honestly don't hurt the end result), but I simply don't. I do know that the negatives developed in Xtol Stock versus Xtol 1+3 look identical in terms of density, but the results from 1+3 look just a tad bit cleaner, and of course using less chemistry whenever possible is always nice. For this roll, I used gentle agitation, inverting constantly for the first minute, then for 10 seconds every minute for the total 27 minutes. No prewash, standard fixing, no hypo-clear, no intermittent washings, nothing special.

"Old Reliable", Eastman 5234, Xtol 1+3

"Little Flakes", Eastman 5234, Xtol 1+3

Side tangent, this film is probably the best nature/architecture stock available, since it's incredibly cheap, with Ultrafine selling it in 100' rolls for $54.95, $10 cheaper than FP4, $10.24 cheaper than Pan F Plus, and $15 cheaper than Delta 100, while still being very fine grain (Probably more so than Delta 100) with rich tonality, and being able to resolve more than a lot of existing lenses for film cameras. It's a film I initially tried because I happened to have Xtol handy, but I'm fully head over heels for this stock, and I have plans to try developing it in whatever I next have available to me, since everybody should be able to experience this film for themselves.

Keeping in mind that this was shot wide open, it's incredible how well this film resolves fine details.

I need to make a post dedicated to showing my love for Eastman 5234, but this is just to show that you don't need Xtol Stock to develop this film. Once I find out how the hell I got that development time, I'll interpolate a development time for Caffenol-C, since that's a developer you don't need to buy 5 liters at a time, it's always available everywhere, and it smells like a vintage cadaver. Thanks for reading, and I hope I can push myself to post here somewhat regularly.