>>3614134>Xtol is my preferred developerMine as well, because it does everything, especially if you experiment with dilutions. But most importantly, it gives full speed with all films, small grain (smaller than any non-special purpose fine grain dev), and a normal contrast with most films.
Virtually all the devs I use are Xtol, Perceptol and Microphen. Xtol most of the time, Microphen for pushing HP5+ cause I slightly prefer it over Xtol. And Perceptol when I'm shooting something contrasty and have enough light, I'll pull some film 1 stop and use a dilution like 1+3 to get long dev times, with little agitation, to get some compensating effects and fine grain. Like for instance in the pic in my previous post, where I even had to *up* the contrast a tad in post. Or this one, you can even see a bit of halo on the tree bark.
Truth be told though, these are very minute preferences and I'd be fine just with Xtol. But since I can find the ilford stuff cheaply locally, I'm indulging a bit.
