Agfa Brovura substitute???

[nyoung]

Looking through a box (500 sheet film box) of 30ish year old prints and I noticed a few from the mid 80s that really stood out from the rest of the pile which was 99% Kodak Poly RC.

IIRC, the prints in question were done on an AGFA paper called Brovura (SP?).

Anybody have an idea about a current paper that would approximate the look of the old AGFA stock?

 

[Ray Rogers]

Any chance you could give a visual sample of how they differ?

 

[Ian Grant]

Brovira was an Agfa FB paper quite cold toned with excellent deep blacks & rich shadow tones. I have a swatch of all the 80's Agfa papers back in the UK, there was also Brovira Speed an RC version, which was much punchier than the Ilford & Kodak RC equivalents. Kenthene, the Kentmere RC paper, gave similar deep blacks.

Ian

 

[Mike Crawford]

Adox MCC developed in a cold tone developer gives a really strong, deep, cold black on a white base. (Selenium will shift it colder.) Being based on Agfa MCC, it's almost a relative of Brovira!
Just found this link on printing for Avedon using Brovira.
http://lifeslittleadventures.typepad.com/lifes_little_adventures/2006/05/how_we_did_it.html

 

[nyoung]

Visually, pretty much what Ian said.

 

[Ian Grant]

Visually, pretty much what Ian said.

MCC whether Agfa or Adox isn't that close to Brovira unfortunately.

Ian

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Interestingly, the Avedon over-exposed and over-developed negatives was a technique that another thread here about Ralph Gibson talked about.
He used Tri-X and Rodinal, though.

 

[Andrew Moxom]

Brovira was Agfa's bromide cool tone paper. It was also the coolest toned bromide paper available at the time. It's long gone, but a good alternative is the Slavich unibrom gradepaper. Unibrom is now currently the coldest toned bromide graded paper available today. It's not identical, but close

 

[Mike Crawford]

MCC whether Agfa or Adox isn't that close to Brovira unfortunately.

Ian

I don't think I was saying MCC is a replacement for Brovira Ian, or for any other paper when it comes to it. (Once a paper is gone, it's gone, time to move on to another.)
But.... if you like deep tones and the ability to move it to colder tones, it is well worth checking out. Interestingly, even though I find the Adox emulsion very similar to the Agfa MCC emulsion, the fact it's on a whiter base makes it, (for me at least), a different paper. Would be nice though if it came in boxes of 50 as well as 25!

 

[nyoung]

The Slavich sounds like a good starting point. I really loved that deep black cold toned look of the Brovira but alas, the job at the time and the demand for prints as quickly as possible kept me from printing as much of it as I wanted.

 

[Andrew Moxom]

Also, Slavich unibrom is one of the best value for money papers available today. It's super cheap from Freestyle. Enjoy.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

Salvich Unibrom is not 'super cheap' over here and has to be ordered in from Germany www.monochrom.com - I picked up a pack each of grades 2, 3, and 4 in gloss about a while ago but found that quality control was not up to much. Perhaps I should revisit the paper as only one grade pack was affected by grey fogging if I recall correctly.

See: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Tom

 

[Ray Rogers]

Visually, pretty much what Ian said.

I have lost this mail twice:it just keeps dissapearing during the composition; this time I am composing off APUG and will just paste it (t)here now:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
My skin crawls when density and tone are described with words rather than hard data or the actual images themselves. I don't mean to be provocative, I am sure I am guilty of this too! But seriously folks, Who describes... Who proudly produces... paper described best as: having inferior, shallow blacks with poor shadow tones?

Which company's products are we dissing?

Please keep in mind I am not trying to start discord, I just find the staus quo rather ludicrous.

(That said, MY mental image of Brovira is also as described....)


----
And it's no, no, no no nobody's fault but ... "Blind" Willie?

 

[Ian Grant]

I don't think I was saying MCC is a replacement for Brovira Ian, or for any other paper when it comes to it. (Once a paper is gone, it's gone, time to move on to another.)
But.... if you like deep tones and the ability to move it to colder tones, it is well worth checking out. Interestingly, even though I find the Adox emulsion very similar to the Agfa MCC emulsion, the fact it's on a whiter base makes it, (for me at least), a different paper. Would be nice though if it came in boxes of 50 as well as 25!

Every time I find a paper I really like it either changes or gets discontinued

I used Record Rapid for sometime, but Agfa took out the Cadmium making it less flexible, then laterreplaced it with MCC. I also used Brovira Speed and Portriga Speed (RC version of Record Rapid).

Have to agree Mike, you have to work with what's available, I switched to Forte Polywarmtone only for that to go as well, I think I've enough left for the two exhibitions booked for next year.

I prefer a whiter base which was why I didn't switch to Multigrade Warntone FB with it's sickly off white base after Agfa's pull out, but that's now changed to a whiter base as well so it's time for some testing before I stock up again.

Ian

 

[werra]

What a coincidence, I printed yesterday some things on Brovira Speed. What about Foma papers?