bad paper?

[JRieke]

I was recently given several hundred sheets of 8x10 kodak rc paper and chemistry. I ran my first prints through and they came out mottled with some areas looking like they got little to no development at all. I figured maybe my temps were too low so I raised the temp to 70 and agitated the hell out of the developer tray. Prints came out a bit better this time but still mottled with areas of under and uneven development. I figured maybe my chemistry was bad so I took out some Arista 5x7 rc paper and ran a few prints. These all came out beautifully! I'm assuming at this point that the paper is shot. Is there anything thay can be done with bad paper, alt processes and such? It seems a shame to throw all this away but it isn't even producing interesting effects to where you might want to do a low-fi thing with it.

Suggestions?

Jeremiah

 

[Kevin Kehler]

Kodak hasn't made B&W paper in several years. I would assume old paper, improperly stored is causing the problems. You can try some alternative processes but don't expect any consistency. One sheet might work out, the next one done exactly the same way will not.

 

[MattKing]

Try a sheet from the middle of the pack - you may find that it is just the outside sheets that are sub-par.

 

[X. Phot.]

Photograms are easy and always interesting. To make them even more interesting, use the photograms as paper negatives for contact prints creating positives, all this using the same paper.