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Current crop of silver gelatin enlarging papers - preferences?


Call Freestyle and ask. When I wanted to try the Arista.EDU Ultra and compare it to Fomapan 200, the Freestyle telephone rep told me not to - they were one and the same film. There was no hiding it - they just don't publicize it.
 

Welcome back to simplicity.

The Rollei experience rocks. Simple! Deliberative! Classic! Super results!

I've noticed alt processes and fuzzy grunge-like images are popular. Perhaps the thinking is different helps sales. More like art. What photography did to painting digital is doing to silver printing.

I prefer flat drying, warm, not yellow, papers. WT keeps shadows open. Each paper has attributes. All Ilford's papers and especially Galerie are top notch. Not a question of what is best but the papers characteristics.
 
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I've been printing with Galerie lately and agree with the comment about paper surface. It has a nice finish and base color more pleasing than Adox. You can bend Galerie's image tone to the warm side of neutral by pulling the paper. Also there is limited contrast control with exposure. If you have two heads (dichro and condenser) you have more control. Whites are very clean. But, in some ways it's more difficult to use.
 
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made some test prints with the fomabrom VC 111 glossy....yup Bruce Barnbaum is right about the paper...also might want to try the foma 542; a warmtone paper that rocks if you can get the tone right...takes loooong exposures under my light...but the results are stunning
Best, Peter
 

Do note- I'm not walking away from alt process printing. That will always be there. Especially when working from large/ultra-large format negatives. But I've been doing a lot of work with the Rollei that I'd like to print myself, ergo the desire to get back into silver gelatin enlarging.
 

While condenser and diffusion sources certainly produce different levels of contrast that would be the hard way to go about it. The usual way of varying contrast with graded papers is with divided development. You have a tray of a relatively contrasty print developer, say Dektol or Bromophen, maybe a little stronger than usual dilution, and a tray of soft developer like Selectol-Soft - Freestyle sells an equivalent of Sekectol-Soft. Then you divide development between the two to achieve different contrasts between grades. Both Barnbaum's book and Adams' The Print (and presumably others, I haven't really delved into my copy of Way Beyond Monochrome yet) go into this in more detail.

VC papers are more convenient and allow burning areas with different filters but it isn't too hard to get intermediate grade contrast from graded papers.
 

My DR lacks the space for two developing trays. I often run a two tray fix line or single tray process using 11x14 tray or larger. After I have a working print 1/2 grade tweaks can be accomplished using 130 vs LPD, pulling the print or deciding to tone or not to. If I had space, I would likely use LPD and 120.

 
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I use a LPL 670 for MF. The enlarger is modular. I infrequently change heads on the column if needing to adjust contrast.
 
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