Expired paper: Printing Experience

Yesterday won a bid on Forte Polygrade V and Adox MCC 111 which has expired atleast 7-10 years ago but they were kept in cold and dry place, as according to the seller.

Now I wonder how do they print.

Recently some Lumen prints from Wolfgang Mörsch has inspired me, so I may experiement a bit other than that it will be mostly exposing negatives.

What I do is:

Test print with restrainer (Anti-fogging agent)

http://www.fotoimpex.de/shop/fotochemie/moersch-restrainer-neutral-antischleiermittel-100-ml.html

If it is no good - then rest goes for Lith printing.

I have some Forte Polywarmton that prints like it was new. I also has some Polygrade that fogs hopelessly. I recently got some Fortezo and some other graded Forte paper that I haven't tried yet.

It's a bit of a crap shoot, really, if it's going to be good or not. Sometimes printing on old paper can be tremendously frustrating. What I do with paper that fogs evenly is to print as normal, and then give 15% more exposure. Then I use bleach until the fog is bleached off, was, refix, and I usually end up with a nice print. But I have fresh paper that needs to get used up before it gets old too, so I usually use the old paper for lith printing.

If you like experimenting, old paper can be fun. If you like knowing what to expect, and seek nothing but the best and most repeatable results, old paper can be an absolute nightmare.

I hope you have fun with it!

Seems it may be the time to experiment some Lumen prints. Some experiments from Mr. Mörsch is pretty impressive...

baachitraka said:

Seems it may be the time to experiment some Lumen prints. Some experiments from Mr. Mörsch is pretty impressive...

Click to expand...

Everything from Herr Mörsch is impressive - he is really the Printer with capital "P". I wonder often is he better Chemist or Printer

Do you mean Agfa 111 not Adox? I've had pretty good luck with Agfa MCC in the later boxes marked made in E.U. More fog trouble with older boxes marked made in France. The package of older Forte Polygrade I picked up was very badly fogged. It was unopened and looked brand new off the shelf. My old Fortezo still looks great. In fact I recently mounted a print done on 20 year old Fortezo.

Sorry its Agfa MCC 111 FB, sadly made in France.

The Agfa paper is probably not going to work very well, but I've seen nice lith prints from it.

Old paper usually loses a lot of contrast in addition to the fog, which is another problem I forgot to mention.

Try normal contrast filtration first, and if you get only low fog, use a restrainer as mentioned above. If you're able to get rid of the fog, then try printing with high contrast filters.

The AGFA paper also worked pretty well for bleaching and re-developing in lith. When you do this you need to stop the re-development before it's completely re-developed, in order to get any interesting colors out of it, so here the fog will not be that much of a problem. But contrast still will be.

Placed an order for the stabilizer for Lumen prints and along with Easy lith from Moersch-Photochemie.

baachitraka said:

Yesterday won a bid on Forte Polygrade V and Adox MCC 111 which has expired atleast 7-10 years ago but they were kept in cold and dry place, as according to the seller.

Click to expand...

Haha, that was you? I missed out on that one.

I recently purchased quite a bit of Ultrafine RC VC Paper that was fogged. It was in an unopened Ultrafine box, but which had some age to it. I said to myself . . "That's odd. I thought only Kodak papers died prematurely." Then I looked at the back of the paper and it had the old "Kodak Papers" logo written all over it. So, I use it for testing compositions and I make photograms, etc. It works great for that.