Rumor has it that the Adorama paper is/was Ilford. As Ilford has stopped working with re-branders, whatever they've got now is all they'll ever have, and most of the products listed on their Web site are out of stock according to the Web site. Of course, they might just sign up with some other company and start selling a completely different product under the same or a different name.
Freestyle has several suppliers for the different lines of their product. This can be confusing because most of them go by the "Arista" name; you've
got to pay attention to the sub-name:
- Arista Pro -- I'm not sure this moniker was used for paper, but for film it was Ilford. Little or none of it is left.
- Arista II -- This is supposedly Kentmere paper. In film, it is/was Agfa, but I don't think they've got much of that left. AFAIK, the paper line is current.
- Arista.EDU -- This is Forte, in both film and paper. This seems to be a current product line, although Freestyle has a few odd gaps in the line.
- Arista.EDU Ultra -- This is Foma, in both film and paper.
- Freestyle Private Reserve -- If they've got any left, this paper is Agfa.
As to the original question, for film, paper, and chemistry, there are people who are very devoted to just about every product out there, so if this thread goes on for long enough, you'll get recommendations for lots of very different things.
That said, if you just want to "get you feet wet" and re-familiarize yourself with B&W processing, I'd say to start either with something inexpensive (Arista.EDU Ultra fits this bill for both film and paper) or with what you used last.
For chemistry, similar comments apply. My survey of commercial developer prices is about a year old and limited. Freestyle's Arista line extends to chemistry, though, and is pretty inexpensive. They've got A76, which I'm guessing is a D-76 clone (the development times match those for D-76). Rodinal and similar products (like Calbe/Foma R09) are quite inexpensive when diluted to 1+50 or 1+100. Personally, I favor phenidone/vitamin C ("PC") developers rather than the more common metol/hydroquinone ("MQ") developers, since phenidone and vitamin C are safer than metol and hydroquinone. (Not that metol and hydroquinone are all
that toxic, but if reducing even a small risk is cheap and easy, why not do it?) I use mix-it-yourself chemistry, but in commercial products, AFAIK only Kodak XTOL and Paterson FX-50 are PC developers. The latter is much pricier and is likely to be hard to find; Paterson's been having problems with their chemistry supply of late. Among paper developers, there's the A&O (formerly Agfa) Neutol Plus (but
not other products in the Neutol line) and the new
Silvergrain Tektol line. I've been using an earlier mix-it-yourself Tektol variant called
DS-14 with good results.
