I finally got round to printing on some of the 'Nature 532' - it's very similar in surface texture and weight to Art Classic, with possibly slightly less of of a surface sheen. (Silverprint describes 'Nature' as having a 'high surface sheen' but my box didn't have that). It feels even more like 'drawing paper' to me, and I like that.
The paper base is a warmish white or light cream compared with say Ilford WT (newer version) but next to Kentmere Art Classic it looks whiter, and makes Art Classic look ivory.
As its VC it's easier to get the deep blacks than Art Classic, BUT it's very slow. I ended up printing image size longest size 8" from full 35mm neg, at f4 for 90 secs. Quite a high key but only averagely dense neg. I was going to print 12 x 16 but gave up and cut the paper. For this reason I think it's a pity the smallest available size at Silverprint at least, seems to be 9.5 x 12.
Overall though I like it a lot - a pleasure to handle under the enlarger and whilst processing, dries nice and firm. Definitely going to use it more, for suitable images. Definitely makes me a bit less sad about the demise of Art Classic, though it's not exactly the same, and the slow exposure times are a bit off-putting for larger prints - I haven't tried toning yet but will be doing so. My normal warm developer is Agfa WA but I tried Ilford WA with this for the first time - my feeling is that the Art Classic/ Agfa WA combination is warmer than the Foma Nature/ Ilford WA combination but not able to tell how much this is affected by the paper or the developer as I was trying two things new to me at once.
Hope this is useful for languishing Art Classic users.
