Forte shows signs of life in the USA...

[aldevo]

Calumet Photo's website in the USA is now showing that it expects stock of various Forte paper products to arrive from between the first and last weeks of April.

That's a good sign. I'm also encouraged by the fact that Calumet is choosing to stock both Polywarmtone and, now, Polygrade paper products. In the recent past, Calumet only stocked the Polywarmtone paper.

I wonder who the new US distributor might be? Omega-Satter continues to deny they know anything about Forte's future in the USA.

 

[Dean Williams]

John at JandC would probably know. He just got a new shipment of the JandC Classic films. They're made on the Forte line.

 

[Zathras]

What about graded Forte Papers?

I'm glad to see that Forte is showing signs of life again. Does anybody know if Forte still makes Bromofort or Fortezo? I used to love Bromofort when I used a cold light head on my D-2. I finally gave up on trying to make VC paper work with the cold light and went back to condensers. ( I'd get a Chromega head, but I have a huge credit card debt that does not leave me with a whole lot of diposable income at the moment.).

Mike Sullivan

 

[jandc]

Calumet Photo's website in the USA is now showing that it expects stock of various Forte paper products to arrive from between the first and last weeks of April.

That's a good sign. I'm also encouraged by the fact that Calumet is choosing to stock both Polywarmtone and, now, Polygrade paper products. In the recent past, Calumet only stocked the Polywarmtone paper.

I wonder who the new US distributor might be? Omega-Satter continues to deny they know anything about Forte's future in the USA.

I would assume they are buying from Forte directly but you would have to ask them.

We have already received Polywarmtone triple weight PW-14 from Forte in 8x10, 11x14 and 12x16 sizes, Polygrade is on it's way as well as more Museum paper (Fortezzo heavy weight).

 

[photomc]

This IS good news, had just started working with Polygrade and liked the 'look' of the paper very much. Plus with a warmtone developer and KRST it gives a very nice brown tone, much more to what I have wanted when using Viradon.

 

[L Gebhardt]

So is the JandC Polywarmtone the same as Forte Polywarmtone Plus?

 

[Jeremy]

So is the JandC Polywarmtone the same as Forte Polywarmtone Plus?

Yes.

 

[ronlamarsh]

Forte VC

I'm glad to see that Forte is showing signs of life again. Does anybody know if Forte still makes Bromofort or Fortezo? I used to love Bromofort when I used a cold light head on my D-2. I finally gave up on trying to make VC paper work with the cold light and went back to condensers. ( I'd get a Chromega head, but I have a huge credit card debt that does not leave me with a whole lot of diposable income at the moment.).

Mike Sullivan

I used to think it was my coldlight also but afteer reviewing a number of different texts, notably Steve Anchell's book on VC printing, and looking at his test data in the back I came to the conclusion that the Forte VC papers just don't have the range of other VC products. His tests on polygrade and polywarmtone WITH an omega condenser enalrger, kodak, ilford, and catchet filters show the aforementioned papers have a compressed range even with a tungsten lightsource. All ranges were skewed toward the softend with a grade 3 being maximum contrast. I have used polygrade 5 with a V54 coldlight and polymax filters and gotten basically the same results. I agree the Bromofort is an outstanding paper I used to use grade 3 for all my printing. I am thinking of switching to Ilford MGIV or trying the new Adox Vario G.