Ilford warmtone and long exposure times

technopoptart · Mar 16, 2007

What is up with the longer exposure times for warm tone paper?

I added 100 sec and it made no difference, it was just like enlarging it to 11x14, at a certian point it seemed to just stop exposing.

Now this picture did have a bit of snow in it, but even with portraits i have noticed that warm tone takes a lot longer exposure times.

JLP · Mar 16, 2007

That is not my experience and i use it quite often. What developer are you using? Could it be expired or exhausted?

jan

Dan Henderson · Mar 16, 2007

I also use MGIV and MGWT alot, and don't notice the warm tone being much slower. Certainly less than a stop.

Bruce Osgood · Mar 16, 2007

I suspect the problem is in your developer. Perhaps it is not 'fresh'.

Bob F. · Mar 16, 2007

Warmtone fiber is about a stop slower than standard MGIV-FB (P100 Vs P200 at G2, but that will presumably vary in different developers).

Make sure you are developing for long enough: despite what Ilford's datasheet suggests, I find that Warmtone requires about 1/3rd to 1/2 more development time too: typically 3 minutes or more. Old paper might be another possibility.

Good luck, Bob.

Tony Egan · Mar 17, 2007

I am currently using 2 papers. Ilford Warmtone and my stockpiled Agfa MCC. Warmtone requires 1 to 2 stops more exposure or 2 to 2 1/2 the time of the Agfa. It's not uncommon for me to expose for 80-100 seconds on negatives which need 30 seconds or so with the Agfa. I'm not a technical expert but someone once told me WT has "twice the silver" of most other papers. That's the extent of my knowledge but your experience squares with mine. Not any easy paper to use with a dense negative.

Roger Hicks · Mar 17, 2007

Tony Egan said:
I'm not a technical expert but someone once told me WT has "twice the silver" of most other papers.

Nor was the person who told you that!

Warm tones are normally produced with smaller grains. Smaller grains = slower paper, just as with film.

There are other ways to achieve warm tones, some now illegal, but this is definitely one explanation.

We use WT all the time, and almost all of the more recent B+W pics on www.rogerandfrances.com are on MG WT. Wonderful stuff! But, as everyone says, SLOW.

Cheers,

R.

David Brown · Mar 17, 2007

FirePhoto said:
I also use MGIV and MGWT alot, and don't notice the warm tone being much slower. Certainly less than a stop.

3/4 of a stop for me in Dektol.

Andrew Moxom · Apr 11, 2007

I noticed the same phenomenon as Tony. I have some treasured Agfa MC111 that I am freezing for use on rare occaisons, and I am in the process of trying some alternatives. Ilford WT FB had me pulling my hair out with double the amount of exposure required than the Agfa MCC111, sometime more. I was using Agfa Neutol WA diluted 1:7. The only benefit IC an see is that it allows me to use the middle apertures on my enlarger lens rather than stopping down too much, and still have decent exposure times.
Once I had figured out the differences, the additional exposure time was not too much of a problem. In actual fact, the results were not too disimilar to MCC111 so far so good.

Ilford warmtone and long exposure times

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