Kentmere Kentona toning characteristics

I'm interested in others experience of developing and toning Kentona:

I've just started printing on Kentmere Kentona, with and without selenium toning. In a relatively cold tone developer such as Agfa 115 the paper gives a hint of "towards warm" rich blacks, however when prints are selenium toned the tendency is towards a hot chocolate brown which seems to occur rapidly with less of a increased D-max dominant phase.

Initial impressions also seem to indicate a greater brown tone if at least partially developed in a soft working developer such as ID-3 but I suspect time spent in the selenium toner bath may have a greater effect. Perhaps one way to reduce the chocolate tone is to decrease concentration of the selenium toner; currently Fotospeed SLT20 1+9 @ approx. 20ºC



Tom.

I don't have that much experience with this paper, only about 100 sheets. I used it with Ansco 130 and lith developers, and I loved it in both, but I'm not good enough with my exposures (roll film) to live with only one contrast grade.
Nice creamy, and warm tones, turned almost a hint of earth green/brown in Ansco 130, especially diluted to 1+3 or so. Nice blacks, gorgeous understated highlights.
Toning - I only ever tried it with Kodak Rapid Selenium Toner, at 1+9. I got almost a maroon tone with it after using the 130. I did get a bit more impact in the black, but as you say, not very pronounced.
With lith printing I haven't tried toning (I actually had problems with banding on the paper so I gave it up), but the tones were great. A very beautiful but vague pink coloration in the highlights, with brown/grey tones down the scale. Very nice grain. Sometimes it would turn green on me and lose the highlight color, mainly during long exposures. During short exposures and long development times the color came back and the green gradually disappeared with shortened exposure.

- Thomas

Thomas,

I have been using Fomatone paper for my lith printing experiments but I actually bought the Kentona paper to try with lith printing; although I've not tried lith printing with the Kentona paper yet. Perhaps I should attempt to tone Kentona in another toner, such as Agfa Viradon.

At some point I'll compare the Fomatone and Kentona papers processed in Fotospeed LD20.

Tom.