Kentone

[Toffle]

I was cleaning out the old (old) darkroom at my school the other day and found a pack of Kentmere Kentone Blue 16x20 paper. I have no experience with this paper whatsoever so I have no idea what to expect. Inspected under a safelight, it looks very dark blue. For a normal paper I would take this to mean that it had been fogged, but with a coated paper like this, I don't know for certain.

Can anyone give me any pointers on using this paper? I might cut some down to a more manageable size and try some things, but as I'm in the middle of a Caffenol project, I think it might have to wait a bit.

Cheers,

 

[Toffle]

I finally got around to trying this paper. Much as I expected, there is considerable fog, and normally I would just chuck it, but the effect is really quite interesting... almost like that Prussian Blue of cyanotypes. I tried some Farmers Reducer on it, adding about a stop of brightness/contrast.

I'd like to be able to bleach/reduce the fog of this paper if possible while still achieving some acceptable level of "blacks". Any suggestions? By the way, I'm contact printing 4x5... (dreaming of the day I have a suitable enlarger)

(hm... just spent about a half hour trying to link my image to appear in the post... argh!)

Cheers,

 

[mike c]

Have you tried any KBr in the developer.

 

[Mark Fisher]

If you lith print at all, I'd give that a try. Fogging seems to matter less when printing as lith. I think it is because you need so much exposure to make lith printing work that the relative fog exposure is much smaller than the print exposure (?).

 

[Toffle]

Have you tried any KBr in the developer.

I suppose I should have mentioned what it is I'm printing with... I'm using the last of an old bottle of Agfa MC developer. I could easily add some KBr... (It's sitting right on my darkroom table beside my other chems... you think I would have thought of that" :rolleyes: )

Cheers,