Life of b&w papers?

"vintage" papers are great for lumen prints, retina prints, and paper negatives ..
have fun !
john

Here's a snap of the papers...the bottom 2 Ilford I already had...
Doing more tests but so far the 2 kodak papers, Bresko and Bromide are good, the Ilforbrom is fogged.

The absolute WORST offender in this panoply is Kodak Panalure (for B&W prints from color negatives), long discontinued but relevant to the discussion. Perfect one year and was heavily fogged the next. - David Lyga

i don't have much paper younger than four years!

I'm hoping this box of Ilford paper (batch no 254XS) may still yield a few prints from a camera of similar vintage (& format)

Ian

Dear Ian,

The question is do you have a gaslight with which to expose it?

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

Bit of a spooky co-incidence this as I have today been looking at original paper labels of several dozen paper types that have been found in a store cupboard in our marketing department that were removed from the old RAJAR Photo works at the top of the Mobberley site. I have a virtually identical label in mint condition ( never seen the light of day for decades ) except it says Gaslight Postcards.

I am going to have them all scanned and put on the website, the old Rajar ones are very interesting including Rajina brand.....and one I had not heard before ILFORD Valora paper.

Simon, does Ilford have an archive of it's historical artefacts etc. The period between WWI & WWII saw the almagamation of many companies Rajar, Paget, Marion etc to form APEM/APM which along with Illingworths etc later merged with Ilford.

Ian

We have lots and lots of interesting 'stuff' but the full proper archives went to The National Museum Of Film and TV in Bradford when we moved up from the factories in the South, I think KODAK in Harrow also sent archive material to Bradford.

Regards

Simon. ILFORD photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

For paper that tends to fog, you can always try adding benzatriazole to the developer--it's a restrainer (anti-fog) agent. A 0.2% solution is typically used, and you add, by experimentation, until the fog is controlled.

Voceumana