Old Paper

I lust after that Velour Black

Well I finally got into the darkroom after 3 weeks of illness. I tested the papers for fog. I was surprized at the results. Most of the enlarging papers were not fogged. I developed in Agfa Nuetol 1:9 for 1 min.

Enlarging Papers
Medalist - No fog
Cykora - No fog
Velour - No fog
Halid - No fog

Contact Papers
Some Felix - No fog

The slightly fogged papers
Clhoride
Kodak Bromide
Some Felix

50mal of a 1% benzotiazole sol. removed all traces of fog, from all papers. (36oz of developer)

The Clhoride paper has the feel and look of Azo paper. I will work with it this weekend to see if the print looks close.
The Halid is a folding paper, made to put creases in without damage to emulsion. It worked well I double folded it without damage.

The woman I bought this from called yesterday to see if I would take the rest of the paper, for shipping cost. Mostly Kodak Bromide, after last nights experience I said sure. I probaly will not have to bid on ebay for old paper for a while.

opal

When I was shooting for money, in the 1950's, Opal G was king. I still have some bride's pix that are holding up nicely and I often lament the lack of a duplicate these days.

The vivitar or whatever designation is unknown to me.

good luck

Herb

When working with the paper this weekend I found the Chloride paper is warmer the modern Azo. Also a different paper shinny back instead of flat. It took sepia toning completely different then modern Azo. It was a real golden brown as opposed to the reddish brown I got from Azo. Does anyone have an Idea what other paper it might be? It does not look like Velox either. All it says is Chloride on the box.

By the way in my last post, Felix is supposed to be Velox. Don't ask me what happened.

Velox with a sepia tone look almost red.

Old Paper revisited

It been a long time since posting, but I've got new information on working with old paper.

Most of the paper that I have older then the seventies is fogged, when developed in developers with no anti fogging agent. Some need more then 50ml per liter to get a print with outfog and then the time in the soup had to be less then 1 min.

The contrast suffered a bit. I also found out that there are no brighteners in the paper, so some of the contrast may be because of different standards.

In other discussions on this subject I mentioned Chlorohydroquinone as a warm tone developer. It took me a while to acquire some, or for that matter any available. Then Acros wouldn't sell to a residential customer. I finely acquired 100g to try out. It isn't cheap with shipping charges it came to ~$1.47 a gram. When I mixed up the formula I was disappointed to find that the tones weren't as promised on modern paper.

I figured that it was a expensive lesson. I had read some where that Chlorohydroquinone was inherently an antifog developer, so I thought I would throw a few of the pieces of the old paper in. To my shock the paper would not fog even after 6 minutes. I then preceded to print a few and found that the contrast was closer to what I expected. Some of the old paper I was going to toss because everything I tried before didn't work at all. But so far has not been the case with this one. I was so exited I bought the last 300gr Acros had. Fortunately a local chemical company was willing to order it for me, this time the shipping was alot less and it only cost ~$.75 a gram. Well worth it when I look at the possibility of saving all this old paper.

I tried adding some other chemical to speed up the processing without fogging, so far nothing has worked.

Here is the formula

Defender 58-D from the 1949 version of "Photo Lab Index"

Water 750ml
Sodium Sulfite 16gr
Chlorohydroquinone 4gr
Sodium Carbonate 16gr
Water to make 1L

Mix 1:1 Develope at least 4 mins. Expose 2 times longer then usual.

If there are suggestions on getting the time down, or even getting a colder look I would appreciate them. The tone on the older papers is quite nice. Unfortunately I do not have a scanner that works to get the prints to show you. Hopefully i can soon.

According to Richard Benson, Kodak Illustrators' Special was Paul Strand's favorite paper. He toned it always with Nelson Gold Toner, which has a very similar action as Selenium, but not quite! The he used to varnish (!) his prints...

There was an eBay seller not too long ago selling a lot of old Defender. I bought a number of packages from in various grades...some Apex, Velour, and Warmtone DS. None of the bad packages had base fox but those old paper envelopes crack...they instantly turned black in developer. All except for one, that is. Velour T-3. Prints BEAUTIFULLY with hardly any fog in plain old Dektol. So I concluded that shelf-life was not the issue, at least not with me.

It would be interesting to know which paper Richard Benson would use if he had to print Paul Strand's negatives today: the late Forte PW17, the Fomatone MG 132, both semi-matte and ivory based?

Just marking the Defender 58-D formula for future reference.

Bump for a friend