Oriental G Discontinued per Freestyle

[Roger Cole]

What is "PE" paper? Polyethelene coated, aka RC?

I've been experimenting with Arista Private Reserve, aka Adox MCP 310 and 312, in both glossy and pearl respectively, myself. It is a very nice paper. I'm not sold yet on it versus Ilford MGIV RC. I need to work on these some more. I dislike RC glossy except for contacts where the smoothness helps with showing all detail possible under a loupe, but the Ilford Pearl and Adox/Arista 312 are very nice surfaces, not too much hit to d-max relative to the glossy and they look quite a bit like FB glossy-dried-matte.

 

[Richard Jepsen]

Rodger,

Yes, PE is Polyethelene or RC. You discovered 312 Semi-Matte/Pearl. ADOX 312 Pearl has a high surface gloss. Using a color head, 312's light surface texture hids -135 Tri-X grain on 11x14s. The D-max is slightly less. The white base helps prints project through glass. I was always a fiber guy but for wall mounts I am getting converted to ADOX 312 pearl.

 

[Roger Cole]

It's a nice paper. I like the surface. I've always preferred the pearl types in RC; the glossies are too shiny for B&W for my tastes and the totally matte ones suffer too much from poor d-max (though not as bad as the original Kodak N surface, which was truly horrid back in the early days of RC.)

OTOH, this is the only neutral toned paper that I've seen that I think I prefer untoned to lightly selenium toned. Instead of cooling slightly and getting richer, like even MGIV does, it just gets a bit darker and warmer or at least it looks that way to me.