Paper update for Pt/Pd

[George Papantoniou]

I have to tell you that I have succeded to make Palladium prints on three kinds of paper that I have never seen mentioned in manuals and notes about the process. They are:

Canson Montval (and montval torchon)
Canson Aquarelle
Whatman

I have used the Palladium solution dear Karl Heinz Kland sent me from Germany and some Ferric Oxalate that I had since 1997 or something. The latter had gone bad but I resurrected it with the help of my fellow APUGgers (and some oxalic acid)...

I have used the Palladium paper with my students and now they are really happy to have 2-3 good prints each to expose in their annual show.

The only problem encountered was that since we had to enlarge their 35mil negs to the desired 8x12 inch size, we used digital means (scanning) and printed them on Duraflex material in a Lambda printer, only to realize that the Duraflex incorporates a UV filter that boosted our exposure time 15X.... it was boring, but it worked in the end... if we knew it would take so much time and effort, we would have enlarged the negs manually on lith film...

 

[Colin Graham]

Thanks for this, always nice to hear about new papers to try out. I believe Canson Aquarelle is the one paper my local art supply store stocks.

 

[George Papantoniou]

Hi Colin,

I only have to tell you that the best results came with the Whatman paper...

The Canson Aquarelle gave nice tonality and gradation, but the max black was not as satisfactory as with the Whatman (the neg was softish, so this could be the reason)...

In fact, I have to remark that now that I've seen the dry prints I am not satisfied at all with the Canson Montval. So, you can remove it from the list I gave (sorry about the mistake)

 

[Loris Medici]

Hi Yorgos,

I have used Canson papers with other iron processes before (Cyanotype & Vandyke) and therefore I'm not surprised they work well with classic DOP Pt/Pd process (which is another iron process). I left Canson papers because they were not providing the smooth surface I need for photographic prints (unfortunately I couldn't manage to find HP Canson papers in Istanbul) despite they are bonmarché and they have good wet strength...

Whatman paper was/is always recommended by Mike Ware for iron processes. And his variants (Argyrotype, POP Pt/Pd and New Cyanotype) are usually more finicky when it comes to paper choice. See:
http://www.mikeware.co.uk/mikeware/preparations.html
(section: "Choice of Paper")
and
http://www.mikeware.co.uk/mikeware/Alternative_Printing.html

I have used Whatman paper with POP Palladium and it gave me good results. But again, the surface is not as smooth as I want it to be (close to satin when it gets wet and dries later). I currently prefer Bergger COT 320 and Crane Weston Diploma Parchment for prints that need fine details.

Regards,
Loris.