Paper with higest Contrast

[mvjim]

A general question. Which printing paper do you believe can give the highest contrast. (Brightest whites and deepest blacks)?

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Probably Galerie. I did a test a few years ago of a range of the premium graded papers, and Galerie definitely had the whitest base, and I generally think of Galerie as a paper that can produce very solid blacks.

 

[John Simmons]

First, I have tried practically every paper out there VC and Graded. Ilford Warmtone Glossy does not have the whitest base, which does belong to ilford galerie, but the warmtone glossy does have the deepest blacks I have measured giving the apperance of high contrast. It also has a noticable edge in microcontrast against the others I have tried, again IMO. The devloper I use is ilford coldtone.

Regards,
John

 

[fhovie]

AZO in Amidol .... Oh yea .... can't get it anymore .... Just thinking of it because I spent the weekend reducing the worlds supply of remaining AZO by 17 sheets. Very nice!

 

[Roger Hicks]

A general question. Which printing paper do you believe can give the highest contrast. (Brightest whites and deepest blacks)?

At the risk of appearing pedantic, I'd suggest that a better way of phrasing this is 'which paper gives the highest Dmax?' because then you can't confuse it with e.g. grade 5 graded vs. VC. Nor can you confuse 'brightest white' with optical whiteners. Dmax, after all, starts out with the cleanest white the paper can manage and expresses the deepest black as a function of this, e.g. a Dmax of 2.0 means that the deepest blacks reflect 1/100 of the light of the brightest white.

Few papers greatly exceed a Dmax of 2.2 but I seem to recall that some contact and printing-out papers exceed 2.4. The slower the paper, the smaller the grain size and the higher the Dmax, as a generalization.

I've seen MG WT exceed 2.2 in the right developer, but with all due respect, I don't think it's an outstandingly meaningful question because I've also seen prints with a far smaller brightness range that give the impression of more luminous whites and deeper blacks, e.g. platinum prints. If the Dmax attainable is below 2.0 in a developing-out paper, though, I'd suggest it will often look flat and dull.

Then there's the question of separation of both light and dark tones: the whitest white and the blackest black are worthless if the tonality in between is no good.

Finally, I'd add that an immense amount depends on framing, lighting and (above all) composition.

Cheers,

R.

 

[percepts]

and another thing...

depending on the print surface, there will be a lot of scattering of light so what you see as opposed to what a densitometer sees can be very different.
For example I tested some Ilford gallerie which was over exposed and selenium toned. Then I measured with densitometer and the blacks were 2.4 relative to the whites. But hanging it on wall in normal room lighting and measuring the contrast range with a spot meter from a normal viewing distance, I only got 1.5 range.

Now if you did the same test with a high gloss RC paper you may get similar densitometer readings but the spot meter test would give you greater range when it was hung on a wall because a high gloss surface doesn't scatter nearly as much light.

 

[Keith Tapscott.]

A general question. Which printing paper do you believe can give the highest contrast. (Brightest whites and deepest blacks)?

Probably Ilford Ilfospeed grade #5 Glossy resin coated paper. The choice of paper developer may make a difference too as well as the way that RC paper is dried.