RC/FB printing paper concern

Hi everyone!

I'll just let people in one what I do.
I'm a college student in my second semester-long black and white darkroom class. In the first class we used RC paper and in this class we are to use FB paper. I've been using what I believe is Ilford's MG IV. I use Pearl for RC and Glossy for FB because matte in the FB just looks like an image on a piece of computer paper to me. I've also just gotten into using different developers for film.

Here's my question. I've been using FB since early January and have gotten maybe 5 final prints that I like. Most of the time when I use FB I am unsatisfied because the photos look somewhat muddy as compared to how I print on RC. No matter what I do with contrast and printing times, it always seems muddy, but muddy doesn't mean out of focus. I've tried a lot of different test strips at different locations but it's not really helping. I know that my exposure is good because my exposure is always great when I shoot slide film.

Is there something else I should know about the glossy fiber paper as compared to the pearl RC? Like maybe contrast is higher on one that the other or anything like that? Or possibly a good way to become more familiar with the properties of the paper?

Is there another glossy fiber paper (or matte that doesn't look flat and boring) that is better than Ilford's?

Thanks!!

Are you compensating for drydown factor?
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

are you developing the paper to completion? RC paper seems to develop in 1 minute for me. But I develop fiber paper for 2 minutes.

It takes practice... but the above suggestions are good places to start. Most importantly, though, is making good negatives. It would be worthwhile to run some exposure/development tests on your film. Very subtle differences in the negatives can make printing in the darkroom much easier. (Also, it sounds like you have some rebranded paper... make sure it's fresh. Old paper that hasn't been stored right can fog with resulting grey flat prints)

Good luck

Hi Andrew

A mistake I made when I just recently changed from RC to fibre is comparing the two prints made from the same negative, the new fibre and the original RC.

Just continue to make prints from new negs on fibre paper and eventually the beauty will shine through, I promise you.

I've never been able to quite put it in to words, but to me, with Fibre, the paper becomes the image, both image and paper becoming one. With RC, it always seemed to be an image sitting on a bit of plastic, a temporary home.

(please, no fb/rc war of words,I apologise to all rc users)

As the Guys have said, work on that dry down.

Stoo

It takes awhile to "lock-in" on what a particular paper can and can't do. As said, play around with the dry-down and also adjust your contrast filtration, assuming this is VC paper. If you're using graded paper, you'll have to adjust the dilution of the dev or go to something like the Beer's formula or a dev and water bath combo.

Sometimes a particular paper just doesn't "float your boat". I had awful luck with a certain kind of Luminos paper a few years back; I just couldn't get it to look good, but I quite like other papers from Luminos, now Kentmere. Learn what you can from this paper and maybe try another or perhaps the same brand but different finish. Finish can have a lot to do with how an image looks.

Hang in there, FB can look stunning.

The one thing that people new to printing do most often is to pull prints too soon. When printing note the time that it takes for the print to look done and continue to develop for a time equal to the noted time. In other words 2X what you would think right. Print development goes to completion and the last portion contributes to print density and contrast. Don't worry about over development it's hard to do.

Unless you dry your FB glossy on a ferrotype plate or dryer you can never get the true gloss look of RC. I like the semi gloss look of FB glossy air dried.

Andrew, when my daughter was an undergraduate student, she ran into the same problem. In her case, she was underexposing the film and over developing. This was the case because she followed the film manufacturer's instructions. So, we did a film speed test and found that she was underexposing a full stop. Also, we found that the manufacturer's development time was about 30% too much. When we resolved this, her prints became absolutely brilliant. You might want to find out if you school has a transmission dentsitometer so that you can perform these tests.

esanford said:

Andrew, when my daughter was an undergraduate student, she ran into the same problem. In her case, she was underexposing the film and over developing. This was the case because she followed the film manufacturer's instructions. So, we did a film speed test and found that she was underexposing a full stop. Also, we found that the manufacturer's development time was about 30% too much. When we resolved this, her prints became absolutely brilliant. You might want to find out if you school has a transmission dentsitometer so that you can perform these tests.

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Underexposing and overdeveloping would increase contrast. Andrew said his prints looked muddy. I would take this to mean not enought contrast.

I think the suggestions above that you are under developing your prints is the most likely cause of your malaise, possibly because you are developing by inspection. Remember that it is difficult to overdevelop prints, whether rc or fibre; check the manufacturers time recommendation and don’t short cut it. The drydown effect slightly darkens prints as they dry so that isn’t your problem.

I may try to scan some prints and put them up someplace else with a link today (it's 1:32 in Indiana USA right now) and I'll try to find some of what I'm talking about. I'll also go back to the darkroom and pick up the prints that I was working on yesterday morning to hopefully show as well.

I'm pretty sure that all of my processing is good, especially yesterday I noticed that since I was the only person in my class to be printing that the image showed up exceptionally early but I knew that it wouldn't do just to pull it out when it looked good. I do admit that I haven't really payed much attention to the drydown since normally I can't really work on my own time plus there's the number of prints we have to get done.

The big problem that I had yesterday was that I contact printed some 120 film and checked it out very closely, and then started making tests to print a specific neg and it just wouldn't come out the way that it did on the RC contact print. granted it's much smaller, but it just wasn't working out. Possibly, some of my prints that look muddy may look alright now, but they weren't matching what I was going for at the time, not just slightly darker. I've got 8 prints due coming up so I'll get some practice in one way or another.

As for film developing, I had been doing the normal ISO100 and developing for however long Kodak said and my RC's came out well, and recently I've been decreasing ISO to something like 64 or 90 or 320 (for 400ISO) and then working from that dev chart times.

Thanks everyone!

Andrew Laverghetta said:

I may try to scan some prints and put them up someplace else with a link today (it's 1:32 in Indiana USA right now) and I'll try to find some of what I'm talking about. I'll also go back to the darkroom and pick up the prints that I was working on yesterday morning to hopefully show as well.

I'm pretty sure that all of my processing is good, especially yesterday I noticed that since I was the only person in my class to be printing that the image showed up exceptionally early but I knew that it wouldn't do just to pull it out when it looked good. I do admit that I haven't really payed much attention to the drydown since normally I can't really work on my own time plus there's the number of prints we have to get done.

The big problem that I had yesterday was that I contact printed some 120 film and checked it out very closely, and then started making tests to print a specific neg and it just wouldn't come out the way that it did on the RC contact print. granted it's much smaller, but it just wasn't working out. Possibly, some of my prints that look muddy may look alright now, but they weren't matching what I was going for at the time, not just slightly darker. I've got 8 prints due coming up so I'll get some practice in one way or another.

As for film developing, I had been doing the normal ISO100 and developing for however long Kodak said and my RC's came out well, and recently I've been decreasing ISO to something like 64 or 90 or 320 (for 400ISO) and then working from that dev chart times.

Thanks everyone!

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You really should do some ISO/development testing. There is always a difference between how the contact prints and the enlargements look. A contact print, since there is no lens to get in the way, does not suffer from the effects of diffraction. A contact print will always have more contrast and sharper detail than an enlargement. Almost anyone here who has been working with black-and-white to any degree of seriousness for any length of time will tell you that the manufactuer's recommendations and their personal film speed/development time are quite different. The manufacturer spec comes from a laboratory test - shooting a photo of a color/density chart, and what time and temperature in what chemistry it takes to render that chart accurately. A lab test doesn't have a 12 stop brightness range, or a 2 stop brightness range either. Here's something to try when you print next- cut your printing time by 5% and 10% on two additional prints of whatever you print. Then develop the prints for a minimum of two minutes. Also, what are you doing for contrast filtering? If you are using Ilford Multigrade IV, a pure white light from the enlarger is likely to give you a flatter, less contrasty print than you want. If your enlarger has a dichroic head, dial in 10cc of Magenta. If it does not, and you use gel filters either above or below the lens, make sure you use the grade 2 filter as a starting point.

If that doesn't do it, I suspect you've got a fogged batch of paper.

By any chance have you done a safelight test?

yeah, it's a huge gang darkroom used for three classes. That's two intermediate classes plus a 4x5 class. We're using what I believe to be Omega variable condenser enlargers and I think the lens is Schneider or something similar 50mm and 80mm. I do both 35mm and 120. I'm quite sure the paper hasn't been or isn't getting fogged by the safelight or any other source. I'm using a box of 100 or so sheets of 8x10 plus I've bought two packs of 11x14 and have used one and a half of those. We're using the contrast filters by the way and with RC, 2 1/2 or 3 would work. How should I determine exposure before I mess with contrast? Should I just use a 2 filter at this point and get a test strip to make a specific spot look as close to how I want it as possible?

By all means... play around with your contrast filters. Sometimes, a good way to decide which filter to use is to cut a sheet in half, and expose one half with a 2 filter, and the other half with 2 1/2 or 3... whatever. Then you won't waste too much paper determining your contrast. You'll have to fine tune the exposures once you determine the best contrast setting.

nyx said:

Are you compensating for drydown factor?
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

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That is the exact problem I have just had. I did my first fb prints last weekend and they looked really nice in the water and the I dried them in a blotter and the whites turned kind of a dishwater gray. I also have a print dryer, which I will try the next time.

g

Andrew Laverghetta said:

I may try to scan some prints and put them up someplace else with a link today

Click to expand...

Good idea.
Andrew, are you happy that you are using the right grade or combination of filters to achieve the grade the image needs ?

Gerald Koch said:

Underexposing and overdeveloping would increase contrast. Andrew said his prints looked muddy. I would take this to mean not enought contrast.

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Good point! However, what I was really getting to (and not stating very clearly) is that printing has to start with a good negative. Too often the colleges focus on printing without helping the students expose and develop film properly....

Did I miss something or has everyone here missed suggesting ferrotyping the glossy prints?

To me, glossy FB prints don't achieve full brilliance until they are ferrotyped, until then the surface is muddy and the image is dull. Drying without ferrotyping is just not the same thing.

Of course, RC does not require ferrotyping nor should you ever use a ferrotype plate with an RC paper.

Since I don't see it mentioned, I assume that these prints have not been ferrotyped, but just air dried. If so, using a ferrotype plate or dryer is the only way to bring up the full brilliance of a glossy FB print.

PE

so how does this ferrotyping work? Problem could be that there isn't this kind of equipment here yet/at the moment, since I'm working in the school's darkroom. Is is a process that I could fund myself or does it cost a fair amount? Everybody here airdries their FB prints and RC prints can be put in the heated print dryer but it says RC only.

I just made a portrait on RC and it looks pretty good. I then did a test or two with FB and then made just one test for the drying process and so far it looks pretty good. Hopefully it dries out well.

Andrew, FB glossy paper is intended to be dried face down on a very highly polished ferrotype plate using a release agent or polish which gives the paper a very high gloss. This is the preferred method for drying glossy FB to achieve the surface and image characteristics of RC glossy.

It was the only method used to dry papers until RC came along. You dried glossy face to the ferrotype plate and matte was dried face away from the plate.

Try a google search. Here is one example:

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/fe/ferrotype+plate.html

PE

I've read this thread with interest; there have been some excellent suggestions! For me the most likely culprits seem to be -

a) Not compensating for drydown
b) An old/incorrectly stored batch of paper
c) Safelight flashing/fogging (see below)

Re c) - I used to attend the local college and work in their shared darkroom. While experimenting I noticed that MGWT showed far better contrast and overall "punch" than MGIV and MGCT. Intrigued, I printed the same image to the very best standard I could achieve on all three papers and took them out for daylight inspection. Everyone agreed that the MGIV and MGCT prints looked okay, but the MGWT print shone by comparison.

This bothered me to the point where I phoned Ilford and asked them about it. After quite a long discussion of the problem with one of their (extremely obliging) technical chaps we realised that the issue was that MGWT is about a stop slower than the other two and so was less sensitive to fogging.

Turns out that the safelights filters in the communal darkroom hadn't been changed in a dog's age and were merrily fogging everyone's papers, reducing print contrast to a fare-thee-well along the way. I did a safelight test (see Tim Rudman's excellent darkroom book) and proved that the papers fogged in about two minutes and flashed in considerably less than that. (The college's response was to make sympathetic tutting noises and take no action. Shortly afterwards I stopped wasting time and money in their darkroom!)

I think it's probably the least likely answer (given there's no real speed difference between the RC and FB variants (correct me if I'm wrong, someone!)), but it's probably worth spending a couple of minutes checking anyway.


Re PE's point on ferrotyping - I haven't tried this myself and have no doubt that PE is correct when he says that it brings up the full brilliance of an FB print. However, I have no trouble in at least matching the contrast characteristics of RC paper with air-dried FB, giving nice bright, clean highlights and deep, rich shadow values. I also note that (like myself) you prefer Pearl RC to Gloss and (I believe) air-dried FB is a closer match to this than ferrotyped FB.


I wish you every success!

All the best,

Frank

I have no doubt that there is probably merit in all of the answers here.

I am just surprised that you all seem to be rather unaware that glossy FB paper is designed to be ferrotyped. It is not inherently glossy like its RC counterpart, but rather is made in such a way that if ferrotyped the full gloss is revealed.

Otherwise it is a semi-gloss or half-matte. In any case, it is not the paper surface intended. And, it seems that the art (or even the need) of ferrotyping has been virtually lost over the years.

Go back to your photo albums and pick out some non-RC glossy prints and compare the gloss on them with your prints. If yours don't match the level of gloss, it is due to the lack of ferrotyping, as all photofinishers ferrotyped prints back in the 'good old days'. The gloss on a ferrotyped FB print should match that of a glossy RC print. The tone quality should be equal to or better on the FB glossy print.

PE

PE
What is the solution for preparing the print to be ferrotyped?
My drum dryer has the polished chrome surface required but I've never tried ferrotyping and do not use glossy papers. But always interested in something old/new again.