Toning budget RC papers: Inkpress MultiTone vs Arista/Foma Fomaspeed

[dcy]

EDIT: Apparently for some viewers the images are all on one row. I have re-labeled them so they can be identified.

I have been experimenting with sepia and selenium toning with the cheapest RC papers in the market and I wanted to share my impressions:

(1) Inkpress MultiTone responds A LOT more strongly to sepia toning than Arista / Foma.

I don't know if Arista paper is merely a rebrand of Fomaspeed, but it's made by Foma, so it should at least be "similar". In the images below, the left column (railway sign) are Inkpress MultiTone RC Pearl while the right column (building) are Arista EDU Ultra RC Semi-Matte. The top row are split-tones with sepia and selenium.

I don't know if my cellphone photos convey the difference, but in person it's unmistakable. MultiTone responds immediately to sepia and quickly acquires a strong sepia tone, whereas for Arista/Foma, I fought and fought and fought and could not get it to actually look sepia. I left the print in the bleach until both the highlights and midtones were gone and the shadows starting to disappear too, and yet when they came back in the sepia bath they just look "meh".

(2) Neither paper responds well to selenium toning.

The bottom row is selenium. If you hold a toned and untoned print side by side and squint really hard you can detect an increase in Dmax and a slight shift in tone. It is easier to see with the Arista/Foma paper, but the difference is small enough that I'm not sure whether it's the paper or whether the photo with the building is just better suited for selenium, or whether my mind is interpreting the darker sky as "more selenium".


I definitely want to try toning with better paper. When my current stack of RC paper starts to run low, I'm planning to order (a) Ilford RC Cooltone and (b) some FB paper to try.


Honestly, I'm quite disappointed with Arista/Foma RC paper. It costs twice as much as MultiTone, yet performs much worse with sepia, is not clearly better for selenium, and in another recent thread we found that it falls apart a lot more easily when confronted with a poor developer.


As a side-note, I think the photos on the right are sharper. I hope they are. They were taken with a better camera (Pentax 17 vs Olympus PEN) with a sharp lens and modern coatings and more precise focus, and were enlarged with a better lens (Nikkor vs Spiratone). Recently there was a forum discussion about why the pictures on the left appear a bit soft. Some of the proposed culprits were the camera lens and the enlarger lens.


Left: Inkpress MultiTone RC Pearl
Right: RC Semi-Matte
Top: Split Tone (Sepia + Selenium)
Bottom: Selenium Tone

Inkpress MultiTone + Split Tone

Arista (Foma) + Split Tone

Inkpress MultiTone + Selenium Tone

Arista (Foma) + Selenium Tone

 

[koraks]

The bottom row is selenium.

They're all on one row for me. How can we identify which image is which print?

I disagree that fomaspeed doesn't respond well to selenium toning. For me, it gives a distinct boost in shadow density and shifts the tone a bit towards neutral. I find that subtle selenium toning improves the print significantly, on the whole. In some cases, the eggplant hue of deeper selenium toning I personally also find attractive, but many people dislike the magenta coloration. You toned these pretty far, it seems. Again, I quite like that hue, but it's not everyone's taste.

None of your prints show a good dmax, however. The blacks are all pretty weak.

 

[dcy]

They're all on one row for me. How can we identify which image is which print?

Oops.

I have now put each print on its own row with a proper label.

In some cases, the eggplant hue of deeper selenium toning I personally also find attractive, but many people dislike the magenta coloration.

I've seen a couple of examples of the eggplant hue and I thought they looked nice. I haven't seen that color in my own prints yet.

None of your prints show a good dmax, however. The blacks are all pretty weak.

I was thinking the same thing. I wasn't 100% sure because I don't have a reference point, but I've been struggling with Dmax. My current best guess is bad developer. Next time I print I'm going to use the Ilford multigrade developer I just bought. Comparing the results with a freshly bought good quality developer will allow me to either confirm it's the developer or rule out that option.

 

[koraks]

Yeah, tired/too dilute developer or too brief a developing time are the likely culprits. The papers will respond differently (and generally less strongly) to toning if you develop them out further. You end up with bigger silver particles that are less receptive to toning. The effect will be subtle and/or you may have to bleach or tone more strongly (longer, less dilute) to get a similar result, and even then, it won't be quite the same.