The continuing saga on expired paper takes us to Hungary where Forte paper comes from. The company started in 1922 as part of Kodak and was later bought out. It declared bankruptcy in 2007. Adox seems to have saved some of the equipment and has a
PolyWarmtone appeal to generate enough interest to resurrect the Polywarmtone paper.
The paper I bought came from Latvia. Research in forums indicates it was much loved in its heyday and lith'ed well. It was also noted as being very slow to develop which I was to discover. The listing said 1980's. The package indicates medium contrast, glossy, white, and thin.
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| Packaging Details |
I started as usual with a test strip at f11 on the enlarger using what has turned into my standard test negative from a Santa Fe railway locomotive wheel truck.
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| f11 test strip |
The paper was developed as follows...
2 minute Ilford Universal PQ (1+9)
20 seconds stop
2 minute Ilford Rapid Fix (1+9)
10 minute wash
The first thing I notice is the small white margin on the right is actually gray. This is exactly what I saw with the
Argenta paper. In the past I took this to be the result of the age of the paper. Clearly it makes for a cold low contrast image. I judged a good print at 16" as below...
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| Bromofort f11 16 sec |
A little light for my taste so half a stop more exposure...
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| Bromofort f11 23 sec |
The contrast isn't too bad but the white paper being gray is disappointing.
Lith Test
Next I wanted to test if the paper responded well to Lith developer. I used the Moersch EasyLith A+B developer. This time I mixed a batch to 1+15. I exposed the paper +3 stops (2 minutes). I developed it and waited for the 'snatch time'. I had to wait 25 minutes! The result was amazing though. The white paper came out whiter. So clearly the developer is the problem with these old papers. The tone is much warmer as I have come to expect.
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| Bromofort f11 120 sec exp 25 min dev Moersch EasyLith |
Next I experimented with how to reduce the development time. I tried two things. More exposure and higher developer temperature. First I printed at f8 and f5.6 at 2 minutes exposure with room temperature developer. This helped only marginally which is what I expected. I pulled both prints too early however so the time are actually longer for an equivalent print.
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| Bromofort f8 120 sec exp 19 min dev Moersch EasyLith |
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| Bromofort f5.6 120 sec exp 19 min dev Moersch EasyLith |
Next was to raised the developer temperature. I placed the developer tray in a hot water bath and waited for the temperature to stabilize. It ended up at 42 degrees C.
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| Bromofort f5.6 120 sec exp 4 min 43 sec dev 42 deg C temp Moersch EasyLith |
This was much faster and I got a satisfactory print from it. Going back to the original discovery that the Lith developer yielded a whiter border I went back to the Argenta paper to see if EasyLith could rescue it. It is clearly fast to develop as the snatch time was just 2 seconds in this case at 42 degrees C. Clearly higher temp is not needed for this paper. It also yielded a very high contrast image.
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| Argenta f5.6 120 sec exp 2 min dev 42 deg C temp Moersch EasyLith |
Compare this to the Universal PQ print on the same paper...
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| Argenta developed using Ilford Universal PQ developer |
Next I may try and measure the contrast differences.
Addendum: Toning:
I took one sample each from the above (Universal PG developer and EasyLith Developer) to test strong selenium toning. The toning was 1+3 concentration (Ilford) at 10 minutes. The result for Universal PQ was the color moved from neutral gray to a pinkish color which warmed the image considerably. For the EasyLith developer image noticeably was lighter and warmer still verging on orange. The comparisons are below. These are before after of the same print.
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| Universal PQ Developer toning comparison. Top photo toned 1+3 at 10 minutes. |
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| Moersch EasyLith Developer toning comparison. Top photo toned 1+3 at 10 minutes. |
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