Quote Originally Posted by Steve Sherman View Post
Hi John, I'm not surprised by the Forte paper still being good. My experience over the years tell me that papers with a pure Bromide emulsion do not age well, papers with a combination of Chloride and Bromide, aka Chlorobromide emulsion papers will age much better, they do tend to loose some warmth and a bit of contrast for papers more than 15 years. I have a stock of Portriga Rapid from the mid 60's that still produces wonderful prints with no restraining agent in the developer. In fact I have a box of Azo, a pure Chloride paper with an expiration date of 1952 still in great shape.

One other note, the Benzotriozole will restrain highlights but shift the image color to a cooler tone, Potassium Bromide can be added to restrain also, not quite as powerful as benzotriozole but nevertheless a restrainer, careful not to over do it as the color shifts to an annoying greenish case that sometimes can be negated by the final selenium toning process. As Ed indicated severe shorting of development time can accomplish similar with added warmth being one side effect and as Ed indicated much harder to target correct printing times.

Cheers
I have found very different results. The Forte paper I have develops a medium grey straight out of the package, even at only ten years old. I have 25 year old Agfa Brovira that remains pure white. My Oriental seagull 10 - 20 years old always has a slight grey tinge but is useable, especially with Benzo. Old Galerie always seems to have a greyness. I had thought that both Brovira and Seagull were bromide papers. The biggest disappointment was the Forte Eleganz, which had been none of my favorite papers. I do have some Azo and Velox that expired in the very early 50's that I still print from and I think those are both silver chloride.