I have never made a contact print before, but I have decided to start doing so now that I'm shooting 8 by 10. I've done traditional darkroom printing with my medium format and 4 by 5, but I am very excited at the prospect of just slapping down a negative on a piece of paper and making a print that way (well, technically I just spent way too much money on a nice contact printing frame, so I will be using the frame.)

My question is, what is your favorite contact printing paper for 8x10?

I have read some forums and there are some people that swear by the now-discontinued to Kodak AZO paper, and I even called up a guy that apparently has a huge stockpile of it and we chatted for a long time and he said he would sell me some, so I sent him an email but I never heard back.

So I would appreciate recommendations on what paper to buy, and also what bulb to buy. It's been explained to me that if I use my enlarger to try and do contact prints, I will get very long exposure times (because of how slow the contact printing paper is compared to normal silver gelatin paper) so it's been suggested to use a 250 watt bulb. I have some 250 watt tungsten bulbs laying around, so I could just use those if I don't need to diffuse it in any way to make the light falloff as even as possible.

Thanks!