A friend came over tthe other night to use my darkroom for proofs. She brought along an old box (unopened) of 11x14 "Kodak Professional Contact Paper." It is single weight, resin coated and seems to be about a grade 2. She started printing with my enlarger and I went in the house for dinner. When I came back out, she was looking a bit "determined" because time was up to 60 seconds in full room lighting and still having faint prints.
I set up my contact printing lamp and did a test print with 15, 30, 45 and 60 seconds. BINGO! 30 seconds was correct so we printed and the first one came out with a slight greenish hue (dektol 2:1). Did 4:00 in selenium (at 1:9) and got a sepia brownish-red. Backed it down to 1:00 and it is about right. This stuff acts very much like azo, but there is no description on the box about it, no grade, nothing about its makeup other than "high contrast". After looking at the prints a day later, they do seem to dry down a bit, unlike azo which holds its image better during dry down very well.
So, the million dollar question is, what is this stuff? Although the box is old (yellow), it prints perfectly. Could this be an older version of RC azo? There is a piece of tape which has the year 1988 written on it in pencil. This could be the date it was bought or simply the year it was found, we don't know at this point what the paper is. Anyone familiar with this product?
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