Kodak cantact paper

[Tim Curry]

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?

[Daniel Blakeslee]

Tim

Azo RC really does exist and is available in Mexico. Kodak won't ship it to the USA. There is a current thread on this very paper on the contact printing forum of the APUG group (apug.org).

[Tim Curry]

Daniel,

Thanks for the information. I had posted to that thread, but didn't get an answer. I'm wondering if someone has used this product and if they know which type of paper it is.

[Mark Sampson]

The oldest Kodak Darkroom Dataguide I have at work is from 1979 and doesn't list this paper. At home I have older ones, I'll look there and see what they say.

[Bill_1856]

Could be "Proofing" paper. You contact print the client's prints, wash and dry them in the dark but don't fix them, so they can pick the images they want printed and the proofs quickly fade away so the client can't use them.

[jnantz]

tim -

i think bill has the right idea. there used to be quite a few proofing papers in the day. they print well with a fluorescent lightsource. one of the few i remember from what i worked for an olde tyme portraitist was GAF proofing paper.

it was good enough to give the client an idea of what the views looked like, but they didn't last too long :)

- john

[kthompson]

the kodak paper was called Studio Proof...think it was discontinued in the late 80s.

[Tim Curry]

It sounds like this may be the idea, a proofing paper which would fade after a short time. The prints were fixed (TF4), so perhaps they will last a bit longer this way. Will see how they age in the next few weeks and report back.

Many thanks for the answers. Still open to suggestions or ideas on this one. Strange that it took as much light as it did for exposure. We really had to blast it to get a decent print. Any further ideas are appreciated.

P.S. Sorry about my spelling of "cantact" on this post. I guess typing at 5:00 am is not the best time for me.

[kthompson]

If it is Studio Proof--then this may help explain things a bit:

http://www.albumenworks.com/printing-out-paper.html

[Tim Curry]

K.

I looked at C.A.W.'s site for their P.O.P. and I'm not sure it's that type of paper. The latent image does develop properly, so I had ruled out P.O.P. but perhaps I was hasty. About the only thing we didn't try was printing in full sunlight. This may get done this weekend if Ria gets her dander up again. I'll mention it to her. Keep those suggestions coming.

[kthompson]

Tim, I found an old Kodak product manual last night--from the mid 70s. They listed about a half dozen or more contact papers and some were RC. One was called Resisto or something like that. I don't have it in front of me now, but I'll see if I can dig it out later on.

[Ron Mc]

Tim

Your description of this sounds like a an old graphic arts product. Its designed to take litho negs and make B/W prints for either proofing ads or reproduction. In the 80s these products came both as safelight speed as well as filtered room like speed.

Ron Mc (worked in printing since the late 70s)

[Tim Curry]

Ron,

Thanks for your input. Since I'm new to darkroom work, this has been a bit of a problem to figure out. Being able to work in relatively bright room light would be an advantage, with printing times as I've indicated it sounds as if the paper may have been intended for use with lith films. The "high contrast" of the paper could be one indicator. I appreciate the opinions from everyone. The images seem to be holding well still.