Greetings,

I need some recommendations on what’s currently hot and what’s not in b&w printing materials.

May and October are the two months when wives seem to become obsessed with redecorating. Here in Olde New England, their fancy falls to items such as bayberry-scented soap balls for the guest bathroom.

Having, at present, no guests living in our bathroom, we are beginning the re-hab in the living room. All the mature furniture, drapery and wall art have been donated to worthy recipients. Only the mature carpet remains, waiting another four years or so for Chester the mature springer spaniel to die. I’m trying to outlast him, but some days it’s nip and tuck.

In the meantime, as in the old days when a congressman was coming to visit our military base, everything that doesn’t salute gets a new coat of paint.

And the entire “house gallery” gets reprinted.

In the fifteen years since I last had one of these printing frenzies, many materials have disappeared. And as I have mentioned before, my photographic background is much more utilitarian and pedantic. I have little experience in creating masterworks with lots of razzle-dazzle to hang on the wall. Getting enough shadow detail for the lithographer to reproduce on uncoated stock always took priority over winning a blue ribbon for whimsey.

Specifically, I’m wondering about your learned preferences for paper developer, fixer and brown toner.

Ilford has timed their discontinuance of Bromophen perfectly. Apparently the terminally lethargic prefer liquids. I tend to prefer a powder, given what the developer goes through, bouncing for days in the back of an unheated, unrefrigerated UPS truck. It arrives too hot to touch in summer and frozen solid in winter. And heavy jugs of liquid ten to overwhelm the lightweight cartons B&H uses.

I could go back to Dektol. I certainly used a lot of it, back when it came in a tin can. But I just wondered if there currently might be something dramatically better. Something which even a simple soul like me couldn’t fail to notice.

Heard nice things about Photographers’ Formulary version of Ansco 130. Is this really that much better than Dektol? They make Amidol sound like a major problem to use. Is it really that nasty?

My fixer question is whether anyone has successfully tried eliminating the stop bath tray and going straight from print developer to TF-4 fixer. I know it will tend to shorten the fixer life. But I’m making only a few 16x20's at a time which won’t begin to exhaust the fixer before I dump it.

The reason I ask is that things are a little tight in my 30" by 96" retirement sink for 16x20 trays. I could use the space that stop tray occupies for a toner tray.

And lastly, the brownish toner. I have always used Kodak two-part sepia, but find the odor objectionable. I tried Berg copper once. It looked great, but lasted only a few weeks before the prints self-destructed. Found out the hard way that it isn’t permanent.

I bought some sort of brown toner from Photographers’ Formulary a few years ago, but never had the guts to mix it up. The directions had some warning about how the dust particles given off while mixing would eat holes in my eyeballs. Terrific!

So anyone have any better ideas than good ole’ Kodak brown toner or selenium on something like Ilford warmtone RC paper?

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: RC. I’m not crazy about it either.

But years ago, when there was only fiber paper, I wasted hours upon hours sitting around with a Magic Marker, idly drawing bikinis on navel oranges, waiting for my DuPont Varilour to wash and dry. Now I haven’t got that many years left. ;0)

Any other tips to enhance my great living room printing caper would be much appreciated. Nobody cares about shadow detail on uncoated stock anymore...

JC