My enlarging paper is bad

[Ben Calwell]

Yesterday, I bought a 25-sheet package of Ilford Gallerie FB 2 paper from my local camera shop (where the employees think that anyone not shooting digital is hopelessly just not with it). I mixed up some fresh LPD paper developer (my usual developer with Azo) to use with it. The resulting images, and I can't adequately describe them, have a brown, mottled, almost solarized look and tone to them. It's not at all what Gallerie, based on my experience, is supposed to look like. It almost looks as if they are light-struck. I can't tell by the package when this paper is supposed to expire. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I can I tell from the label when the paper has expired (I assume Gallerie does go bad at some point). It wouldn't surprise me if my camera shop is selling paper from the Ford administration.

[Donald Qualls]

Brown, mottled, and partly reversed -- except for the brown part, that sounds like exposing through the back of the sheet as well as possibly safelight fogged. LPD might change the image tone, but isn't Gallerie a warm tone paper? That would mean "gray" from fogging would become brown...

[windpointphoto]

Calumet and B&H Photo. Problem solved. Why on earth are you giving your money to someone who thinks "you're not with it"? Support the business' that support large format photography.

[Chuck_1686]

I assume that you ran a test print using a different type of paper though the same chemicals and it came out OK. If not you should try it to eliminate any processing problems. You're finding out one of the problems with buying graded papers. Always hard to find fresh paper especially in the little used grades. And boxes aren't always dated. You almost have to buy mail order from a big dealer. I like Calumet because they seem to put their own sticker on boxes that has a date. At least you have some idea of age. I will say that I have never seen that problem with Gallerie and some of mine is pretty old.

[Donald Qualls]

Worth noting that there's considerable evidence that papers without developer incorporated have a shelf life, in decent (dry, cool) storage conditions to be measured in decades; I pretty routinely hear of people obtaining paper that expired in the 1960s that's still usable (sometimes without even adding antifoggants to the developer).

Even sitting on a heater shouldn't produce strong fogging in any reasonable time, though; leads one to wonder (again) if there might be chemical contamination. A very small amount of hydrogen sulfide will fog photo paper, and might well give a warm tone due to the size of silver grains produced. However, the partial reversal still seems, to me, to suggest a safelight problem. Most graded papers are okay with a yellow safelight, but it's possible either the safelight filter is dying or something else is going on with safelight.

Hmm. This could also be due to bad fixer, though in that case it would take hours to days to show fully...