A small observation: Foma Classic, Multigrade dev, Eco Pro dev

[Ulophot]

This will be for a limited audience using these materials. No great revelations here for those familiar with darkroom work.

After confirming, following a reply to a previous post, that Fomatone Classic (the warm-tone paper) needs longer development to attain D-max, about 3 minutes in the Eco Pro I use, I got some Multigrade developer to see if it would make any difference. I figured it would be more active and produce greater contrast. To my surprise, it's a bit softer-working.

In saying this, I note that have not made extensive tests. I chose a long-scale negative, an interior portrait with a window to the side and another to the rear of the subject. The print holds details from deep shadows to the high values at gr. 1 1/2. The Multigrade print showed just a hint more deep shadow detail with comparable high values and slightly lower mid-highs; the Eco Pro rendered a bit more local contrast in the facial tones, from about Zone IV+ to VI. Both were developed for 3 minutes. A Multigrade print developed for 2 minutes held a soft black while opening up detail in the IIs and lower IIIs and rendering a greater sense of light overall while keeping detail in the (of course quickly-developing) high values.

The nice thing about standard 3 minute development is this extra leeway in timing for certain negatives like this one. Yes, the same can be done with a 2-minute standard (and no, I'm not ignoring exposure fine-tuning, but that's potentially a bit different), but the variation is shorter and, for a larger print, thus perhaps a little trickier.

I also developed two prints from the same neg made on Ilford Warmtone, developing one in Multigrade and one in Eco Pro, 2 min each. They are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

[Torquemada]

I used foma VC with eco pro from freestyle... its not a great combination. Ethol LPD is a better choice for this paper as you can use 2 minutes of development time and your images come out beautifullly done. I honestly think that with velvia 313 at least, eco pro increases the contrast grade

[esearing]

Formulary 130 (ansco 130) gave good contrasty results with 90 seconds at 1:1 dilution. If you like 3 minutes then dilute 1:2 or 1:3. I agree LPD would be a good choice too if looking for softer contrast and flatter black tones especially at 1:4 dilution. My negatives are developed in Pyro-M and most print well between grades 2.5 and 3. I'm still experimenting with this paper but my current leaning is to not use it for high contrast scenes but rather use it for images with more midtone and use the vc filters to separate the grays.

I only used multigrade once with Ilford Classic and found it to be dull compared to LPD and PF130.