A few years ago I bought some Forte Polycontrast Warmtone while in New York. I liked it alot, but no local shops carried it, so I didn't get anymore. Finally, a shop started stocking it, so I bought a package. Now it has been "improved" and includes a "Plus" in the name. The prints seemed a little cooler, but still very nice. I bought a second package of the Plus. Last night I printed the last picture from the old package of Plus and switched to the new package for the next picture. To my shock, the new picture had a greenish-yellowish cast that is horribly ugly! It was processed the same way, in the same chemicals (Ilford Universal Developer 1:9), only a few minutes after the last photo. Has anyone else had consistency problems with these papers? Does anyone have any thoughts on what could have caused the green-yellow color? Thanks.

-- Jeff Damron (damronj@webtv.net), March 13, 1999

Answers

I don't really know what would have caused the greenish/yellow cast but this is a quality of a lot of B&W papers. Selenium toning will neutralize this color cast but can also give you other color shifts the longer you tone which in most cases are aesthetically pleasing. Some warmtone papers will give a wonderful reddish/brown tone reminiscent of 1950's portraits. Give it a try; you might like it! (Selenium is fairly toxic so where gloves when using it)

Brian

-- Brian Jefferis (jefferis@erols.com), March 14, 1999.

I have the same experience as you Jeff, but even within the same package of Forte Polygrade Warmtone. Some prints will turn out with much more green than others. Especially (which is weird) prints from Kodak TMax400CN (C-41) has become very green! I haven't been able to control the color but since I ran out of warmtone developer, and had to buy Agfa Neutol at the mall, there hasn't been any more green in the prints. But perhaps the Green Will Return...

To return to the 400CN. I really wonder why this gives the most green prints, closely followed by regular TMAX films, but less green with TriX. Can fine grains, or t-grains, affect the color of a b&w print? If I may speculate on this topic a little. I have read that Forte Polygrade Warmtone has the "warmth" in the bright areas, while some other warmtone papers has the dark parts rendered warm (which seems to be the case with Ilford MG warmtone that I have tried). The dark areas of a print comes from the light areas of the negative. If those are very fine grained (as opposed to Tri-x), could that make even the dark parts of the image to get the "highlight" warmth (green!) that the paper is designed for? Well, it was just a thought...

(the warmtone developer was Agfa Neutol WA, my next developer will be Agfa Neutol PLUS, which is without hydroqinone and also doesn't stain the print or the enlarger tray - although the regular Neutol, is quite nice too)

-- Peter Olsson (Peter.Olsson@sb.luth.se), March 15, 1999.

You may wish to try the new Bergger warm-toned VC paper being distributed in the US by Lotus View Camera. It is one of the finest papers I have ever used, period.

It's a little hard to fine at this time, but I know that Mid City Camera in Philadelphia and Freestyle in LA carry it. It's worth the effort.

-- James D. Steele (jdsteele@erols.com), March 19, 1999.

Hi guys. I 've used Neutol WA with Polymax II and MGIV and found that dilution of the developer and temperature are really critical for the image tone. I'm not sure that this is relevent here, since the above mentioned papers are not warm tone ones but as one possible suggestion, try to play with the developer a bit. Of course if the color cast changes from pack to pack, this is most likely due to the paper itself. I would imagine that the condition of storage ( even in the store and upon shipping) can also affect the tone. What I found is that, when diluted 1:7 Neutol WA gives greenish color which intensifies when temperature is below 200C Normally my darkroom is about 18 -190C. I tried to heat up the developer to 23 - 240C and the color changed towards brown warm. As a second step I diluted it 1:10 and didn't get almost any warm tone. Finally found that 1:8 dilution at room temperature ( i.e. just below 200C) gives me a gentle warm tone without much green. Don't know what will happen if temp. is increased at this strength. However, when selenium toned the prints got ( especially on KODAK) purple tone. Actually, if you play with the toner dilution and time you can end up with almost neutral looking prints. About the influence of the film on the image tone I don't believe there is any chemical reason for that. Getting a warm tone is purely chemical process. Grain structure can affect the way light is scattered from the negative. This can perhaps have some importance when printing color, since some wawelenghts can be scatered more than others, but B&W papers don't "see" the color. Moreover, even the finest grains are much larger than the wawelenghts in the visible spectra (300 - 680 nm) so light scattering is not an issue here. Sorry for getting too "scientifical" E.

-- Evgeni Poptoshev (evgeni.poptoshev@surfchem.kth.se), March 22, 1999.