I'm just curious if anyone has tried the new cool tone RC paper from Ilford. Selenium toned it? or used a col tone developer like LPD straight. What are your opinions.

-- Scott Walton (scotlynn@shore.net), October 31, 2000

Answers

Scott, Ilford Cooltone provides excellent tonality in LPD. Naturally, it's coolest with the stronger dilution, but it doesn't change that much with higher dilutions, say, 1:5. It's gets less silvery-looking, but not a lot warmer.

Toning Cooltone in selenium was a disappointment. Basically, it's a waste of time. No color, and little if any change in d-max. Incidentally, I did not use a hardening fixer, so that was not the reason. It just seems impervious to selenium toner.

I've experimented with most of the RC papers, and I've found Agfa MPC RC to be the most satisfying and most versatile. Agfa is not quite as cool as Ilford Cooltone, but it is on the cool to neutral side, and it has just as bright whites and rich tones, with good blacks (for an RC paper). And it tones beautifully in selenium--the most pleasing color and richness--by far!--of any RC paper I've toned. It's also about 2/3 the price of Ilford, which is just an added bonus.

-- Ted Kaufman (writercrmp@aol.com), July 12, 2001.

I tried a pack of it; it's ok (in LPD 1:2), not particularly cool and the paper is really really really white. Untoned it was slightly greenish; a couple of minutes in KRST 1:4 cleaned that right up and brought the color to what appears to me to be dead neutral.

It's been said that since it's a developer-incorporated paper the developer used has virtually no effect on paper tone and that the paper would actually develop just fine in an alkaline-bath activator. I never messed with that, but it might be worthwhile for someone to investigate.

Personally I don't see much point in using it; it isn't very cool and it's RC.

-- John Hicks (jbh@magicnet.net), July 12, 2001.

Scott, I haven't done much toning of it besides selenium 1:9, and while I didn't notice a dramatic tone change, I did see the boost in d-max that you'd expect, but I was mostly toning it to protect the emulsion down the road...

I have been using this for the past year both in trays with my repl. working LPD, which is 1:1 replenished with stock by schedule. And in a small tabletop processor, using LPD 1:1 as well, repl. the same way. I like it, and do find it cooler than, say regular MGIV. It reminds me more of a neutral paper like Kodabrome RC used to be, which I used alot of in the past.

I just finished up about a case and a half of 5x7 Cooltone at work, running it through a 2150 processor. It doesn't require an incorporated paper, so I can't comment on that aspect. It could be that if anyone was still using a Royalprint, they could chime in...but compared to Polymax II (our other std. paper) the Cooltone is cooler, and has a very neutral tone range. The mid grays of a thunder-gray seamless paper look very close, not a tinge of green...there's more shadow seperation in the Ilford papers than Kodak, but the highlights are a little mushy in comparison...I like to keep both on hand, because some negs will work better with Ilford and vice-versa.

-- DK Thompson (kthompson@moh.dcr.state.nc.us), July 13, 2001.