Forte Elegance Neutral Tone

greenspun.com : LUSENET : B&W Photo - Printing & Finishing : One Thread

Merry Christmas everyone!

Recently I asked for feedback on Forte's neutral tone fiber paper, specifically, a comparison to Kodak's Polymax Art. I've since tried the paper myself and I'll offer my findings.

First of all, let me say, I love the tonality of Kodak Polymax Art. It has a superb range of tones, with clean, sparkling highlights (Yes, it has brighteners. But who cares? All I care about is the look of the final print.), strong, deep blacks, and marvelous separation of midrange values. It is also the most neutral-toned paper I've ever seen. My biggest complaint with it is it does not tone well in selenium, offering at best a slight increase in d-max and no color shift at all. Which is not all bad. But there are images which lend themselves to the purple-brown tones selenium is capable of.

Enter Forte Elegance Neutral Tone. I watched my first print come up in the developer and actually said, "Wow!" It's brilliant! It looks a great deal like Polymax, in terms of tonality. It's very cold-toned, though I think Polymax is slightly more neutral. But the great thing about Forte's paper is it tones as well as the best of the graded papers. At 1:15 in selenium, after 2 minutes there is a noticable increae in d-max, after 3 minutes a slight shift of color occurs, passing from its neutral tone (which has a very slight hint of green that I didn't notice till I began toning) to a cool brown. At 5 minutes, it takes on a rich brown and the color change occurs throughout the tonal scale, not just the deeper values, which I've found common to many papers, notably Agfa Classic Multigrade FB.

I haven't had a chance to do a side-by-side comparison yet, but with extended toning, this paper is reminiscent of Forte's Elegance PolyWarmtone Plus, toned in selenium. The range of toning options is remarkable--everything from a slight shift with a deepening of tones to a dramatic shift to chocolate brown. Another thing I liked about the color is it did not get too red; the brown is obviously warm, but not that ugly red-brown that is common with many other papers.

One minor caveat. I use an Aristo VCL4500 variable contrast coldlight head. This paper (but *not* Forte's Elegance Warmtone Plus!) and Kodak's Polymax Art both produce two grades higher contrast than other papers. And these are the only two papers that do that on my system. So, if I would print with, say, Agfa MC Classic RC (my standard proofing paper) at #3 contrast setting, I will have to use #1 to achieve the same contrast with either of these papers. If I need less contrast than I can achieve with #0, I have to change to another paper or use a softer-working developer. If anyone knows the reason for this, I'd love to hear from him or her.

-- Ted Kaufman (writercrmp@aol.com), December 25, 2001

Answers

Ted: Glad to hear that you liked the Forte. As I said before, it's sensitivity to toning is amazing. I recently used Kodak's Sepia toner on some prints, also with great results. I pulled the prints from the bleach after only 45 seconds! They were a beautiful sepia upon contact with the toner. But the real beauty lies in the ability to control the tone with selenium. It has become my primary paper. I don't however, have the answer to your contrast puzzle.

-- Arden Howell (Serenisea@aol.com), December 25, 2001.

Dear Ted, You do not need to switch papers to get a lower contrast with these 2 papers:you only have to change your prining method. Change to split printing which means you expose the paper twice, once with pure blue light and once with pure green light. I also use a Aristo VC4500 and Polymax Fine Art. For the last 4 years I have split print every print made. You also have twice the control in dodging and burning. You can seperately dodge or burn the blacks and dark midtones during the blue light exposure, then separetly burn and or dodge the midtones and highlight during the green light exposure. With this split printing technique you can produce prints not easily obtained any other way. For the lowest contrast posiible on any VC paper print ONLY withe the Green light. The Real contrast grade might be as low as 00. If you have any questions about split printing you can e-mail me directly. IMHO you are not using the VC4500 to its best capacity without split printing.

-- John Elder (celder2162@aol.com), December 26, 2001.

Glad to get your feedback. I, too, was surprised with the color shift when toned in selenium. The paper, with extended toning in selenium, seems more like a "warmish" paper to me. I have to disagree with Arden, however (this is why everyone needs to try things out for themselves). I do not like the way the paper tones with Kokak sepia toner. To me, it gets a putrid yellow tone that has always kept me from toning warm tone paper with sepia. When I first tried Forte neutral tone, because of this response I was convinced after sepia toning that the batch I got was really warm tone paper mislabeled. But the next batches did the same thing.

This is a great paper, and I'm glad you are finding it to your liking.

-- Jim Rock (jameswrock@aol.com), December 26, 2001.


John: I've heard enough about the benefits of split filter printing enough lately to motivate me to give it a try. For any of you that are interested, Bill Pierce writes a column called "Nuts and Bolts" for the Digital Journalist (available at digitaljournalist.com) and in this month's issue, makes his case for split-filtration.

-- Ted Kaufman (writercrmp@aol.com), December 28, 2001.

The Forte neutral tone VC paper is sublime. Offers so many control options, and is quite flexible compared to many other papers. The Warmtone in my opinion is awful. Muddy contrast even with split printing. Selenium tone the Neutral for better warmtone results. Sad that one of the only places in Los Angeles to find it is Freestyle. Was in the middle of printing today and ran out, so went to Samy's which is close and all they had and ever have is Warmtone! Call themselves a 'Pro' store? Read somewhere (Photo Techniques?) that this paper has a higher silver content than most other brands. Is that true?

-- Ted Davis (teddavisphotography@hotmail.com), December 29, 2001.


Ted: I've heard Forte's Warmtone Art paper is dull looking compared to the Warmtone Plus version. Primarily, Plus's highlights of are much cleaner and the base whiter compared to Art's duller cream base. Also, Plus is a heavier paper--heavier than any paper I've seen lately--with a very pretty surface. It's tonal scale is more like Neutral than its familial Warmtone Art brethern. Warmtone Plus is also very sensitive to toning. However, one must use very dilute (1:20 or greater) toner or it can very quickly turn from a pleasing chocolate brown to an ugly red-brown.

The Neutral tone is much more versative, however. And it tones to such a lovely deep brown, there seems little need to stock both Neutral and Plus. It would, though, be nice to see Neutral with the heavy weight of Plus.

For anyone who likes Forte's Neutral, another paper that shares similar properties is Luminos Flexicon VC fiber. It has a cold- neutral tone, an elegant, smooth surface, and it tones very nicely in selenium. Its untoned appearance is exceptionally clean, with no trace of green, and it holds deep blacks and sparkling highlights. In selenium, it never becomes deep brown; it goes from neutral to purple-brown to an unpleasant reddish brown. Thus, compared to Forte Neutral, its tone is not as versatile in selenuim, but with no toning or moderate toning, it's a very worthwhile consideration.

-- Ted Kaufman (writercrmp@aol.com), December 29, 2001.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ