Fogging on (Expired?) Paper

[snark]

I recently acquired a sizeable amount of B&W papers, mostly VC FB, matte, semi-matte, pearl - nice stuff. It's from several different manufacturers, Luminos, Oriental, Kodak, Ilford. No clue how it was stored or how old it is. A lot of it is unopened, so I know it's not light-fogged.

I used some of the Luminos VC pearl yesterday. With Arista liquid developer I got a light grey fog over the entire sheet (borders included). Not real dark, actually a pleasant effect for certain prints. With the Arista warmtone developer it took twice as long as I expected, about four minutes, to completely develop the image, and they looked flat and muddy.

Because I've experienced different results with these two developers, I'm wondering whether the fog is entirely the presumably expired paper, or perhaps partly compatibility with the developer. Might I be able to reduce the fog by using a different developer?

 

[webestang64]

"fog is entirely the presumably expired paper"...,,,,,I have gotten different "fog" effects or "flat" contrast from exspired paper with different developers as well. You can keep trying different developers but you may never get rid of the fog/flatness, the older the paper gets the more flat and fogged (base fog) it will become.
Just like film.....the older it gets the more the base fog becomes darker.

 

[timor]

Hi. Get some potassium bromide to add to your try developer. If fogging is not to mighty it will help with FB papers.
Warmtone developers are slower in action as they are less concentrated for exactly it's warmtone action, but they contain also much higher quantities of sodium carbonate for its warmtone purposes. Unfortunately sodium carbonate accelerates fogging, what with out of date papers may have muddy effect.

 

[snark]

Thank you, Timor. Sounds like good advice. I will stop using the warmtone developer with affected paper, and will buy the potassium bromide. It might say on the container, but as long as we are on the subject how much would I add to a liter of developer?

 

[vintagesnaps]

I use vintage/expired papers for lumen prints but haven't tried them for traditional darkroom prints. From what I understand the older the paper the more fogged it would be likely to be, and of course how it was stored could affect it.

Have you tried looking at APUG? or maybe AlternativePhotography.com .

 

[timor]

Thank you, Timor. Sounds like good advice. I will stop using the warmtone developer with affected paper, and will buy the potassium bromide. It might say on the container, but as long as we are on the subject how much would I add to a liter of developer?

Start with 1 gram of KBr per 1 liter of ready to use developer and add more if needed. You may do that in two ways; or dissolve 10 g of KBr in 100 ml of water and later add it to working developer using let say syringe, each 10ml = 1g of KBr and that will not change too much the concentration of the developer. Or you may prepare 1g portions and dissolve directly in developer (it will take 2-3 min.) in the tray. If you don't have proper scale you may go by volume, but first you will have to crush crystals of KBr into powder and go by the teaspoons. I have to check how many grams 1 teaspoon. At some point you will reach point of no fog, but watch your contrast, it will grow and maybe you gonna have to change filtration to softer contrast. More KBr also gives stronger warmtones so you still can try this warmtone paper. I am printing with Dektol with added 1g of KBr and getting pleasant warm prints on Berger paper.