Ilford MGIV RC Chenical Smell

[Elenarain]

I am using Ilford MGIV RC De Luxe for lumen prints in a contact frame. After about 30 minutes in the sun, the paper (and everything it contacts) develops a really terrible strong chemical smell that does not diminish after fixing or copious rinsing. It still has this terrible odor over a month later. Is this paper not appropriate for this process .. am I missing a step? I’m getting beautiful images but can’t handle the smell. BTW I am using a combination of organic and inorganic materials for exposure.. doesn’t seem to matter..

 

[vintagesnaps]

I've done lumen prints, and I've never had anything like that happen. Although I'm doing lumen prints with vintage paper, and leave them on a table in a window for minutes, hours, days... (long exposures because some of the color gets washed out in the fixer). I've used Ilford paper in the darkroom.

The only thing I can think of is that for lumen prints I use diluted fixer, maybe 1:9 parts fixer to water. In the darkroom though I've used the usual strength fixer, and prints can float around in that for some time and be fine. I mean, you can smell the fixer but once the prints are dry I've never noticed any lingering strong smell.

You could try AlternativePhotography.com . Or try asking on Home - The Film Photography Project , ask Leslie (whose user name I can't remember offhand). Or maybe try APUG (which has changed but if you search you may find their new site, it was called analog photograhy users group).