Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/04/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>>One of the prime difficulties in finding 'good' b&w printing papers is that >>the production of such is an environmental disaster. Thus, large-volume >>producers such as AGFA and Kodak have been forced to reduce the silver >>content in their papers to comply with environmental regulations, and this >>has led to greyer blacks and muddier whites in a lot of papers. >> >I do not have any figures about the actual silver content in papers old and >new, regulated or not. I do have, however, sensitometric values from my >densitometer. I must say that all modern papers (fiber based and RC coated >(Kodak, Agfa, Ilford,Guilleminot and Oriental)) I have tested (when >developed in top class paper developers) got deep blacks around D= 2,20 >and clean whites around D=0,05. These values are in the same league as any >readings I have collected from the papers produced in the seventies and >even earlier. >Deep black is generally equated with densities around D=2,10 to D=2,40. >Grey black is normally positioned around D=1,70. Every paper I know of can >easily surpass this value. Only papers with a nonglossy surface are around >D=1,60 and could be interpreted as grey black. >That grand master,Ansel Adams, reported in his books the same values and he >was quite critical about the blacks and whites. >So I have no factual evidence that the silver content of the newer papers >is less than it used to be and if this were the case then the correlation >between silver content and the visual impression of 'blackness' is less >straight forward than proposed. >Erwin Puts Very interesting, and no doubt scientifically sound. Why not try printing images with them? Robert