New Ilford FB Classic and FB Cooltone review

[Koolzakukumba]

I've been playing with a few sheets of each of the new Ilford papers and found time to write up some early impressions. It's not a full review as I only had four sheets of each to work with but it's enough to know that these new papers are great.

Unless you're into lith printing, Ilford's FB range seems to have all bases covered. And thankfully they've kept the price the same as the outgoing Multigrade IV FB - at least for the time being! Can't wait to get my hands on some more so I can start printing a portfolio, something I've been wanting to do for a while. But which paper to choose?

You can read about it here:

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[Photo_Smith]

Looks good and thanks for the mini review. It is interesting the emergence time is quick and the speed uniform though lower grades.
Ilford make a great range of papers, its great to see them expanding that.

 

[shadowfox]

Excellent prints suited for the papers.
Thanks for the review.

 

[Koolzakukumba]

Thanks. 🙂. Despite all the great papers that have been lost it's good to know we still have several really excellent ones - and no excuses if we can't produce the goods!

 

[tsiklonaut]

Very useful and highly apreciated review. Big up to Ilford bringing those out. I really like the tonal rendering presented here. I must try some for regular printing as well.

Still, out of curiosity has anyone tried how those new papers Lith?

 

[Ansel]

Thanks. Not sure I understand your comment about dry down though... Are you saying FB Classic has no apreciable dry down?

 

[Koolzakukumba]

Very useful and highly apreciated review. Big up to Ilford bringing those out. I really like the tonal rendering presented here. I must try some for regular printing as well.

Still, out of curiosity has anyone tried how those new papers Lith?

I think the short answer is that they don't.

 

[Koolzakukumba]

Thanks. Not sure I understand your comment about dry down though... Are you saying FB Classic has no apreciable dry down?

On the print, The Gate, there's a highlight on the paint near the front of the gate that I wanted to have almost but not quite paper white. It looked how I wanted it to when the print was wet and I noticed no appreciable difference when it was dry. From that, my impression was that there was little to no dry down. I can't sat I noticed much on the other print made on FB Cooltone either.

There's a guy on another forum who has used a lot of FB Cooltone and says there's about the usual amount of MG IV dry down. I said in my review that I'd need to do more prints before I could know for sure so that's an issue I'll be looking at when I get some more paper.

 

[sevad]

Thanks for the review Koolza. I'll get some of this stuff as well as it sure sounds good. we have got to keep supporting companies like Ilford and anyone else who shows a commitment like this.

 

[kchoquette]

Awesome, some good information here! Still curious on the difference between the glossy surface compared to Multigrade IV Glossy, so I may wind up buying a small pack of the 'Classic'.

 

[Koolzakukumba]

Awesome, some good information here! Still curious on the difference between the glossy surface compared to Multigrade IV Glossy, so I may wind up buying a small pack of the 'Classic'.

I think there might be a very small difference in the surfaces of FB Classic and MG IV but it's not enough to be worth bothering about. For some reason it bothered me a little when I saw the FB Classic surface but I think that was because I'd been using Tetenal FB glossy. When I did a direct comparison between the two Ilfords I realised there's not much difference at all.