Polycontrast Paper

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clcolucci58

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Was surfing Ebay looking at photography items as I do from time to time and just for S&G's search Kodak Polycontrast paper which I used all the time back in the day:rolleyes: and as expected there are some for auction, hmmm..other then weapons what isn't for sell on Ebay. I was thinking of getting some but why bye some as it is expired paper, I'm sure it will print but not that well. Just a thought, and how many of you used this paper back in the day along with Kodak Plus-X:)

Regards,
clc
 
I used some but my favorite was DuPont Varilour R and used a lot of it. In the mid 70's I worked at one of the national labs ( research lab) and printed thousands of prints on Polycontrast. It was our standard paper.
 
x-ray said:
I used some but my favorite was DuPont Varilour ...
Click to expand...

+1

My dad's fav was Varigam, the original variable contrast paper from DuPont. I learned on that and then, when Varilour came out I migrated to it after a short period with Kodak Polycontrast. This was all way before RC papers came out.

Much later, after the demise of DuPont's line of papers, I returned to Polycontrast before later migrating to various, mostly Kodak, fixed grade papers.
 
I remember Varigam but only used a little. My dad used Varigam as well. DuPont made excellent paper.

Back in the 50's when my dad was teaching me printing we used Ansco Indigo paper. Later I used Agfa Portriga and Varilour. I was never a big fan of Kodabromide or Medalist. I used a little but didn't care for it. For contact printing I used Velox and Azo. Azo was my favorite for contacts.
 
Ilford did the original research on this and made the first VC paper. DuPont was first to market because of WW2. Quite honestly, most VC papers were pretty poor until about 20-30 years ago (and Kodak's were worse than Ilford's), but Ilford's current MG papers are better than most fixed-grade papers from the past.

Cheers,

R.
 
clcolucci58 said:
Was surfing Ebay looking at photography items as I do from time to time and just for S&G's search Kodak Polycontrast paper which I used all the time back in the day:rolleyes: and as expected there are some for auction, hmmm..other then weapons what isn't for sell on Ebay. I was thinking of getting some but why bye some as it is expired paper, I'm sure it will print but not that well. Just a thought, and how many of you used this paper back in the day along with Kodak Plus-X:)

Regards,
clc
Click to expand...

It's all a question of how well it was stored. I opened my last box of Kodak RC Polycontrast paper in August (which spent the last 10 years in my fridge), and it still prints as nicely as ever):


Tuweep 4 (8x10 Print) by nbg90455, on Flickr
 
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