Foma 133 was the answer

What, you might well ask, was the question?  Well if you've been following my posts on the Ballymoney Agricultural Show prints you'd know that I've been lamenting the awful sunny weather that day.  I know, ironic for someone living in Northern Ireland - you'd think we'd be glad of full sun when it comes.  Most times we are, of course, but it does present challenges when out with a camera - harsh shadows and bleached out whites to name a couple.  Still, that aside, I couldn't seem to get a decent print from any of the negatives - and they looked OK on the light box, with visible texture in the black hides of the cattle and some detail present in the white topcoats of the people showing their animals.  Just that the results I was getting on paper were distinctly average.  I tried Ilford MG Classic fibre paper (see here) and then a few sheets of Fomaspeed RCVC Oyster paper (here) and neither really worked that well. 

So yesterday morning I was lying in bed wondering what to do (Sunday morning is my usual slot for darkroom work, when the house is generally quiet).  I thought I'd give the negs one last try before moving on to something else and decided to go for an old favourite - Foma 133 Velvet fibre paper.   I'd had good results on it for some Still Life shots and it had worked a treat on some older negatives (see here and here). 

Firstly, I sacrificed a sheet of Ilford MG Classic paper, for reference: 

Then I printed the same using Foma 133.  It's a much slower paper than the Ilford, two stops at least.

The guy at the front has rather cleverly managed to hide one of his legs.  HP5+ developed in HC-110.

The warm tone of the Foma paper has really taken the sting out of the strong sunlight and it works so much better for this shot.  Looking at them side-by-side the Ilford looks a bit under-printed but I'm not inclined to do any more with it.  I'll settle for the Foma for this set of negatives.