A tale of two darkroom papers

I don't really do much technical stuff on this place.  I doubt that will change much but today I thought I would mention a little play I had last Sunday morning with a couple of different darkroom papers - my recent go-to, Foma 133 and Ilford's fibre multigrade classic paper. They are different beasts, that's for sure.

I guess my motivation was down to the fact that I'd just used my last sheet of Foma 133, whereas I still have some Ilford MG Classic left.  I have a selection of others, too (Foma, Ilford, Adox and Slavich) which I fully intend to 'use up' before buying another sheet of new paper.  Most of it is in the freezer but even there it won't last forever, so it's getting used. My wife will be happy there's space being freed up in the freezer.  Also, it might inspire me to get out and take some decent shots.  Something needs to, that's for sure.

So, this was my last sheet from the box of 100 10"x8" Foma 133:

Breaking wave at Ballintoy. Cropped from the square ('Blad, 150mm, FP4+ in Ilford HC)

I was happy with this - the Foma did a fine job of giving some detail in the highlights (the breaking wave) while still keeping texture in the rocks.  This was a straight print - out of the box using the figures for exposure and grade from the enlarger probe.  I've an LED head, which defaults to split-grade printing and it works a treat with this paper.

The blurb for Foma 133 states that it has a warm image tone, suitable for portrait photography and retro-style work.  It goes on to say that the paper is manufactured using a special silver chlorobromide emulsion that gives the image a brown green to warm brown tone that can be further influenced by the type of developer used.  I used good old Ilford Multigrade develeper, so nothing special there.  This is the fine-grain, velvet finish, baryta coated - it's available in glossy and semi-matt as well.  I know I've said it before, but I really love this paper.

To satisfy my curiosity, I printed the same scene on Ilford MG Classic fibre paper, which Ilford describe as premium quality (225g/m2) baryta-coated paper designed for all enlarger types, with improved DMax and shorter exposure time, neutral image, great clarity and good response to toners.  It's available in glossy and matt finishes - this is the glossy:

Same scene, different paper. 

Again, this is a straight print, using the time and grade suggested by my enlarger probe.  This actually looks a lot better than it did when it came out of the fix, where there was very little detail visible in the sky at all.  Clearly dry-down is more significant with this paper than with the Foma.  It's a much brighter and more contrasty print - the highlight detail has been lost in the wave but the rocks are pretty similar in both prints, given the differences in the paper base (warm tone in the Foma, neutral in the Ilford).  

I thought I should be able to do better with the Ilford, so I dialed in an extra chunk of exposure at grade 0 for the whole print and then a shorter exposure at grade 5 to up the contrast in the sky with a partial burn-in.  This was the result:

 

Second attempt with the Ilford paper

So this is much improved over the first attempt - the sky has more oomph and there's a bit more detail in the wave highlight, though still not as much as with the Foma.  

I'm getting close to the original print on the Foma paper and with another couple of iterations I might get there.  But at this stage it's probably time to sit back and think about the bigger picture.  The two emulsions are plainly different and trying to make one look like the other is, well, probably kind of stupid.  There's a lot of variables in the process - the negative itself, my enlarger LED head, the probe and the built-in configurations for the two papers.  What is clear is that for my setup, for this negative, the out-of-the-box straight print competition is won hands-down by Foma.  For a different negative we might see a different result.  It's horses for courses.  Isn't it always?