In Praise of Multigrade Warmtone

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Not being able to get my old standard Portriga Rapid, I picked up a pack of Multigrade IV Warmtone, which my local Wolf dealer carries by the boatload. Processed it in Ansco 130. While it still doesn't have the incredible shadow detail of Portriga, I did find two amazing and wonderful things about it. 1) There's virtually no "dreaded dry down," and 2) It air-dries almost flat. Next project will be to try it with Amidol. Any other suggestions?

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), December 11, 2000

Answers

Experiment with toning MGFBWT. Different strengths of selenium give dramatically different final print color, with strong selenium moving it to a full brown color with strong increase in density as well. Dilute toning gives much more subtle color. Other toners also affect it strongly.---Carl

-- Carl Weese (cweese@earthlink.net), December 11, 2000.

I agree that Multigrade Warmtone is a wonderful paper. I didn't realize how much it looks like Portriga until I did a direct comparison of the same negative printed on both papers. The primary difference is that MG Warm does not have Portriga's buff colored paper base. The variable contrast is convenient too.

But I should add that Portriga is available again. B&H currently has it in stock.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edb@unblinkingeye.com), December 15, 2000.


As of today B&H still has it in stock, but they arent getting any more of it. Since I've never tried it I decided not to in case I liked it. Those who like it can stock up, although all they have is grade 3 in larger sizes

-- Wayne (wsteffen@skypoint.com), April 24, 2001.

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