hi i'm rachel from little vintage photography
and this is going to be a whistle stop tour across the ilford range of papers
using different photographic paper stock in the dark room is a really simple but
effective way of bringing some creativity and variety to your work
choosing the right photographic paper stock for you and your work is actually
a very personal choice and you might find that
it changes depending on the subject matter and there's other things to
consider such as who is it for where's it going
to be displayed is it for the wall is it to go into an album does it need
to be archival there's really no right and wrong answer it's all down to
personal choice generally these papers are split into
two types we have resin coated and we have fibre based papers and we're going
to look at some of those today
resin coated papers are simple to work with because they have a coating on them
that makes them easier to handle they're also quite economical when it
comes to washing so you do your develop you stop and you fix
then when you're in your final wash all you need to do is leave them there for a
couple of minutes two to five minutes and they will be done
they also come in different tones and finishes and i've got some examples here
at the top there's the multigrade resin coated deluxe
which is a kind of neutral tone in the center i've got the
multigrade resin coated warm tone and at the bottom
the multigrade resin coated cool tone which has a quite
silvery blue finish to it quick note about where it says mg
on the box for these papers that means multigrade and that means that
effectively you can use the ilford range of filters
to change and adjust the contrast in your
final prints going back to the examples here
in the middle we have the warm tone paper one thing to remember when you're
working with ilford warm tone paper is that your exposure times will be
different from those that you would use with the
neutral tone deluxe or with the cool tone
at the bottom as a general rule of thumb i tend to double my exposure times and
then do another test strip just to make sure i'm in the right
ballpark with that another thing you can do
is also check the manual in every box of paper you'll find that there is a
guide you'll see that there is a table at the bottom
which lists the different types of paper and it has something called iso
this is to do with the paper speed basically means how quickly
does your paper react with light here we've got some examples of the
different finishes so at the top we've got the
multigrade resin coated deluxe in the glossy finish
moving down we've got this one here which is the pearl
and that has a sort of slight delicate shimmer to it
and then at the bottom we've got the satin which is a slightly softer touch
i like using these two papers for things like portraits actually because
they've got a bit of a softer feel to them without going for the full
matte effect something else to think about is that the
level of contrast when using these two papers is actually
softer or lower contrast than when you're using something like the glossy
and it's something you might want to think about when you're choosing which
filters to use on those prints using those papers
the other type of ilford paper is fibre-based
working with fibre-based paper takes longer and you need to take a bit more
care but there's something really luxurious
about this kind of paper because they're heavier weight
it's called a double weight and it means that as a physical object
they're really lovely to hold in your hand the main thing to remember when
working with fiber-based papers is that the developing the washing and
the drying times are all going to take longer than they would with the
resin coated papers if you check the manual that comes
with each pack of paper you'll actually find that there's a very helpful section
that tells you about the development times then
you've got a section about washing with resin coated paper you're looking at
about two minutes with a fiber-based you're looking more
at 30 minutes to 45 minutes so it's a big difference with that
if you go a little bit further down it'll tell you about drying
and then there's a section here which is about the washing process
itself you want to fix it first do a first wash
then you'll want to use something like wash aid that ilford create
in order to help with that process and then a final wash as well in fresh
running water all of that helps to make sure that you have
the optimum use from your fibre-based paper
fibre-based papers handle slightly differently in the developing tray
and drying them is an art in itself but making sure you don't rush it
is key you can air dry your fibre based papers either by putting them into a
print rack or simply hanging them up once they're dry
i tend to put them under a very heavy pile of books for several days
or you can clip them into a glass frame something to make sure that they're not
going to curve too much although this process takes more time
and more care it's worth it in the end i've got some examples here of the
fibre-based papers in different tones they also come in different finishes
these ones are all glossy but you also have things like semi-matte and matte
at the top we've got the multigrade fiber-based classic
which is a sort of neutral tone in the center we've got the
warm tone version of that again with this you can use the warm tone developer
in order to give that even more warmth if you'd like or tone it at the end
and then at the bottom we have the cool tone version of
this paper
the last paper i'd like to share with you today is the art 300
now this is a textured art paper and it's something a little bit different
from the others that we've looked at again it's a multigrade paper and the
effect with this is more like printing onto watercolor
paper it's a heavier weight paper which means
it will take more time and more care to get it finished properly
but for a really important project or print there's something very special
about using a paper like this a paper like this works really well with
things like the warm tone developer and extra toning at
the end with something like the selenium it's worth experimenting in the dark
room to find out what works best for you
so that's a brief look at some of the different types of paper stock you can
get from ilford hopefully it will have inspired you and you will have seen
something that's made you want to try it out for yourself
if you want to learn more you can check out ilford's other videos thanks very
much for watching
you