A couple of weeks ago I solicited advise about papers here and elsewhere. Someone said try Azo paper from Kodak. I did and I want to spread the word. Great Stuff. For contacts prints I have never tried anything which so completely renders a negative's tonal variation. There is a sense of direct translation. The mid tones especially are bright and well defined. There is a "pop" that leads to an overall feeling of depth. This is the same paper Weston used in the twenties and thirties.He used a bare light bulb to expose it. In some ways it has the long tonal scale associated with platnum papers. I have no idea why Kodak does not promoted it more as a paper for fine art black and white 4x5 and 8x10 contact prints. This type of classic printing seems to be making a comeback as photographers increasingly are seeking the best materials for their individual expresssion. Enough. Please just try it. I found mine at B&H mail order in New York.

-- Jim Ryder (JimRyder12@aol.com), November 18, 1997

Answers

Azo contact printing paper

Please let me add: This paper is extremely slow. A negative contact printed on Seagull at f 16 for 30 seconds printed on Azo at F 5.6 for two minutes!!! It is made for contact printing, very very slow. That is evidently why Weston used a bare bulb with a peg system to vary his exposures. I hope this helps people who may try this for the first time.

-- jim ryder (jimRyder12@aol.com), November 19, 1997.

printing

try thisRe: paper

-- John (johnkolby@aol.com), February 12, 2001.

I have used Azo for many years now. It is my favorite paper, bar none. After playing around with it, I settled on using HC-110 as a paper developer. I tried it at various dilutions and about 8:1 seemed to be the most workable. I seemed to be able to get much richer smoother blacks, and perhaps, though I never ran any scientific tests, a bit longer scale.

At any rate, using this soup and a light selenium toning printing from my 8 x 10 and 4 x 5 negs gave me the prints that I was looking for.

I found a lithographer's contact printing lamp made by NuArc that hung from the ceiling and had variable power taps on the power supply. It gave 10 - 20 second exposures on the 75% setting.

-- Tony Brent (ajbrent@mich.com), September 22, 1998.