Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The Importance of Numerals

I was extremely excited to find a 100 sheet pack of Kodak Polymax II RC paper (glossy) for sale on eBay. As I mentioned last week, Kodak Polymax RC is one of my favorite types of paper for lumen printing. It did not occur to me that Kodak Polymax II and Kodak Polymax would be entirely different papers. They are totally different papers.

Kodak Polymax (no numerals) is a much older formulation of that type of paper. Like I mentioned, it tends to produce cream to brown fields with orange to red (sometimes violet) objects. I've found nothing that gets close to the same delicacy and lightness of Polymax, though some other Kodak papers will produce the same brown/red scheme, they can't match the lighter shades that Polymax can render.

Unfortunately, Polymax II doesn't seem to be even remotely connected to Polymax. I did a test print as soon as the paper arrived and, much to my dismay, the paper began turning indigo once struck by sunlight. Not brown, cream, tan or beige. Indigo. There are several papers that produce similar colors, so the indigo isn't anything I haven't seen before. It's nothing particularly arresting. Which sucks. I was hoping for a replacement for a very hard to find paper that gives amazing results... and I didn't get it. Not even a moderately nearby substitute.

Lame. At least it isn't a big loss, since the Polymax II isn't ugly. It wasn't even that expensive, which is part of why I was so excited. It was cheaper than even buying newly made photo paper, which is actually refreshing. Most expired and outdated photo papers are extremely expensive. I'm not exactly sure why, because such old papers aren't really that useful for printing. They tend to be fogged or unpredictable in their printing because of their age. I guess some folks are willing to pay for their old favorite papers, even at an unbelievable markup, and even when the papers may not actually work any longer. There can't be that big a market for old papers to use in lumen printing.

Kodak Polymax II RC
I've mentioned before that Kodak has not produced any new photographic papers since 2005, which is nearly a decade now. So even Polymax II isn't easy to obtain. It's much easier to get than the original Polymax, but as described above (at length), it isn't as nice.

Color Palette: Field starts out as indigo blue, then shifts with sufficient (2+ hour) exposure into a dark violet-brown. Objects will start out a very soft baby blue, developing into a very nice mixture of red, violet and blue. Interestingly, these remain separate instead of simply blurring into a continuum.

Moisture Response: There is a reaction, but not a huge one. The moisture creates a darker halo around objects, with a bit of a shift towards red.

Reaction to Fixing: Untested, but Kodak products in general do not react well to being fixed. I will be testing this soon, though.

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