In September I received an interesting email from Foma Bohemia to announce their latest silver gelatin paper, Fomapastel.
Looking at the spec sheet provided, I then became intrigued. Imagine Monochrome prints in Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta & Yellow! It was time to shuffle through the neg sheets and book a few days in the darkroom.
Of course, these kind of colours may be achieved through various “alternative / historical” printing processes as well as toning silver gel papers. A few of these processes are simple enough, Cyanoytpe for example, but some processes require a great deal of skill and experience to achieve acceptable results.
So the idea of having the fun without the hassle was quite appealing… Upon reading the data sheet I noticed Foma’s “Important Notice” regarding temperature control was fairly unusual for a photographic paper. Of course film processing must be as precise as possible, but paper is usually a lot more flexible regarding temperature fluctuations. Another exception to the usual process was the time recommended for processing. Between 50 – 80 seconds, a fairly short time for FB papers. I have included the data sheet below for further reading.
Foma also advised the use of a higher than usual contrast setting. This makes perfect sense due to the fact that a white paper base offers the greatest range of tonality, any other colour will reduce this range.
Let the fun begin….
My usual process when using an unknown paper is to start with a familiar paper stock, Fomaspeed RC paper. This test gives me a benchmark for comparison.
I was using Fomatol P as the developer and ended up following the recommended procedures. Too long a time in the dev resulted in slight paper fog. Filtration was usually a plus 1 to 2 grades higher than Fomaspeed. The result was a lower grey scale / tonal range.
In conclusion, as can been seen in the examples, some images worked well, others not so much. The paper itself is easy enough to use, after a little testing. I did break a few rules and these prints ended up in the bin.
I’m ordering more of this paper as I feel I really didn’t have enough suitable images. I’m going to focus on subjects that gives more highlight than shadow areas. Maybe reflections on water, clouds scapes or both. I am sure my horizons will expand with a little more experience using Fomapastel.
Chris Reid, Belfast Oct. 2024
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