Fibre or resin coated paper?

[Steve]

Went to an open day at University of Derby over the weekend and the tutor was showing us around the darkroom facilities.

Some prints were washing and he made a comment that he insisted his students use fibre paper and not resin coated.


The last time I used fibre paper (albeit years ago) it just seemed a pain to use, curled horribly and didn't seem any better than resin.

Is it really that much better?

 

[Knikki]

Depends on what you want to do. Fibre does work well with lith prints, but yes it still curls and takes ages to wash.

 

[Steve]

Thanks .... going to give it another try and see if maybe I get on better with it this time.

 

[robhooley167]

I prefer the look of fibre based paper, not entirely sure why as you can get matte RC paper. Completely irrational i know, but i also like a challenge

 

[raathistle]

If he insisted students learn on FB then he's an imbecile. It's more expensive, takes longer to produce anything from and thus learn, and is incredibly unforgiving on washing/curling. A much more sensible solution is to standardise an RC/FB set-up, where you know exactly what the changes you need to make when you produce the final print on the FB are. This way you still get FB's proven archive quality, feel and other benefits, with the speed and cost savings for all the test processes with RC