Arista Classic enlarging paper

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With all the talk of the Arista films from Freestlye being the same as Ilford FP4+ and HP5+, I'm interested in hearing if anyone has found the same for the Arista Classic graded enlarging paper. If it's the same as Ilford Galerie, it would represent a significant cost savings. I like Galerie, but it's quite expensive (>$80 for 100 8x10s).

-- Erik Asgeirsson (erik@erikcellist.com), May 06, 2002

Answers

Opinions are what you'll get in response to your question. So here's mine FWIW.

Freestyle probably can't really admit it, but Arista is (probably) Ilford. My experience with Arista is that their blacks (Dmax) are very dark flat grey. Not my personal cup of hemlock. Graded papers are nice, but one box of VC will reduce your paper inventory by a factor of four or more and be much more versatile.

My personal favorite is Mitsubishi Gekko VC RC matte (yes RC). Also at Freestyle. Better, richer, darker, deeper blacks than I've seen for a long time and a far whiter base paper than most. Really a dramatic difference from the big yellow or big green fathers.

But opinions are what makes horse races.

-- Steve Feldman (steve@toprinting.com), May 06, 2002.


I believe that the Arista Classic is Ilford. This is based on my finding a small ID number I located on the box label (not the batch number, but finer print). The format of this number matched some Ilford Galerie I had on hand in the same way that id numbers on the film boxes matched Ilford labels. Additionally, on their Web site, Ilford talks about a private labeling program they offer.

Now, this does not mean the paper is the same as Galerie, necessarily. It could be a different formulation similar to the old Ilfobrom, for example. I haven't done comparison tests with Galerie. I don't have a reflection densitometer, so I don't know the DMax of the paper, but the blacks seem to be more than dark gray and are deep enough to convey the feeling I want in my prints.

Freestyle also offers a fiber VC version that one might expect to be very similar, if not identical, to Multigrade FB.

-- Jerry Flynn (flynn68@attglobal.net), May 07, 2002.


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