The Kallitype Thread

[tgtaylor]

I shot this negative on a different day but developed it using an ammonium citrate/sodium acetate developer which gave a different more brownish coloration and gold toned as in the preceding. I find the composition includes too much of the foreground tree which goes black in the corner. Perfect camera position/composition is imperative in the historical processes which were contact printed from in-camera negatives. Luckily I live nearby but getting a nice cumulus clouds on the coast is the hard part.

Thomas

[tgtaylor]

Roadside Carnival - Oakland, California 2017.



Gold-toned Kallitype.

Thomas

[terra_monk]

Lake Erie, Ontario.
In-camera 5x7 negative FP4+ in Pyrocat HD. Kallitype gold-thiourea (touch in selenium) toned, printed on Hahnemühle Platinum. Sodium citrate
Note: kind of grainy a bit ... trying to figure out why the image tonality-structure-grain igets added during gold-thiourea toning. I noticed the effects of adding a salt into the toner mix. Is palladium toner smother?

[andreios]

@terramonk - a great image indeed!
As for the graininess, I am no huge expert, but in my experience the grain was always the effect of the developer - the toner never effected the "graininess" in the print.. But I usually got prints like this in other developers than sodium citrate.. Is your developer fresh or old?

[terra_monk]

Andreios: thank you. Fresh, may be 2-3 prints and I keep replenishing probably more often than suggested. I clearly saw the breaking of the tonality during toning. May be this is the effect of thiourea or tartaric acid and the impact is not consistent ether

[tgtaylor]

Roadside Carnival #2 - Oakland, California 2017.



Thomas

[andreios]

Andreios: thank you. Fresh, may be 2-3 prints and I keep replenishing probably more often than suggested. I clearly saw the breaking of the tonality during toning. May be this is the effect of thiourea or tartaric acid and the impact is not consistent ether

You are using tartaric acid in the sodium citrate developer? If so, I think that might be the reason - it is also part of the borax dev. that I mentioned.. Try next time with just 20% sod. citrate (thats what I use) and see if there is any difference.

[tgtaylor]

Try a different toner. I used the Bostick & Sullivan Gold-Ammonium Thiocyanate POP formula on the above prints for 15 to 20 minutes and observed no breakdown in the print during toning.

Thomas

[terra_monk]

Try a different toner. I used the Bostick & Sullivan Gold-Ammonium Thiocyanate POP formula on the above prints for 15 to 20 minutes and observed no breakdown in the print during toning.

interesting ... First I played with gold-thiourea toner from Sandy"s article which does not mention Sodium Chloride. I was also using thiourea sourced locally in Toronto. Only after I bought thiourea from B&S and later followed Clerc's Thiourea Gold Toner mixing steps I managed to get acceptable results, but not very repeatable with various degree of grainy/broken surface.

Andreios, I mentioned salt in the gold toner formula. using 20% sod. citrate developer.

Thank you!

[tgtaylor]

Both Sandy's and Clerc's formulas call for 2% sodium chloride. Decide what outcome you are looking for and use the developer/toner combination that will deliver that outcome. For the preceding images wanted a brownish/black tonality and choose an ammonium citrate/sodium acetate developer and the B&S POP toner. Mixing the B&S toner for a couple of prints is mathematically tricky so make sure you have your dimensional analysis down beforehand.

Thomas