Selenium Toner Impact On Negatives

[Bruce E. Rathbun]

So what is the deal with Selenium Toner boosting negative contrast? After research I find there are so many different claims for dilutions . What is more confusing is the claim that a dilution around 1:32 will increase density while 1:3 will increase contrast. Did I miss something? Increased desnity goes hand in hand with increased contrast. Unless the 1:3 will only impact highlights. Can someone please shed some light here?

-Bruce

[Brian Ellis]

Selenium toning increases the density only of the highlights, the shadows and midtones remain unchanged. And yes, the effect of a change in density is a change in contrast. I'm not aware that different dilutions operate differently, I believe the only effect of a highly diluted solution would be to increase the time it takes for the selenium toning to have its maximum effect. I can't imagine why anyone would use a 1-32 dilution. I've always mixed one part selenium to one part hypo clearing agent because that's what John Sexton teaches in his workshops. At that dilution and around 68 degrees ten minutes is about the longest time you need, anything longer than that will have no effect. There's a discussion of selenium toning negatives in Ansel Adams' book "The Negative."

[David A. Goldfarb]

I find 1:3 for 8 minutes will get you about a one stop expansion in contrast. The time may vary with different films and depending on the type of fixer used.

[Bobby Sandstrom]

Bruce, Brian gave you a condensed version of the John Sexton method. As John states in his workshop book, be sure the negative is thoroughly and properly fixed else it will be irreparably damaged. After toning, place neg in hypo clearing agent for 3 min then wash and dry as you normally do.

[Duane Polcou]

Selenimum toning negatives to increase their overall contrast is perhaps a viable process with
graded papers, but given the extreme contrast flexibility of VC papers, expressly their ability to produce quite a high contrast print, or portion of a print, this toning procedure is outdated.

Ansel liked to tone, aka "intensify", just part of his negatives. The bottom half of his "Moonrise Over Hernandez" negative was sorely underexposed (he exposed the neg to keep detail in the moon - read "Examples: the Making of Forty Photographs") so this area required intensification. By year 2005 VC head/VC paper standards, however, I feel this procedure would be unnecessary.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

this toning procedure is outdated.

I beleive Bruce is trying out pt/pd and for that selenium toning of negatives can be a god send. It might be the difference from being able to print the negative to just looking at it and wishing you could... :-)

[brook]

How does this work on pyro stained negs? Does it just affect the silver?

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Yep, it works very good with pyrocat stained negatives, I have never tried it with PMK or ABC, but I see no reason why it could not work.

[paulr]

For a while, I was doing this for routine N+ development. It worked fine, but today I use developer-only methods. I wouldn't hesitate to use selenium if for whatever reason I ended up with a neg that was too soft by mistake. I did find that using selenium left the grain size alone, while increasing development seems to increase graininess. Not an issue for me with t-max, but i was mostly using this treatment on agfa pan.

My formula was:

Rapid Selenium Toner: 110 ml

Hypo Clear Stock: 180ml

Water to make: 1.0 L

This is just a 1:8 solution of selenium in hypo clear. It eliminates separate hypo clear and washing steps.
After fixing, rinse negs for 5 minutes. then agitate in the intensifying hypoclear solution for 5 minutes. Beyond this, I have not seen much additional intensification. In general I saw an increase in contrast equal to N+1 or N+1.5. Capacity is about 40 sheets of 4x5 per liter.

[paulr]

one more thing ... I urge caution if you plan to experiment with anything stronger than 1:8. I have had negs wrecked by selenium solutions that were too strong. as always, YMMV ...