Selenium Toner Impact On Negatives

[ronald moravec]

Look up Victor`s Intensifier. It will intensify far more than selenum and can be washed off with fixer. Uses mercury something or other so it is toxic. Keep you fingers out.

Of course so is seleneum.

[Brian Ellis]

With all due respect, Duane is incorrect. Selenium toning doesn't alter the overall contrast of a negative, it increases only the highlight density leaving the midtones and shadows unchanged. For that reason there's a big difference between toning a negative to increase highlight contrast and jacking up the contrast when printing VC paper (or for that matter jacking up the contrast by moving to a higher grade of paper). Using a higher contrast paper, whether VC or graded, has a major effect not only the highlights but also the shadows and midtones of the print. Selenium toning negatives remains a very viable idea in the right situation and and isn't outdated by VC paper.

[David A. Goldfarb]

It also improves the archival qualities of the negative. Selenium toning is standard procedure for archival microfilming, as I understand it.

[Michael Veit]

" it increases only the highlight density leaving the midtones and shadows unchanged. "

Brian, with all due respect, this simply isn't true. Try this: take a junk negative, stick a piece of elctrical tape across an area where it'll mask the full range of negative densities and selenium tone. When you pull the tape off, you'll see that even lower densities were affected. Yes, proportionally, the highlights (in print) are jacked up more, but to say midtones and shadows remain the same just isn't so.

[paulr]

"Look up Victor`s Intensifier. It will intensify far more than selenum and can be washed off with fixer. Uses mercury something or other so it is toxic. Keep you fingers out."

Understatement of the day. You probably don't want anything containg mercuric chloride anywhere near your house. It is more dangerous than anything else used in photography. Selenium isn't in the same league. You would need training that goes way beyond what you can get from a message board to safely handle it. The chemical safety coordinator at my college summmed it up when I asked him about it. "Look--you can work with uranium if you want, with hydrogen sulfide, even with cyanide. But I don't want any mercury compounds on this campus."

"It also improves the archival qualities of the negative. Selenium toning is standard procedure for archival microfilming, as I understand it."

This has been the assumption, but I don't know if it's been demonstrated. Wilhelm's tests pretty much unravelled the idea that selenium does much for print longevity.

"When you pull the tape off, you'll see that even lower densities were affected. Yes, proportionally, the highlights (in print) are jacked up more, but to say midtones and shadows remain the same just isn't so."

Michael is right. Selenium raises contrast, with no change in the shape of the curve that I can see.

[paulr]

Wilhelm's tests may be imperfect (as any simulation will be) but I don't see how they're exactly the same thing as megadosing a rat. Physiology and simple chemical oxidation are different worlds.

At any rate, if assumptions about Selenium's archival powers are true, you would expect a selenium toned print to at least stain more slowly or to a lesser degree when immersed in a sulfide or gold toner. Well, it doesn't. It will tone to a different color, but that's it. This is relevant, because sulfide toning is really just a controlled way of tarnishing the silver in the same way that atmospheric pollutants do. Gold toning, however, seems to have some protective qualities.

Kodak doesn't cite the source of their information, nor do they reveal any methodology. Wilhelm discloses everything. And even though simulations like his are imperfect, they seem to be considered reasonable by conservator. And they're consistent with the experience of anyone who's sulfide toned a selenium print.

[Aaron van de Sande]

Could someobody provide a link or quote from Wilhelm? Every article from him seems to indicate the selenium toning is helpful.

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/HW_Book_16_of_20_HiRes_v1a.pdf
http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/HW_Book_17_of_20_HiRes_v1a.pdf

Even Ansel indicated that sulfide toning is 'more archival' than selenium. This is old knowledge.

[Aaron van de Sande]

bulletin board did not parse newline correctly

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/HW_Book_16_of_20_HiRes_v1a.pdf

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/HW_Book_17_of_20_HiRes_v1a.pdf

[paulr]

Sulfide toning would be a "100 lbs of sugar" argument if you expected it to have zero effect on a selenium toned print. It is reasonable, however, to expect selenium to have SOME effect on the degree or rate of toning. Gold toning has some effect. Sulfide toning itself does. But selenium does not.

There are a lot of common sense assumptions in photography that have never been tested in any rigorous way. A lot of them are about conservation. And some of them have not held up so well. Selenium MAY offer some archival protection. But so far, the one attempt at verifying this that I've seen has come up with nothing. If Kodak sends you anything that resembles a study, please post it.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that Kodak could get sued if their information is wrong. They aren't promising immortal prints, or even prints that will last X number of years. It's hard to imagine that someone could prove they made a specific archival claim that was false and that caused recoverable damages. There are so many variables that you'd have a hard time in court proving anything.

[kthompson]

brown toner is used more with microfilm, and now Silverlock is the things being used in reformatting , although I'm not really sure what they use in the archives of the place I work for. I don't work in that building so I'm not really sure what they use... The archive tech lab (separate from microfilm lab) used brown, polytoner and selenium for years and in the museum lab, we use mainly selenium, polytoner and sepia--mostly for exhibit prints. In the past I have used the discontinued Kodak film, SO-132 for duplicating old negs, and with that film they specified using Selenium. That film and it's predecessors had some longterm stability problems that pretty much ended it's use in archives. Kodak claimed to have solved this problem by this newer version of the film and the inclusion of the selenium and by omitting hypo clear from the processing sequence. By the time SO-132 came out, most archives had quit using it because it's tonal response was pretty bad as well. I have to work with dupe negs on occasion that were made on these films going back from about the mid 50s through the late 70s and they have suffered pretty badly compared to the Plus-X and Super-XX and Ektapan, Pro Copy etc that was also shot at the time--which in many cases looks as good as day one at 50, 60 yrs old. Even 70+ yr old nitrate film looks better many times that this SO dupe film.

Here are some links though for those wondering about those selenium/sulfur microfilm tests...fwiw, I was at a smithsonian conference about ten years ago, and James Reilly from the IPI presented some of this info about selenium and sulfide toners in regards to managing photo collections in archives & museums. During one of his talks, he mentioned that "everythig" should be toned in sulfide or selenium toners.

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/abbey/an/an12/an12-5/an12-507.html

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/1993/0376.html

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/1997/1159.html

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/1993/0386.html