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Thread: Darkroom Toned images

  1. #21

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    Re: Darkroom Toned images

    What would be interesting is a warm, chocolate-y shadows with brilliant, almost cool-toned highlights.
    Try toning a lith print in strong selenium (1+4) for a minute, followed by gold until the highlights are neutral. This achieves more or less precisely what you describe here.

    But more importantly, the half-tone-then-redevelop method gives a subtler overall toning effect.
    But does it also work better/differently than partial bleaching and then thiourea redevelopment? To be honest, I don't see much in the middle picture that couldn't be achieved with just partial bleaching and then sepia redevelopment.

    I've done quite a bit of experimentation with toning lately. One of my favorites turned out to be a warm sepia followed by strong selenium on a cold-tone paper.

    Esearing gives some excellent points as well - you can vary the tone of thiourea sepia dramatically by varying the thiourea:NaOH ratio. In addition, if you combine it with selenium toning, there is a distinct difference between sepia followed by selenium or the reverse. First selenium and then sepia tends to give more yellowish/bland tones (even with a purple/brown sepia 'setting') while sepia followed by selenium shifts the tones more towards magenta and purple brown. By varying the bleach time/depth, the thiourea:NaOH ratio and the addition of selenium before/after sepia, you can get an almost infinite gamut of tones in the brown-yellow-purple/magenta spectrum.

    If you also throw in partial/soft development, polychrome development (cf. Wolfgang Moersch) or lith printing in the mix, and add gold toner to your repertoire, the possibilities become so extensive that they are virtually impossible to chart in human lifetime. Particularly polychrome development can be interesting if you want to get more pronounced toning without the somewhat crude look of actual lith. For polychrome development, take a metol-only developer and develop until the deepest shadows are still significantly less than medium grey. Follow this by further development in a pure hydroquinone developer until the shadows are where you want them. Works best with warmtone papers; exposure needs to be about one stop more than for a regularly developed print. The effect, as said, is somewhere in-between regular development and lith, with quite warm tones in the untoned prints but without the graininess or excessive S-curve of lith.

    Ammonium chloride is an interesting additive that could be added to a lith or a regular developer, but as esearing notes, it tends to fog papers. The extent to which this happens can be acceptable, but I personally find it difficult to handle.

  2. #22

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    Re: Darkroom Toned images

    Koraks - The polychrome kit is not available in USA. We can get the easy Lith AB kit. Is that the same thing or does it lean more toward true Lith?
    The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
    http://www.searing.photography

  3. #23

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    Re: Darkroom Toned images

    esearing, polychrome is essentially two-bath development for prints: one bath is a regular lith developer, the other bath is a very slow developer that can either be a warmtone developer diluted excessively, or a developer formulated for this specific purpose. The lith A+B from the Moersch kit will be usable, but you'd need the other developer as well. I haven't personally tried the Moersch polychrome kit (or his Lith developers for that matter); I instead mix my developers from scratch. Check out this pdf and particularly the metol-only developer formula on the last page: https://www.moersch-photochemie.de/f...echniques1.pdf

  4. #24
    Corran's Avatar
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    Re: Darkroom Toned images

    koraks, you (and esearing) are correct that I need to mess with the ratio of thiourea and sodium hydroxide. I mixed up a big batch of 1:1:100 I think and have been using it ever since (it lasts surprisingly long).

    I've been lax in sitting down and learning about lith printing. Never done it nor do I really know much about it, but I think it's something I would use.

    There is always more to play with.

    To answer your question about partial bleaching - the thing about fully bleaching is that it reduces the overall density of the print. I first started using this toning method as a way to pull back overexposed prints. So I tend to bleach fully to do that, as partial bleaching doesn't reduce the density (sometimes adds to it).
    Bryan | Blog | YouTube | Instagram | Portfolio
    All comments and thoughtful critique welcome

  5. #25
    Pastafarian supremo Rick A's Avatar
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    Re: Darkroom Toned images

    40 Maples
    Foma 100/PMK
    Bergger Neutral/LPD selenium toned
    Rick Allen

    Argentum Aevum

    practicing Pastafarian

  6. #26

    Re: Darkroom Toned images

    That is a nice looking tone.
    --- Steve from Missouri ---

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