When did selenium toning become popular?

[Oren Grad]

Merg, thanks very much for weighing in on this and helping us fill out some key pieces of the story.

[Greg]

Fred Picker certainly popularized selenium toning from the 1970s onward.

Fred Picker's method:
After processing and washing the prints....
Prints go into a tray of Sodium Thiosulfate (1 lb. box in a half gallon of water) for 4 minutes.
Then into a toning tray (6 ounces of Kodak Rapid Selenium toner, 1-1/2 oz. of Permawash, in a half gallon of water). Prints tone nicely in 3-6 minutes.
Final wash of 1/2 hour or more.

[Drew Wiley]

Wow. Health issues. Rubber gloves certainly aren't a new invention. I still use thick ones when developing prints, but thin nitrile disposable gloves for sheet film dev. Was hoping Merg would chime in with some historical details, and he did.

[Mark Sampson]

A minor point, but it's worth noting that Fred Picker learned his craft studying with Ansel Adams. (And I learned a lot from Picker's writing.)
A less-minor point is that recent research has shown that selenium toning, as practiced by many of us, does not actually protect the print as we'd been told. Full toning, to a brick-red color, does.
IIRC the studies were done by Doug Nishimura at the Image Permanence Institute, which is affiliated with Rochester Institute of Technology. I also think the topic was discussed at length in a thread on this forum, but I can't be bothered to look it up now.
For myself, I decided to continue my previous practice of toning my prints in a weak KRST solution. Because I like the way it looks, and because it may help with image stability. I'll do the best I can and hope that my prints survive as I made them. And if anyone is interested in my prints in a hundred years, the conservators will know how they were made, so they can restore them if they want. (Lots of 'ifs' in that last sentence!)

[bob carnie]

As I understand selenium toning - the selenium couples to the silver metal left in the paper. this adds an extra layer of protection .

[Oren Grad]

IIRC the studies were done by Doug Nishimura at the Image Permanence Institute, which is affiliated with Rochester Institute of Technology. I also think the topic was discussed at length in a thread on this forum, but I can't be bothered to look it up now.

The studies reported by Doug Nishimura are not the only ones.

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...erimental-data

Other discussion in these threads:

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...and-Permanence

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...Selenium-toner

[Tin Can]

Oren seems to have a handle on this.

20 years ago I printed only FB, no toning. Now I do only RC.

I may skip toning a while longer. I'll age my KRST.

Did I miss the film toning part?

[tgtaylor]

Prints go into a tray of Sodium Thiosulfate (1 lb. box in a half gallon of water) for 4 minutes.

Wow, that's about a 25% solution if I've done the math right! I would have never guessed that a 25% solution was needed if using ST alone for SG. By contrast my Kallitypes and Salts require only a 5% and 10% solution rsp.

Thomas

[Drew Wiley]

Utterly, utterly wasteful, Thomas. Sometimes Fred Picker did things the hard way. A 5% soln was plenty strong for even his own Brilliant brand of paper, and I've always dil the Kodak Rapid Selenium in plain water. There seems to be some mythology on this subject.

[Doremus Scudder]

Utterly, utterly wasteful, Thomas. Sometimes Fred Picker did things the hard way. A 5% soln was plenty strong for even his own Brilliant brand of paper, and I've always dil the Kodak Rapid Selenium in plain water. There seems to be some mythology on this subject.

Indeed. But AA started it all, advocating mixing the selenium toner with HCA to save a step. The only problem with that is that the HCA exhausts long before the toner (even if you regularly discard your toner, which I don't). I imagine this practice made a bit of money for Kodak; today it seems utterly irresponsible, not to mention uneconomical. For me it's: ... Fix 2, Toner, HCA, Wash. I save and replenish my toner.

Best,

Doremus