Question about using gelatine for salt printing

[LAamLE]

Hello,
I am currently making my first salt prints.

I am currently trying out 2 recipes:
- 18g sodium citrate
- 20g ammonium chloride
- 9g gelatine
- 1l dist. water

- 20g sodium cirtate
- 20g ammonium chloride
- 1l dist. water

The recipe with the gelatine brings a little more contrast.
What surprises me is that I need more than double the amount of silver nitrate for the paper treated with gelatine. Also the coating (with brush) is much more difficult because the silver nitrate penetrates very fast into the paper felt.

Is this normal?

I am curious to get some answers.

Thanks
Andreas

[koraks]

I didn't notice this, but I generally omit the gelatin as I found it made virtually no difference at this concentration.

[LAamLE]

Thanks Koraks,
i did some more tests and will probably leave out the gelatine, the gain in contrast is not very high.

What I might want to try is potassium dichromate.
I am still hesitant because it is a chemical which has a certain risk. Also the disposal is probably problematic.
What is your experience?

Currently I work with digital negatives (Epson 3880) and I am not really satisfied with the tonal values / contrast.

Sorry for the bumpy English, but I hope the internet translator did a good job.

Thanks Andreas

[chuck461]

Hi Andreas
Koraks gave me a lot of great information when I tried Salt Prints for the first time. Here is a link.In post #4 he mentions his experience with Dichromate.

https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?143318-Salt-Prints-on-Vellum-or-Gampi&highlight=salt+print+vellum

[Vaughn]

Thanks Koraks,
...
I am still hesitant because it is a chemical which has a certain risk. Also the disposal is probably problematic.
What is your experience?
...

Treating waste dichromates with Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) with change the dichromate to a stable, much less toxic form that can go down the drain. The ascorbic acid is cheap and easy to buy on line.

[alexmuir]

Treating waste dichromates with Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) with change the dichromate to a stable, much less toxic form that can go down the drain. The ascorbic acid is cheap and easy to buy on line.

This is of interest to me. How do you treat the waste product? Do you simply add ascorbic acid powder to the Dichromate water? Is there a recommended proportion?
Thanks for any further info.
Alex


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[koraks]

I never got satisfactory results with dichromate or digital negatives (same printer as you are using) with salt prints. The way to go are real silver negatives with very high density range. It'll make those prints sing.