Ilford Galerie Fiber dev'd w/ Ansco 130, Neutol WA, or Dektol, thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Corran

Since this thread is about Ilford Galerie, I have to mention that my first try with thiorea dioxide, which from now on I'm going to abbreviate as ThO₂, has produced beautiful chocolate brown tones. Very interesting! And easy to make. Bleached with Farmers Reducer.

Shadow density and contrast doesn't appear to have changed much, which is unfortunate as that's what I was hoping to achieve, but I'll have to look closer after drying.

Edit - not exactly color correct due to lighting but you get the idea:

http://www.garrisaudiovisual.com/pho.../tho2tone1.jpg

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I don't think you can add density with sepia toners, but you can remove it in the highlights by changing the mix - but it also changes the color too. For the PF kit 10ml T(5% solution) + 40 SH(10% solution) in 500ml water gives dark brown tone and returns all density, while 40ml T + 10ml SH is more yellow-brown and doesn't return all density in the highlights (or does so much slower). So perhaps the FSA toner is similar if you alter the mix of ThO2 to carbonate.
Where did you find the ThO2?
And is the FSA tone different than the Thourea + Sodium Hydroxide tones? I read that the Sodium Carbonate forms Sodium Hydroxide when mixed with water so it may be very similar but safer to use.

If trying to lighten the print overall use diluted partial bleach or spot bleach, wash, fix, then full bleaching with toner.

Hi Corran,

Glad you liked it and made it work ! Are these prints dried ? Did you do a partial or a full bleach ? I do mostly do a partial bleach because the complete bleach boosts contrast too much in my hands.

You might try the Copper bleach, gives a bigger boost and deeper dark browns and sometimes a split to blueish mid tones..

Maybe it is paper depended, I tried mostly on Ilford MG FB papers, and some really old Zunow and Agfa..not on Galerie

Keep experimenting !

Good luck,

Cor

Eric, the tone (warm to neutral to cool) of the ThO₂ toner is modified by the ratio of the Th and SH from what I understand. More SH, cooler tones. I actually might add a bit more percentage of SH to my mix to get a slightly less sepia tone. Anyway, I'm not sure if there is density differences with changes in the ratio - I will have to try. I only used SH instead of carbonate because I had it here - I assume there's no difference in results at the same pH level, you'd just have to use more carbonate to get there compared to SH. But I'm no chemist so maybe I'm wrong. Oh, and maybe it wasn't clear, but FSA and ThO₂ are identical as far as I know. Or maybe there's a very specific recipe for what is truly "FSA" but for reference the mix I made yesterday was 20g Th, 30g SH, 2500mL of water (that's a lot but I was going to tone 16x20 prints so I needed it).

I bought the thiourea on eBay of all places for under $10 for 3oz. PF requires forms and and such to order it from. Not sure why, I honestly don't even know what thiourea is. Perhaps I should read the MSDS sheet again.

Cor - those prints were in the wash. The dry-down of Galerie seems to be very low and on drying they looked about the same. For that image I did a shorter bleach time. If complete bleach boosts contrast maybe I should have left it a bit longer. I will try again - but unfortunately all my fooling yesterday exhausted the reducer and so I ordered a bunch of bulk potassium bromide/ferricyanide to mix up as much as I need.

I tried MGIV, Galerie, and Warmtone. I liked the Galerie results here the most. I did not like the MGIV results at all - it is a subtle pink image, yuck. Warmtone was in between - kind of brown/magenta all over. Not great. I'm going to add 10g of SH and go for slightly less warmth - so 1:2:125 ratio for my mix. Maybe I'll also try an inverted mix and see if I can get cool blues. I wouldn't mind trying the copper bleach but don't have the materials at the moment.

Per wikipedia - "Thiourea dioxide is prepared by the oxidation of thiourea with hydrogen peroxide."
Thiourea is also known as Thiocarbamide; sulfocarbamide; sulfouren.

Thiourea can be ordered by the pound from Artcraft without the DEA forms and a bit cheaper than PF. Sodium Hydroxide is also available. PF has a nice kit if anyone wants to try their hand at sepia toning including the bleach.

Generally you make a 10% solution of Thiourea and 10% solution of Sodium Hydroxide and blend them to change the tones from yellowish (more T) to deep brown (more SH). The ratio of toner solution to water is about 10% - 12% for working strength (example 50ml T : 50ml SH : 900ml Water to make a working strength)
Some people get a magenta tone from higher concentration of SH, but I have not managed to do so yet.
I also like this method of mixing the 10% solutions because I can start with equal parts and then adjust the ratios if needed.

What I also found interesting in my recent experiments was that while split toning the highlights with a Sepia toner then using Selenium to complete development I had No magenta tone on Ilford and Bergger WarmTone papers. It was a true milk chocolate brown. I did fix between the toners so not sure if that had an impact.

More experimentation required.

Eric, we should compare prints some time! It would be interesting to see some of your experiments. Thanks!

Speaking of chocolate brown, MGIV when soaked in reducer for a long time and then toned in thiourea did this:

http://www.garrisaudiovisual.com/pho...2toning2ss.jpg

This was a test print from some months ago that was way too dark. The reduced and toned image is fantastic though and doesn't have that problem anymore.

I wonder if someone should make a "cool things I did in the darkroom today" thread" This is starting to be a bit of a blog on darkroom stuff so I apologize.