Actual metallic silver on print

[Tim Meisburger]

Would dilute fixer achieve the same thing, or is it the altered chemical composition of exhausted fixer?

[Sevo]

Would dilute fixer achieve the same thing, or is it the altered chemical composition of exhausted fixer?

It is due to the fixer being so silver overloaded that silver precipitates on surfaces. Crystallization needing a seed and silver crystals being a better seed for silver than other solids, it often follows the pattern of the developed image more so than blank areas of the paper/film or tray wall - but the latter get stained as well.

Dilute fixer will obviously overload faster - but going by the fact that the phenomenon is almost unknown to photographers that only use modern (relatively dilute, acidic) photographic ready-made fixers, I suspect that over-used very dilute fixer does not have the required concentrations, and won't do as a economic way to achieve the effect. If you want to toy with it, try a pure hypo solution (no acids or buffers added) saturated by feeding it with leaders and rejects or a box of fogged paper...

[Cor]

Slightly related but there is an obscure toner (re)described (original from an old Norwegian photo journal AFAIK)by Judy Siegel in her Issue 7: The World Journal of Post-Factory Photography as a Plating-Out toner for Silver Gelatin (SS toner), which gives a mirror like appearance of a print, very funky and unique, not for every image.

Best,

Cor

[Tim Meisburger]

Great! I have a process now. I will use a Paterson Orbital, so can get by with just 50ml of fixer, which should overload quickly. I will also use plain hypo. I'll fix two prints with 50ml using an acid stop, then try a third with no stop and see if that works. If not, I'll skip the stop and try again, and see if I cannot get the effect with the third or fourth sheet. I'll give it a try Saturday and report back.