The Salt Print Thread

[tgtaylor]

I reprints mine yesterday morning to get rid of the processing stain visble in the upper left hand corner. This time I came it perfect with a better tone (sepia). Gong to mount and frame it after work today.

Thomas

[Kimberly Anderson]

You are picky. I like that. I am refining my latest salt-print too and spent seven hours yesterday tweaking the silver, the gold toning and the processing. LOOOOTS of variables with salt. No two are alike, that is for sure.

[Shailendra]

Hi Kimberly - nice image. Perhaps the lightening in the second image is due to the image not being toned? I tone all my prints and never get a shift either in color or tone.

Here's an image that I recently printed:



The top half was burned-in a for a couple of minutes while dodging the bottom half and toned with gold and platinum.

Thomas

Thomas, this is beautiful, great work!

[tgtaylor]

Thanks Shailendra.

I printed this as a salt print a couple of months ago but didn't burn in the top-half which, IMM, left it unbalanced. I was explaining that to Jim Andrada at a Starbucks in San Francisco when he was in town and he spilled a little coffee on it which wiped right off. The 2d printing came out perfect.

Thomas

[Kimberly Anderson]

So...help me with this one...

Longer exposures have more contrast?

[mdm]

Yes, short exposures have less contrast, long more and apparently the extremes have reciprocity failure too.

[mdm]

Whole Plate on Fabriano

[Kimberly Anderson]

Yes, short exposures have less contrast, long more and apparently the extremes have reciprocity failure too.

Ok, cool. In an attempt to squeeze some more contrast out of my negative/print I'm switching to 12% Silver Nitrate down from 20%. In my first test last night I am seeing that the 12% is significantly 'slower', thus will need a longer exposure. I was wondering if the longer exposure would add contrast, so I am cautiously optomistic.

Thanks mdm!

[Jim Noel]

Longer exposures add contrast. Not huge amounts, but some. This is also true of film.

[mdm]

According to Ellie Young in her book increasing silver from 12 to 15% increases contrast, prints cooler , improves highlight detail and looses shadow detail. 20% is the same again, so you may be out of luck. Less light though could help and so could a tiny amount of potassium dichromate.