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Thread: When did selenium toning become popular?

  1. #1
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    When did selenium toning become popular?

    The thread title is my question. We have a separate thread here...

    http://www.largeformatphotography.in...llurium-Toning

    ...that mentions a 1910 German patent, so evidently knowledge of it goes very far back. But does anyone have a sense of when selenium started to be widely adopted in practice, and when it started to be promoted as more or less a standard of good practice for silver printing?

  2. #2

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    Re: When did selenium toning become popular?

    I've no data to support this, but my sense is that it became expected practice in the 1970s.

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    Re: When did selenium toning become popular?

    Anecdotally I think much of its popularity (and the widespread adoption of it as a de facto standard) has to do with Ansel.

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    Re: When did selenium toning become popular?

    I know it was being written about fairly widely in the 1970s, which is when I got started. Ansel is certainly a plausible candidate as a key influence. The only one of his technical books in my collection is the 1976 edition of Camera and Lens, so I don't have any sense of when he started to write about it and whether he dropped any hints as to where he picked up the bug.

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    Re: When did selenium toning become popular?

    Before the turn of the century, most of the toning was with gold or sulfide (or both) if you check the old books... I don't have access to my library right now, but selenium was a last century process (probably from the beginning)...

    Ansco's version was called "Flemish Toner" and I think I have seen ads for it from the 20's...

    Using it as a protective solution I think was postwar, but it sure got a boost from Ansel...

    Steve K

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    Re: When did selenium toning become popular?

    Speculating here: was the presence of significant amounts of atmospheric sulphur (and the various oxides thereof) from burning coal for everything in the late 19th century and early 20th significant in damaging untoned prints? Or did people just prefer the colour of the toned print? My 1905 reference doesn't (from memory) make any comment, just provides recipes. Apropos of which - it lists a platinum process that starts with half a pound of platinum metal...

    Neil

  7. #7

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    Re: When did selenium toning become popular?

    "Selenium toning was patented in 1910" per Tim Rudman's Toning Book

  8. #8

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    Re: When did selenium toning become popular?

    Over rated IMHO. I will only tone if this helps me to meet my goals for a given image - and will never ascribe to this to simply appease the sensibilities of uninformed collectors! (boy, did that feel great!)

  9. #9
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    Re: When did selenium toning become popular?

    Thanks to all for their thoughts so far. We've had plenty of discussion in other threads about what selenium toning does or doesn't do for prints and whether it's a good idea. Here I'm especially interested in sorting out the history.

    Another anecdotal observation: my impression is that Edward Weston didn't tone, and even Brett, a generation further on, mostly preferred not to. I'd speculate, with emphasis on speculate, that the practice wasn't so well established in Edward's time, while Brett was a man of strong opinions who would have been happy to thumb his nose at the conventional wisdom whatever it said. But can we come up with more concrete evidence on the evolution of practice?

  10. #10

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    Re: When did selenium toning become popular?

    I'd look at Adams' 1935 book "Making A Photograph"; it was his first technical manual. Following that, early editions of "The Print" from the 1950s. Certainly two influential publications.
    I don't remember where or when I learned to use KRST. But when I started making what we now call 'fine prints', the word was to tone after two fixing baths, KRST 1:31 in a hypo-clearing agent solution. That would have been in the late '70s. Of course in those days warm-tone papers, sepia toning, and other similar processes were seen as hopelessly old-fashioned, remnants of pictorialism and camera clubs.

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