Thanks everyone.
In the future, I think that I'll dispense with Selenium toning. I can keep the bottle around for aesthetic purposes.
Thanks everyone.
In the future, I think that I'll dispense with Selenium toning. I can keep the bottle around for aesthetic purposes.
I always used 1:13. I have properly fixed, washed and toned prints that are 40-50 years old that still look fine.
It has always been my belief that the selenium couples around the silver metal forming a extra barrier of stability, depending on dilution and the amount of time the shadows and midtones do receive the selenium, maybe the highlights less.
I still use a 1:5 dilution with short time , I like the tonal change and I do believe there is added protection... nothing I have heard here on these posts convinces me otherwise.
I seldom use selenium as much as I once did for classic graded papers like Seagull G. But it's always been at 1:20. One of my current favorite papers, Ilford MG Cooltone, tones so ridiculously fast in selenium that even at that dilution, I can only use it for about 15 sec in cold water before it starts losing the intended cold tone. So it's just for sake of a bit of optional tweak after my primary gold toning. I've never been convinced Sistan does much of anything, though it might once have had a valid purpose with RC papers, which I don't personally use anyway. The whole emphasis on toning for sake of image permanence (versus esthetic considerations) stems way back to when industrial revolution style air pollution from coal pumped huge amounts of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants into urban air, which wreaked havoc with silver images. Hence the former popularity of deep sulfide toning as well as platinum prints and other alternative. I have some lovely brown albumen prints from that era, still in superb conditions, as well as some blue cyanotypes. By comparison, many of the old silver prints of various types show symptoms of partial failure.
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