A question about farmers reducer staining

[_tf_]

Bit of a screwup today, I had 2L of what I thought was unused hypo from a few days ago, so mixed it up with 2L freshly made to make me 4L to use to fix post-bleaching with Farmer's reducer, alas, it must have been used (I usually keep it around for the rest of the day, in case print needs redoing, just have forgotten to pour it out). The whole print stained dramatically as soon as it hit the toner, you win some … But the stain is homogeneous, and the print is not entirely uninteresting, which made me wonder how colour fast the stain is, or whether I should expect it to change over time?

Hypo fail by tthef, on Flickr

[Doremus Scudder]

If prints are underfixed when they hit the toner, you end up toning the residual silver halides along with the image, hence the staining. It is likely permanent.

Note that one can use selenium toner as a test for residual silver for just this reason.

Doremus

[Drew Wiley]

Farmer's doesn't last very long without problems once A&B are mixed.

But yes, you might have lucked out with that particular print, which seems to wear the stain quite well. I like the way the road in the distance leads the eye way back to the pass; and the counterpoise of the curved log of the right side of the picture channels the eye down toward the same point. The warmish tone lends a sense of atmospheric depth. I often like to use brown sulfide toner that way, but very subtly and differentially in the scene, that is, in a very nuanced split tone effect, to give an impression of dimensionality and distance. Really nice overall tonality it would seem, though the web is always somewhat deficient showing the real thing. Nice composition with a lot going for it throughout.

[_tf_]

If prints are underfixed when they hit the toner, you end up toning the residual silver halides along with the image, hence the staining.

Thank you, that makes sense, I think I understand better now what the reducer actually does!

[_tf_]

Farmer's doesn't last very long without problems once A&B are mixed.

But yes, you might have lucked out with that particular print, which seems to wear the stain quite well. I like the way the road in the distance leads the eye way back to the pass; and the counterpoise of the curved log of the right side of the picture channels the eye down toward the same point. The warmish tone lends a sense of atmospheric depth. I often like to use brown sulfide toner that way, but very subtly and differentially in the scene, that is, in a very nuanced split tone effect, to give an impression of dimensionality and distance. Really nice overall tonality it would seem, though the web is always somewhat deficient showing the real thing. Nice composition with a lot going for it throughout.

Thank you. Unfortunately now that it dried it doesn't look entirely right, the tonality of the denser areas doesn't match the brown-orange background, it looks like one of those cheap fliers that are laser-printed on a coloured paper. I guess I could stick it back into the toner for longer, but I don't think it's worth the effort, I was going to re-print it in any case.

[Doremus Scudder]

You might try some light overall bleaching in a weak ferricyanide/bromide bleach to remove the stain. I will affect the lighter tones first. If you mix a weak bleach and bleach carefully, you might be able to clear the very lightest areas before adversely affecting the rest of the image (this is what I have done in the past with fogged paper). Try pulling the print and getting it into a water bath before you see any noticeable change, say after 15 sec. or so in the bleach. Return the print to the bleach until the desired effect is reached.

Or, just make a new print...

Doremus

[Drew Wiley]

Not all papers bleach evenly in Farmers, ending-hue wise.

[_tf_]

This one is fomabrom variant 112, it's pretty even, in daylight it looks like centerfold from the FT. I re-did the print yesterday using very fresh hypo and all went well.