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  #11  
Old 20th November 2017, 09:48 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Originally Posted by skellum View Post

If you're not seeing any difference in your prints, PM me an address and I'll fire you a couple of 'before and after samples' to compare your results to.
Cheers!
This may be more difficult to do on the forum, Skellum but if it is possible to demonstrate before and after prints that way for the rest of us who are yet to try Selenium I'd appreciate it if you have the time.

Thanks

Mike
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  #12  
Old 21st November 2017, 02:36 AM
KevinAllan KevinAllan is offline
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I wrote a blog article comparing the results, from the same negative, of untoned, selenium toned, sepia toned, selenium then sepia toned, and sepia then selenium toned. This series was repeated with two different developers and two different RC papers.

The selenium toner used was Fotospeed SL20, diluted 1:19. This is a fairly low dilution which is intended to provide archival permanence and to strengthen the dmax, but not to provide noticeable colour changes. However, when viewing the results, you can see some difference.

The article is at https://kevinthephotographer.wordpre...rkroom-prints/ - readers can click on the comparative images to see them larger.
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  #13  
Old 21st November 2017, 09:48 AM
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pentaxpete pentaxpete is offline
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WoW !! What a great lot of help ! Thanks Folks ! Well I have some 'Fibre'papers left including Kentmere Bromide 10x8" Glossy ( Old!) and some old Agfa too given to me by a local School so will continue on next printing session. I seem to have LOST 3 years of 'personal' negatives ( as against 'Press Negs') 2013 -2015 -- where ARE they ??? !!! I have earlier years OK . Skellum -- I will send my address -- very kind to help.
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  #14  
Old 21st November 2017, 11:10 AM
Alan Clark Alan Clark is offline
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If anyone who hasn't used selenium is thinking of giving it a go, I would suggest first trying it on Ilford Warmtone Fibre paper. Selenium toner is capable of making big changes to the appearance of prints done on this paper, and can really enhance and improve the look of the print. Because changes to this paper are very noticable when you selenium tone it, you have a good chance to learn how to control selenium to get the kind of print that you dream about.
If you use MGD 4 RC paper the effects of selenium will be minimal, and hard to assess. I have also found that selenium toner doesn't have much effect on the old MGD 4 fibre paper. Selenium probably works very well on the warmtone fibre papers made by Foma, but I've not used these.
Experts seem to say that you selenium tone a print after it has been washed and dried. Best candidates for this are probably prints that look a little bit light. If a print looks just right before you selenium tone it, it will probably end up slightly too dark and with blocked -up shadows after toning it. Don't take my word for this. Try it and see what happens! With a bit of planning you can prepare a few prints specifically for selenium toning, and others to be left untoned for comparison. I suggest that when you have made a print that you judge will look good when it has dried, that you make two more at the same time, for toning. Then make two more at 10% less exposure, and another two at 15% less exposure. Write the details on the back before they go in the developer!
Later, when you selenium tone these prints you can tone for different times to see what effect you like best. I suggest using a 1:10 selenium solution to start with. Put a pre-soaked print in this and watch it like a hawk. As soon as you see ANY change, ie darkening of tones or change of colour, whip it out and run it in water. Note how long it was in the selenium for. Now tone another print that was exposed for the same time. Tone it for twice as long as the first. It will probably have more colour.
If you proceed like this will end up with a little batch of prints that will yield lots of useful information, but only if you wrote full details om the back!!
I've got three prints from the same negative in front of me now all done on Ilford Warmtone fibre paper. The first wasn't toned. It looks good, with nice open shadows and deep blacks. The second got 10% less exposure, and was selenium toned 1:10 for 1.5 minutes. Compared with the untoned print, despite getting less exposure, this one has deeper blacks and slightly more overall contrast, which really lifts the print. Colour change is slight because this print was pulled as soon as a change was spotted.
The third print had 15% less exposure than the untoned print. This one got twice as long in the toner as print no. 2. 3 minutes. It has a noticable purple/warmth. And despite getting 15% less exposure than the untoned print, its shadows are slightly deeper, and it has more overall contrast. Both the selenium toned prints look better than the untoned one, which is actually a nice print -about as good as I could make it. And the toned prints have different qualities, because one has more colour than the other. My son has just come in and I asked him to look carefully at the three prints and say which one he likes best. He picked the warmest toned selenium print. Then I asked him ehich he likes least,and he picked the untoned print. Bingo!
If by now you are thinking that to do selenium toning you need plenty of money to waste expensive paper, and lots of time on your hands, then you may well be right. But what do you want? A dozen pretty good RC prints of different subjects, or one print of of stand-out quality from a special negative?
We all have to make up our own minds on this, but there is no doubt that selenium toning can be the icing on the cake.

Alan
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  #15  
Old 21st November 2017, 02:24 PM
Michael Michael is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by skellum View Post
Hi Pete.
Selenium toning is worth mastering. It appears that the idea it improved archival qualities was wrong. For that, you really want a sulphide toner.
Colin, could you provide a reference for this? I'd like to follow it up for my own interest, as I have a host of 7x5 contacts that fall under this.
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  #16  
Old 21st November 2017, 05:39 PM
Michael Michael is offline
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Colin - Scrub my last request: I have Tim Rudman's book and now see exactly what to read there. I'm glad you pointed this out.
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  #17  
Old 21st November 2017, 07:02 PM
Lostlabours Lostlabours is offline
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Warm-tone papers have a greenish tinge, when you selenium tone this turns ato a warmer reddish colour it's subtle but noticeable,

This link is to a Fomatone Classic 131 FB warmtone paper in ID-78 and Selenium toned
(scroll down the page) alongside a neutral Grey scale.

Ian
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  #18  
Old 21st November 2017, 07:42 PM
Alan Clark Alan Clark is offline
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Here is another way of looking at the advantage you get from using selenium toner.
1. You make a print on warmtone fibre paper that looks very nice when wet and straight out of the fixer.

2. Experience tells you that this will "Dry Down"; i.e. those lovely delicate highlights will look too dark when the print has dried.

3. So you make your final print with 10% less exposure. This preserves the delicate highlights when the print has dried. But what about the lower values? They don't dry down. They looked great in the first print, but in the minus 10% print they don't look deep enough.

This is where a light application of selenium toner comes in very useful. It darkens the shadow areas of a minus 10% print down to the values they had in the first print. Highlights stay bright.

Alan
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  #19  
Old 22nd November 2017, 08:22 AM
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skellum skellum is offline
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This may be more difficult to do on the forum, Skellum but if it is possible to demonstrate before and after prints that way for the rest of us who are yet to try Selenium I'd appreciate it if you have the time.

Hi Mike, not been here for a couple of days.
I was actually offering to send Pete couple of prints physically, rather than try to put them online. You're right about the problem of trying to illustrate it online- you would need to do an accurate colour scan of the B&W print, and hope the viewers monitor was accurate enough to show the differences. Somewhere on here I have an album of panoramic images all printed on Ilford MG RC paper. I used RC so they would all dry flat for scanning, and because they were going online (I used FB for any print exchange prints). Some are untoned, some had selenium, and some Viradon. You have to look hard to see the colour change on the selenium prints, whilst the Viradon is fairly obvious.
Cheers!

Last edited by skellum; 22nd November 2017 at 08:23 AM. Reason: shocking spelling!!
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  #20  
Old 22nd November 2017, 11:32 AM
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Rob Archer Rob Archer is online now
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The thing I like about selenium toning is that it's subtle. I note the OP is using Kentmere Bromide paper. This is a lovely paper (if you can live with only one grade) that can be very cold and gives really rich shadows. It hardly responds to selenium at all though. You'll notice the blacks darken very slightly and initially it will make the print even 'colder'. After about 20 minutes (with the toner diluted 1:9) the shadows will take on a slightly 'plummy' tone. I'm not personally keen on this but your opinion may be different. Enjoy experimenting!

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