A day's work in the darkroom...
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OP
OP
I intend to split sepia and selenium tone the prints, as I love the look of that, although the current pure B&W prints are already gorgeous.
Good work!
OP
OP
No, this is just 35mm, but on T-Max 100. Actual image size is 28x42 cm, printed on slightly cut down 40x50cm Ilford Multigrade FB Glossy. In my experience, T-Max 100 in 35mm still prints really nicely with very fine grain on that size. I have achieved similar results with Plus-X 125. A large part of the lovely tonality though in the park photos, is not so much a result of technical aspects, but comes down to the right shooting conditions: spring greenerey, sun just breaking through slightly foggy conditions and a sporadic rain shower on the days of shooting. You can't shoot these kind of photos on every random day. I think I may have used a yellow filter as well, but not sure, these are negs of a backlog I wanted to print.
OP
OP
Marco, there are multiple methods for sepia toning. Which do you use? The color is quite lovely!
OP
OP
Final toning with selenium. I had hoped to achieve a bit more of a split tone result, with clearly cooler shadows, but I have obviously toned to long in sepia to achieve this.
The two lower prints are fully toned in selenium only.
The Italy prints are on another paper as well: old stock Kentmere with a more matte surface and very warm colored paper base.
The two lower prints are fully toned in selenium only.
The Italy prints are on another paper as well: old stock Kentmere with a more matte surface and very warm colored paper base.
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OP
OP
This was with an odourless ferricyanide bleach, thiocarbamide(thiourea) redeveloper, that had an extra bottle in the package containing a sodiumhydroxide solution. Adding more sodiumhydroxide shifts the color tone from yellow via sepia (used here) to brown-red.
Looking good and it's nice to have a productive day in the darkroom. I'm going to be trying my hand at split toning with sepia/selenium very soon but I messed up and bought the stinky type.
OP
OP
If you do want to have any hope of achieving a true split tone, I strongly recommend diluting the ferricyanide bleach considerably more than is usually written in instructions.
At full recommended strength, the bleaching is very fast and will continue during the intermediate rinse before redeveloping. This makes it really hard to prevent over-toning.
I think about 3-4x dilution compared to instructions might be a good starting point. Don't over do diluting either, as that may make the bleaching very slow.
I usually pull the print quite quickly from the bleach once highlights start to disappear. Then dump it in a clean water bath, agitate shortly, pull the print out and rinse with running water, while dumping and replacing the water bath.
You want to get rid of the concentrated bleach as soon as possible, as otherwise the bleach soaked in the paper will continue its job. In my experience, it takes about 5 full water bath replacements and some vigorous agitating to get rid of the bleach. You can then redevelop in peace.
Thanks for the tips as I definitely will want this particular print to be more on the mild side with the sepia highlights and do not want the shadows to be held back at all in the selenium, so I have a few sacrificial work prints for practice. And I should correct my previous post, it was more that I was ignorant of the odorless variety of sepia when I purchased Photo Formulary's sepia sulfide toner. I just recently became aware of the odorless thiocarbamide type.
OP
OP
I think for true split toning the dual bath bleach / redevelop has the advantage over a one bath sulfide toner that you can more or less see how much of the silver in the print is going to be sepia, and how much will be retained for the cold tone selenium shadows.
That said, I would recommend pulling the print from the bleach even before the highlights have fully bleached, as otherwise it is very likely the shadows will have bleached to far to leave enough untoned silver for the selenium toner to act on and achieve a true spilt tone effect. You really need to leave significant black silver in the bleached print's shadows.
I did manage it in this print, but it is still quite hard to achieve a true split tone with warm highlights and cold shadows: https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/park-groenendaal.28897/
Very pretty and indeed an effective split-tone effect!
The older R.I.P papers like MGIV, Kentmere FB and Oriental all split toned better IMO than today’s papers. Marco’s link is a perfect example. You could hit those papers a litter harder so to speak and they wouldn’t run away on you as much as Ilford Classic does. But I believe Classic has more depth than those older papers. You just have to be delicate with it. Like Marco said, dilute the bleach way way back. Sometimes if I use a cold developer like Blue or add PMT to LPD I get a very nice split in a very light thio sepia without selenium toning. Or if I do selenium after the sepia it’s for 30-45sec at 1:19. Too much longer and it starts to change the color contrast between warm and cool.
Loving this thread Marco. We as a community don’t show enough of our prints from the darkroom!
Loving this thread Marco. We as a community don’t show enough of our prints from the darkroom!
Thanks for that example, that looks like a nicely done split tone. I'm wondering about the decision point on when to pull the print. Is it best to pull the print based just off the important print high values or to pull the print based off the important print middle values and to just accept whatever level of bleaching you get in those upper print values? Is this an incorrect way of looking at it?
OP
OP
This is not an exact science, more like art
. Accept the lucky coincidences and differences between prints. It will be somewhat easier to control with diluted bleach though.But as to recommendations: If your middle tones start to significantly bleach, you're way to late with pulling the print: it will be sepia all over.
For a true split tone, I think you need to pull it from the bleach even before your highlights are gone. It could be just a few seconds in the bleach. I was certainly to late when I let the highlights dissapear in these latest prints, see the sepia results above, where there is no real sign of the colder selenium toning.
And remember: the bleaching will continue until you managed to properly wash out the first load of it after just pulling it. So even if you think you may have pulled it to early, it may turn out just right.
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I guess this basically says what has been on my mind which is how to protect the mid-tones during the bleach process..........it will be interesting. Thank you.
MattKing
Moderator
FWIW, I've also experimented with split toning in the reverse order - starting with a partial selenium toning procedure, and finishing with sepia toning.
Doing it that way also involves an educated guess about when to pull from the first bath, except the visual clues are even more subtle.
It is hard to describe how the result looks (slightly) different, but it does.
Doing it that way also involves an educated guess about when to pull from the first bath, except the visual clues are even more subtle.
It is hard to describe how the result looks (slightly) different, but it does.
OP
OP
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