#Silver gelatin print rc paper pro

The sepia toner used was Fotospeed ST20, diluted 1:19. If I had made exposure time alterations to individual prints, I probably would have then forgotten what adjustment had been made. I was aware of advice to produce a darker print where sepia toning is intended, and a lighter print where selenium toning is intended, but I decided to print them all at the same time so that the effects were visible in the reference set of images which would be my end results.

#Silver gelatin print rc paper pro

I chose an image, taken in the Yorkshire Dales at Norber, which would produce a reasonable result as a straight print without dodging and burning, as I didn’t fancy having to replicate the same dodging and burning sequence twenty times.Īll of the prints on the neutral paper were given the same exposure time of 7.2s, and all of the prints on the warm tone paper were given an exposure time of about 15s, in each case calculated using an RH Designs Analyser pro to produce the same tonal range. Note that I have included as separate options, sepia toning followed by selenium toning, and selenium toning followed by sepia toning, to see what difference the order of toning makes.Ī wet Bank Holiday Monday seemed like a good time to spend several hours in the darkroom so I set off to print 20 versions of the same image. A spreadsheet came in handy to list the options: It sounds like a small range of materials but when you work out all of the different variations of paper, developer, untoned, toning with one toner, and toning with two toners, there are actually twenty different options. I then have two types of toner available: Champion Multicontrast print developer (neutral tone).These papers are developed in one of two paper developers: Ilford Multigrade IV RC (a neutral-toned paper).I also wanted to understand better the interaction between paper choice, developer choice, and toners. Most of my darkroom printing is with two resin-coated papers: I’ve liked some of the results and not liked others but haven’t been able to remember what toning regime produced which results. I’m not entirely new to toning, having used sepia and selenium, but my useage has been a bit ad-hoc and not properly documented. I’m also trying to plan my use of toning so that I’m more likely to know in advance what toning I want to apply to a particular negative. It’s a bit of a chore but it will be worth it in the long run. I’m trying to spend more time in the darkroom and become more organised so for example I’ve been producing contact prints for most of my sets of negative to make it easier to pick out the ones I want to print. Welcome to my 114th blog post, which I will use to describe some toning experiments with gelatin silver darkroom prints.