Garden Bistro - Wine print

Very nice image and toning. I've used Caffenol, but never Winenoll. What recipe did you use?

Welcome back to the darkroom, Tom! Glad to see you making prints again. Very happy making.

I take it that the subtle but very suitable reddish hint in the print is the red wine. Am I right and if so I presume I should describe it as staining rather than chemical toning? Like TheToadMen I am curious about the recipe and how long the stain might last.Thanks

Actually, the reddish tint is more due to the selenium toning than anything else. My recipe is like a standard Caffenol C, with wine substituted for the coffee/water components. As with Caffenol, I also add a few ml of old brown to help overcome the latency threshold of the paper. The formula works fine without the old brown, but it takes a lot longer, and depending on the paper, it then becomes more prone to chemical staining. So in answer to your question, I think it is more tone than stain, and the images seem to have good archival permanence. I've only been doing wine prints for just over two years, but I've got Caffenol prints going back to 2007 that show no appreciable fading. Time will tell if the prints are truly archival. Thanks for looking.

What is "old brown"? A shot of used Rodinal or so?

Exactly. Well... used paper developer, but that's the idea. Lith printers do that as well. I believe it has a seasoning effect on the developer, or something to that effect.

Thanks Toffle. I hadn't realised that selenium was involved. I think you are saying that as red wine doesn't contribute anything to the prints look i.e. if it was straight caffenol without red wine it would look the same. I suppose that still leaves the question of whether the red wine creates the kind of developer that then reacts with selenium in a way that straight water wouldn'tAny thoughts? Thanks

No chemist I, but my take on the Caffenol experience (and by extension, wine-ol) is that while they are non-standard developers, it is nonetheless a traditional silver process, as opposed to an alt process. Both Caffenol and wine produce prints that take selenium toning quite readily. As a matter of fact, un-toned the prints are often indistinguishable from traditional silver prints. (other times, they can get quite funky, depending on the paper involved)