Adox Variotone

[Vlad Soare]

Hi guys,

I've just made my first prints on Adox Fine Print Variotone, and it seems to me that something is not quite right. I made four identical prints, two in a warm tone developer and two in a neutral tone developer. Then tried to tone one of each in selenium.
All four are simply indistinguishable!
First, both developers produce an identical image, a very neutral one. There's no hint of a warm tone whatsoever. Not even a tiny bit.
Second, after more than an hour in selenium they haven't changed a bit! With Fomatone I used to see a change in tone after ten minutes, and it would tone to completion in half an hour.

It seems to behave just like a neutral tone paper.
What am I doing wrong?
Is this really a warm tone paper? :confused:

Thank you.

 

[Vlad Soare]

Update: after two hours in selenium, the darkest areas have changed to a chocolate brown tone. So it seems to work, but I guess I should use a more concentrated toner next time.
I found an older test print that I had made on Fomatone and never toned, and inserted it into the toner together with the Adox prints. It turned brown in half an hour, just like I expected.
So I guess Variotone requires a stronger toner than Fomatone. I'll try a lower dilution next time (right now I'm using it at the dilution recommended by the manufacturer, namely 1:20).

OK, so it seems that it does tone after all.
Now, if it also responded differently to different developers, like Polywarmtone used to, it would make me really happy.

 

[Vlad Soare]

I've noticed something else. While Variotone is somewhat slower than neutral tone papers, it's still noticeably faster than other warm tone papers I've worked with (namely Fomatone and Polywarmtone). As far as I know, the tone is influenced by grain size. The finer the grain, the slower the paper, the warmer the tone, and the more powerful the reaction to direct toners. If it's faster than "real" warm tone papers, then it must have coarser grain. This would explain why it requires a much stronger toner to react.

So I guess it's not really a warm tone paper in the usual sense; it seems to be a somewhat-warmish paper, so to speak. It can change its tone if you're determined enough, but it's still a far cry from Fomatone or Polywarmtone, which go from cold black to reddish brown if you just look at them crossly.

[sigh]I miss Polywarmtone... [/sigh]

Could someone recommend a formula for a warm tone developer that would work well with this paper? Overexposing and underdeveloping in a dilute developer doesn't seem to work - I've tried that, too.

Thanks.

 

[Anon Ymous]

Vlad, I'm wondering if the slow toning rate has anything to do with how much hardened the emulsion is.

 

[ath]

I got nice chocolate tones in harman warmtone 1+9. Not as brown as Polywarmtone, but clearly a warmtone paper. I think Polywarmtone was extreme, even for a warmtone paper.
Wolfgang Moersch, who was involved during design of the variotone has quite a bit of information on his website: http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/lang:en, for variotone: http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/galerie/variot.