Albumen: Can I use citric acid in place of acetic?

[adelorenzo]

I thought I might try a few albumen prints this winter. All the formulas I've seen call for mixing the albumen with glacial acetic acid but it's something I don't have in my darkroom. I do have lots of citric acid available, just wondering if I could try to substitute. Most recipes call for 28% acetic acid so would I try the same for citric?

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I have never made an albumen print, so I couldn't say for sure but because of my curious nature, I would give it a try it.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Yes you can use citric acid. Look up James Reilly's The Albumen and Salted Paper Book, which you should be able to download for free, for a thorough discussion of the issues involved and proportions. I got it off the old Stanford albumen site, which now redirects to here:

http://albumen.conservation-us.org/

 

[Barry S]

The acetic acid is used to help denature the albumen protein (in addition to the physical process of whipping). I agree, citric acid should work fine.

 

[adelorenzo]

Thanks everyone. I'll try the citric acid and post my results.

I checked out the albumen site and it's a great resource, thanks for posting David. I'm going to try to track down a copy of the actual book.

 

[Peter Schrager]

It's not doing Albumen..it's getting consistent results. the process is not hard. one of the most fun of the alternate processes.
have a good time !
best,peter

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

It's not doing Albumen..it's getting consistent results. the process is not hard. one of the most fun of the alternate processes.
have a good time !
best,peter

I agree. Getting consistent results with kallitype printing has been the challenge. Carbon printing is very laborious, but it's very consistent.