Kallitype Stain?

sanking · Dec 30, 2006

philldresser said:
I have printed the same negative twice, both with step wedge and used different developers as discussed. The Borax print shows an increased tonal range compared to the Sodium Citrate developer between 1 and 1.5 stops. The range is measured (by eye) from first discernable non black to last discernable tone before white. This is 11 steps (3B - 14W) for sodium citrate and 13/14 steps for Borax/Rochelle (3B - 16/17W). The only other difference was dev temperature where the Borax solution was around 40C. Sodium Citrate was between 18-20C.

Here is one of the 5x4 pics deved on Wed in Sodium Citrate showing the rich chocolate colour entitled ' Unfolding'. This is the image with no staining. The Tonal range on the original goes to step 14, scan does not reflect this as I haven't mastered scanning yet

Well, that is certainly good rich Dmax, and you do not appear to have staining. BTW, temperature of developer does affect tonal range. You need to compare the borax and sodium citrate developers at the same temperature. Higher temperatures increase ES with most developers.

Sandy

Paul · Jan 4, 2007

I just tested the pH of my sodium citrate and it was quite alkaline -- something on the order of 8.5 or higher. I added about 5 grams of citric acid to 1.5 liters of the stock sodium citrate (no potassium dichromate added) and the pH is now acidic -- somewhere at or below 6.5. I left the dichromate out of the equation since I thought its orange color might confuse my reading of the pH strips.

Anyone know if the addition of the dichromate will alter the pH by much?

Sandy, thanks for the heads up on the pH of the developer. I just assumed it was acidic. Me and my assumptions....

-Paul

sanking · Jan 4, 2007

Paul said:
I just tested the pH of my sodium citrate and it was quite alkaline -- something on the order of 8.5 or higher. I added about 5 grams of citric acid to 1.5 liters of the stock sodium citrate (no potassium dichromate added) and the pH is now acidic -- somewhere at or below 6.5. I left the dichromate out of the equation since I thought its orange color might confuse my reading of the pH strips.

Anyone know if the addition of the dichromate will alter the pH by much?

Sandy, thanks for the heads up on the pH of the developer. I just assumed it was acidic. Me and my assumptions....

-Paul

Yeah, me to, for a long time. Then I tested it and got a big surprise. The trisodium type of sodium citrate (C6H5Na3O7), which is very common, is slighly alkaline, but you can make it work easily by adjusting pH with citric acid. I think there is also a disodium acidic type, but if so it is much less common in the marketplace.

Sandy King

Dug · Jan 4, 2007

New Type of Kallitype Stain Question

Now that the brightest Kallitype minds are talking about staining:

I only have a staining problem during the Pd toning of the Kallitype

Single coated Bergger COT320 or Rising Stonehenge paper
Sodium Citrate Developer
Citric Acid Clear

After rinsing and placing the print in the Pd toner from Sandy King's article, every once in a while a dark red contamination appears in the toning bath, spreads, and stains the paper in an even yellow/brown tone.

I have cleaned and monitored all the process and have dedicated a tray to the Pd toning to prevent contamination. Most of the time everything work out fine, but I get varying degrees of staining from the toning process.

Any thoughts?

sanking · Jan 4, 2007

Dug said:
Now that the brightest Kallitype minds are talking about staining:

I only have a staining problem during the Pd toning of the Kallitype

Single coated Bergger COT320 or Rising Stonehenge paper
Sodium Citrate Developer
Citric Acid Clear

After rinsing and placing the print in the Pd toner from Sandy King's article, every once in a while a dark red contamination appears in the toning bath, spreads, and stains the paper in an even yellow/brown tone.

I have cleaned and monitored all the process and have dedicated a tray to the Pd toning to prevent contamination. Most of the time everything work out fine, but I get varying degrees of staining from the toning process.

Any thoughts?

Never seen anything like this. Must be some kind of contamination from something outside of the normal chemicals we use in the process.

Sandy

donbga · Jan 4, 2007

Dug said:
Now that the brightest Kallitype minds are talking about staining:

I only have a staining problem during the Pd toning of the Kallitype

Single coated Bergger COT320 or Rising Stonehenge paper
Sodium Citrate Developer
Citric Acid Clear

After rinsing and placing the print in the Pd toner from Sandy King's article, every once in a while a dark red contamination appears in the toning bath, spreads, and stains the paper in an even yellow/brown tone.

I have cleaned and monitored all the process and have dedicated a tray to the Pd toning to prevent contamination. Most of the time everything work out fine, but I get varying degrees of staining from the toning process.

Any thoughts?

All I can say is that I've had similar problems with the paper turning yellow brown in the toning bath. Baffling and disappointing.

sanking · Jan 5, 2007

donbga said:
All I can say is that I've had similar problems with the paper turning yellow brown in the toning bath. Baffling and disappointing.

Turning yellow brown in a palladium/platinum toning bath? I have seen it with selenium, but never with gold, pallaidum or platinum.

Stock toner mixed with distilled water, rigiht?

Sandy

donbga · Jan 5, 2007

Sandy,

The short answer is yes.

sanking · Jan 5, 2007

donbga said:
Sandy,

The short answer is yes.

Don,

Is he long answer different from the short answer?

Sandy

Paul · Jan 5, 2007

Dug,

Not to ask the obvious, but you are fixing before toning, no? You omit that in the description of your processing steps. I assume you are, but if not that could be the source of your problem.

I have never used the palladium toner (was planning to do so soon though), just the gold and platinum and have never had any problems. In fact, the toning step often removes stains/imperfections that might linger after clearing.

Have you ascertained that the pH of your developer is acidic? How about the pH of your rinse water? Have you tried skipping the rinse and going straight to the clearing bath? How long do you clear, etc? All this is a way of asking if there might not be residual iron nasties that somehow offend the sensibilities of the socially superior palladium.

I will be sure to let you know if I encounter this problem when I try palladium as a toner. I probably will since I have encountered all the problems so far.

-Paul

donbga · Jan 5, 2007

sanking said:
Don,

Is he long answer different from the short answer?

Sandy

Sandy,

Only in that I seem to have tried to do everything to prevent kallitype staining, resulting in one problem or another. As noted in another thread I can't get ferric oxalate to dissolve completely this week. I wanted to try the Weston paper with kallitype printing.

The odd thing is if I use these toners with VDB I don't have the staining problem.

The brown paper stain looks like a scorched white shirt which doesn't occur until I tone with gold or palladium solutions mixed per your instructions in your unblinking eye article.

Dug · Jan 5, 2007

I am following the directions from Sandy's article (My copy from unblinkingeye.com is dogeared and stained even though it stays on the dry side of the darkroom).

I am following the procedure to the letter, except I have omitted the first rinse and go from sodium citrate developer directly to the citric acid clearing bath, and I change the clearing bath after every couple prints. Rinse after the clearing bath then into the toner - 50ml of freah toner solution for an 8X10 which is then discarded. I am mixing the sodium citrate developer from sodium carbonate and citric acid (fizz fizz fizz).

I noticed once the stain formed and spread like something dripped into it. Any ideas about what would cause a color change when dripped into the Pd toning solution described in Sandy's instructions?

Let me make it clear that I find Sandy's article an excellent resource and would encourage anyone who is having issues to try his method. It has been very helpful to me.

Paul · Jan 5, 2007

I would try a different toner and see if you get the same problem. If you do, the problem is not the toner. If you do not, the problem may lie with the palladium toner you mixed. You might also try ordering some sodium citrate rather than making it yourself to eliminate that as a suspect (though I admit that I do not see what harm it could be doing).

-Paul

Dug said:
I am following the directions from Sandy's article (My copy from unblinkingeye.com is dogeared and stained even though it stays on the dry side of the darkroom).

I am following the procedure to the letter, except I have omitted the first rinse and go from sodium citrate developer directly to the citric acid clearing bath, and I change the clearing bath after every couple prints. Rinse after the clearing bath then into the toner - 50ml of freah toner solution for an 8X10 which is then discarded. I am mixing the sodium citrate developer from sodium carbonate and citric acid (fizz fizz fizz).

I noticed once the stain formed and spread like something dripped into it. Any ideas about what would cause a color change when dripped into the Pd toning solution described in Sandy's instructions?

Let me make it clear that I find Sandy's article an excellent resource and would encourage anyone who is having issues to try his method. It has been very helpful to me.

sanking · Jan 5, 2007

donbga said:
Sandy,

Only in that I seem to have tried to do everything to prevent kallitype staining, resulting in one problem or another. As noted in another thread I can't get ferric oxalate to dissolve completely this week. I wanted to try the Weston paper with kallitype printing.

The odd thing is if I use these toners with VDB I don't have the staining problem.

The brown paper stain looks like a scorched white shirt which doesn't occur until I tone with gold or palladium solutions mixed per your instructions in your unblinking eye article.

Don,

Have you also tried going directly from the develpoer to the clearing bath? I recommend this if there is any question about the alkalininty of the rinse water.

I would add that recently I had an unexpected problem with staining that appeared in the final wash. The prints looked great coming out of the toner, with nice clear borders, but after a 20-30 minute wash they would develop a very pronounced stain. A very frustrating thing, because the wash is essential. I remedied this particular situation by takin the print from the toner to a 1% sodium sulfite solution and leaving it there for about 20 minutes before transferring to the wash.

BTW, I can report that the new Weston paper works very well with kallitype, as I would have expected since it works so nicely with pt./pd.

Sandy King

donbga · Jan 5, 2007

sanking said:
Don,

Have you also tried going directly from the develpoer to the clearing bath? I recommend this if there is any question about the alkalininty of the rinse water.

Sandy King

Yes I've tried that also. I mix sodium citrate fresh and adjust the pH to acidic. I've tried different trays and so forth. I dunno ....

Thanks for all your help though.

philsweeney · Jan 7, 2007

donbga said:
Yes I've tried that also. I mix sodium citrate fresh and adjust the pH to acidic. I've tried different trays and so forth. I dunno ....

Thanks for all your help though.

Hi Don,

I seem to recall you commenting before on stain issues. FWIW I apparently was lucky right from the start (paper is another story) and develop the print for 8 minutes and have never had stains. FO and sodium citrate from artcraft. My prints always look cleared before the citric acid.

donbga · Jan 7, 2007

Phil,

I actually made some kallitypes without staining the night before last using Weston DP paper.

I developed in fresh sodium citrate and cleared in two back to back baths of 4% citric acid with no running water wash.

I then toned the prints with sodium palladium, lithium palladium and gold followed by a brief wash before fixing.

Perhaps my luck has changed.

philsweeney · Jan 8, 2007

Hi Don,

Glad to hear about success! Did you double coat the Weston DP paper?

donbga · Jan 8, 2007

Phil,

No I single coated the paper, which seemed to be quite adequate.

Paul · Jan 13, 2007

This may be helpful. It's sort of a "no duh" realization, but true regardless.

I sometimes have trouble telling if all the stain has been removed during the clearing process. With two citric acid baths at 4 minutes each, a print I made last night looked cleared. I was very pleased with it and toned, fixed, washed and dried it. When I later looked at it under a clear white light, it was obvious that all the stain had not been removed in the area masked during exposure. I could see a slight shadow. So, I mixed up a fresh batch of citric acid solution and soaked it for 4 more minutes. Presto, it cleared.

So, one can successfully clear a print that is already toned and fixed. I believe that Sandy King mentioned this in his article or a post, but it never registered until yesterday. Also, it seems that the citric acid clearing bath does not last very long. I think I am going to start refreshing the first bath after every two prints.

Now off to retroactively clear that otherwise nice print I have in my "too good to throw away, to crappy to show anyone" pile.

-Paul

sanking · Jan 18, 2007

Paul said:
So, one can successfully clear a print that is already toned and fixed. I believe that Sandy King mentioned this in his article or a post, but it never registered until yesterday. Also, it seems that the citric acid clearing bath does not last very long. I think I am going to start refreshing the first bath after every two prints.

-Paul

I would add that the stain becomes more and more difficult to remove with time so if you have any prints that need post-processing to remove the stain you should try to clear them as soon as possible.

You may aslo find that other clearing agents may work better than citric acid for post-clearing, disodium EDTA or Kodak Hypo Clear or Heico Perma Wash, for example.

Sandy King

Paul · Jan 18, 2007

Sandy,

I definitely noticed this. The print that I had just processed when I realized it had not properly cleared did so in under five minutes in citric acid. The two that had been sitting around for a while took much longer and one of them never did clear completely.

Thanks for the advice on clearing agents. I may try one of those for the stubborn print (not a huge loss however, since its identical twin cleared nicely).

-Paul

doughowk · Jan 18, 2007

Dick Stevens mentions that 2 tray developer works well to avoid stain - ferrous hydroxide. Also recommends inclusion of organic acid in developer, eg tartaric acid added just before use. His sodium acetate developer has ph of around 8; and the acid's presence rather than its actually lowering of ph appears to be the prime factor.
Glad to hear the Weston paper is good for Kallitypes - just ordered some.

Dana Sullivan · Jan 19, 2007

Always remember, many acids harden gelatins and gums, which are all used in paper sizings. If you use citric acid you run the risk of actually making the paper difficult to clear by hardening the sizing and trapping the emulsion.

We ship tetrasodium EDTA with all of our Kallitype kits and I can't recall hearing of a single customer having clearing problems in years.

Lukas Werth · Jan 19, 2007

Dana Sullivan said:
Always remember, many acids harden gelatins and gums, which are all used in paper sizings. If you use citric acid you run the risk of actually making the paper difficult to clear by hardening the sizing and trapping the emulsion.

We ship tetrasodium EDTA with all of our Kallitype kits and I can't recall hearing of a single customer having clearing problems in years.

EDTA tetrasodium is alkaline, and therefore I would not use it for the first clearing bath. If you use it, the sting may be in the tail - it may develop a stain later, even years later. The disodium variant should be better - but has B&S not alwways recommended citric acid for clearing print-out palladium ("Ziatype")?

I used to mix EDTA tetrasodium into the ferric oxalate for develop-out pt/pd prints, but along with lots of oxalic acid, which makes the FO again acidic.

Kallitype Stain?

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