Mixing gelatin with sodium chloride for Salted Paper Printing

utsavgupta · May 14, 2022

Hi,

I am new to the alternate processes space and I have started my exploration with salted paper print.

I have made my first print with 2% NaCl and 12% AgNO3 solutions. The image came out okay but it seems to be embedded in the paper and lacks sufficient sharpness.

I believe this is happening because the paper is not sized. I have attached an image of the print.

In the article titled A Dash of Salt, I see the author recommending a recipe for sizing. Which is an independent step.

I have seen people on YouTube mention that they add the gelatin in the salting solution itself.

Can someone please share the recipe for a salt solution with gelatin?

Thanks,

Utsav

amam · May 14, 2022

Utsav
Lovely photograph!
I have used a gelatin sizing solution that is 10% gelatin, 1 tablespoon of KOSHER salt and 1 L of water.
Put it in a light tight bottle. It might smell fishy that is normal. I have also used the salt without gelatin on Hammermule Platinum Rag with no issues.
I add my silver nitrate (and citric acid ) to the coated paper after the sheets are dry.

wiltw · May 14, 2022

Curious as to the perceived 'benefit' associated with a salted emulsion paper?!

amam · May 14, 2022

wiltw said:
Curious as to the perceived 'benefit' associated with a salted emulsion paper?!

It is fun to make photographic paper from scratch like the the inventor of negatives/positive photography. It is not a difficult process, and the long delicate scale is beautiful. It is a simple process that is slow and can even be made with a negative from cellphone photograph. It is an archival process.

What is the perceived "benefit" from any film based photography? The dynamic range of a digital camera is better, you don't need to waste money on a photo lab to make your prints, or standing around in a darkroom breathing in fumes getting drunk using money spent on paper and chemicals and WATER which is scarce in a lot of places. Cellphones are cheap and make great photographs, it is immediate, and if you pay 50$USD you can get a program for your phone or computer to "edit" like you would in the darkroom and make prints as good, or maybe better photo than your darkroom using the $50USD printer used to print out your tax return.
There really is no benefit from film based photography at all other than it is fun and you might be able to brag to friends and family that you are an outlier .. or trendy.

utsavgupta · May 14, 2022

Thanks for the tip amam!!

Donald Qualls · May 15, 2022

I might disagree on a point or two in Amam's post, but I won't start what's likely to turn into a religious argument (i.e. Church of Rodinal vs. the Satanic cult of digital).

However, I could point out that one of the biggest benefits of making alt-process prints, whether cyanotype and salted paper, or van Dyke Brown, gum bichromate, carbon transfer, or even platinum/palladium, is the fun factor. Most of us shoot film instead of digital either because we had decades of experience in it before digital came along (and are too set in our ways to want to change) or because we enjoy the physical side of the process. I'm in both categories; I started shooting film beyond clicking the button and letting Kodak do the rest before 1970; which means I was in my 40s before digital started to really be a serious medium, with a level of resolution, color gamut, and sensitivity to compete with film. Further, to me, a large part of the appeal of photography is the "magic" aspect -- the hidden from view miracle by which a milky strip of plastic becomes a bunch of images by the time the film is pulled out of the tank.

Beyond that, salt prints are one of the "gateway drugs" toward higher quality (and more expensive) alternative processes. Cyanotype is pretty cheap; salt prints and van Dyke a little more spendy (silver salts, sometimes gold salts for toning); gum ought to be cheap but never seems to work that way (probably due to making the same print twenty times to get the exposure, contrast, and color just right) and carbon transfer can be thought of as the "big boy's toys" version of gum -- and platinum/palladium are only cheap if you steal catalytic converters to get your metals and can purify them and make them into the correct salts yourself. Even the paper that makes good Pt/Pd prints is expensive! But the prints produced by a well-honed Pt/Pd process are incomparable.

Not to mention that tricolor gum or color carbon are a couple of the more accessible ways to make color prints in a monochrome lab, using tricolor filtered or separation negatives and appropriately colored printing gum or tissue.

Benefits? What are the benefits of any art form? Without arts, we'd just be a species of predator who've evolved the ability to destroy our entire ecosystem.

MattKing · May 15, 2022

wiltw said:
Curious as to the perceived 'benefit' associated with a salted emulsion paper?!

FWIW, I read this as a question about why to choose this alternative process instead of another alternative process, or silver gelatin.

wiltw · May 15, 2022

MattKing said:
FWIW, I read this as a question about why to choose this alternative process instead of another alternative process, or silver gelatin.

I understand the fundamentals in interest in alternative processes. I was curious as to any specific reason for a salted emulsion. That is, in what way does a salted emulsion behave differently from a unsalted emulsion of the same basic formula?!

nmp · May 15, 2022

MattKing said:
FWIW, I read this as a question about why to choose this alternative process instead of another alternative process, or silver gelatin.

Use of perceived quote unquote benefit made it seem like it was some sort of trick question.

wiltw · May 15, 2022

nmp said:
Use of perceived quote unquote benefit made it seem like it was some sort of trick question.

Everything is not always a 'benefit'...if drop in contrast is the result for addition, that is a result, but 'loss of contrast' is not always perceived to be a 'benefit' by all! Yet a drop of contrast might be desireable for some.

As Donald Qualls express, "Benefits? What are the benefits of any art form? " Fun just might be the only 'change' from adding salt to experiment with an alternate process. Not at all being judgemental, merely being curious!

nmp · May 15, 2022

wiltw said:
Everything is not always a 'benefit'...if drop in contrast is the result for addition, that is a result, but 'loss of contrast' is not always perceived to be a 'benefit' by all! Yet a drop of contrast might be desireable for some.

So what was the original question - why the OP asked for a recipe of gelatin recipe after not satisfied with plain salted one. I think not - if you read your response, you were asking about the perceived benefit of "salted emulsion paper" not specifying in comparison to what. The question was vague at best. Not need to dig deeper.

wiltw · May 15, 2022

nmp said:
So what was the original question - why the OP asked for a recipe of gelatin recipe after not satisfied with plain salted one. I think not - if you read your response, you were asking about the perceived benefit of "salted emulsion paper" not specifying in comparison to what. The question was vague at best. Not need to dig deeper.

Mea culpa, I am sorry for apparently offending thee with an innocent question aroused by simple curiosity.
OP had mentioned, "I have seen people on YouTube mention that they add the gelatin in the salting solution itself."...I was merely wondering why the addition of salt.

Since I seem to only get judgemental responses to my inquiry, I looked it up

"The salted paper process was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot, known as The Father of Modern Photography, in 1833 while he was on his honey moon. He was the first to make a silver image on paper. On his first attempts paper coated with a silver nitrate solution and exposed to light only gave a faint metallic silver image. He later discovered that by first applying salt to the paper and then coating it with the silver nitrate solution he could get a much stronger image. This is basically the same way that we make salt prints today."

nmp · May 15, 2022

wiltw said:
Mea culpa, I am sorry for apparently offending thee with an innocent question aroused by simple curiosity.
OP had mentioned, "I have seen people on YouTube mention that they add the gelatin in the salting solution itself."...I was merely wondering why the addition of salt.

Since I seem to only get judgemental responses to my inquiry, I looked it up

"The salted paper process was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot, known as The Father of Modern Photography, in 1833 while he was on his honey moon. He was the first to make a silver image on paper. On his first attempts paper coated with a silver nitrate solution and exposed to light only gave a faint metallic silver image. He later discovered that by first applying salt to the paper and then coating it with the silver nitrate solution he could get a much stronger image. This is basically the same way that we make salt prints today."

I was not offended at all, just confused as hell by what you were trying to ask - of which I am still unsure of.

So now that you know what a salted paper is, perhaps you can answer your own question "why the addition of salt." If you want to understand the chemistry behind it, many here can elaborate for you or provide resources to look up.

:Niranjan.

P.S. One can get an image without the use of the salt using just the additives in the paper as I have shown in one of the threads. But that's an another topic.

fgorga · May 15, 2022

wiltw said:
Curious as to the perceived 'benefit' associated with a salted emulsion paper?!

Not sure exactly what you are asking... but here goes a stab at an answer.

First a few descriptions...

Traditional (common in the past) "silver gelatin" prints involve an emulsion consisting of among other components silver halides (chlorides and bromides, mainly) suspended in gelatin that is then coated on to paper. The image resides in a gelatin layer atop the paper.

"Regular" salted-paper prints (i.e. the process first described by Fox Talbot in 1839) involve soaking (and then drying) paper in a salt solution. This salted paper is then coated with silver nitrate which results in the formation of silver chloride (and thus the image) within the paper.

Salted-gelatin prints are sort of a hybrid. One soaks paper in a mixture of salt and gelatin. When this is dry, one coats again with silver nitrate resulting again, in the formation of silver chloride. Depending on exactly how you coat, the silver (and thus the image) lies at least partly within the paper but probably not as deeply as with 'regular' salted-paper.

The differences between prints made on salted paper with and without gelatin are subtle and best seen rather than described.

As for 'perceived benefit'...

We are talking art here.

Therefore one process is not better or worse than the other. They are just different.

An artist will pick the one that matches their 'vision' of the final work.

NedL · May 15, 2022

I think Frank's answer is the right idea. Even with a gelatin sizing, salted paper is not really an "emulsion" ( no ripening, digesting, formation of crystal centers.. the purpose really is just to make silver chloride on the paper or above the paper in gelatin or other sizing. )

mshchem · May 15, 2022

utsavgupta said:
Hi,

I am new to the alternate processes space and I have started my exploration with salted paper print.

I have made my first print with 2% NaCl and 12% AgNO3 solutions. The image came out okay but it seems to be embedded in the paper and lacks sufficient sharpness.

I believe this is happening because the paper is not sized. I have attached an image of the print.

In the article titled A Dash of Salt, I see the author recommending a recipe for sizing. Which is an independent step.

I have seen people on YouTube mention that they add the gelatin in the salting solution itself.

Can someone please share the recipe for a salt solution with gelatin?

Thanks,

Utsav

There's several recipes for sizing paper. I've seen recipes that call out gelatin, salt, ammonium chloride etc. I would find a reliable book

wiltw · May 15, 2022

fgorga said:
Not sure exactly what you are asking... but here goes a stab at an answer.

Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you for that.

Donald Qualls · May 16, 2022

fgorga said:
We are talking art here.

Therefore one process is not better or worse than the other. They are just different.

An artist will pick the one that matches their 'vision' of the final work.

Precisely this. Fox Talbot was interested in the most "accurate" possible rendition of what we'd now call photograms, because (in his own opinion) he didn't draw well. The rest of his inventions, leading up to the Calotype negative/positive process that was the ancestor of nearly all modern analog photography, were intended as improvements to his original salt print process -- especially the developing-out method that gives what we'd now call much faster film speed. That method still produces beautiful images, as does the simpler salt print method (especially for making positives from a negative). The main detraction from Fox Talbot's process, in fact, was the reduced sharpness compared with the contemporary Daguerreotype, due to the image being in the paper instead of on the surface of a mirror -- but because a Calotype negative could be reproduced in positive in nearly unlimited quantity, that process and its descendants won out.

Silver gelatin prints are easy to make, and most can learn to do them pretty well in a semester class in college or even high school. There are a lot more variables in the older processes -- one might reasonably claim this is why silver gelatin won out, especially for commercial processing. That doesn't make it better, it's just easier to do well enough. Salted paper isn't "better" if the sensitized layer is in gelatin on the surface of the paper vs. embedded in the fibers of unsized paper -- nor is it "better" if you go through the whole complicated Calotype process with gallic acid and silver nitrate solutions used both to sensitize and to develop out the image.

greg zinselmeier · May 16, 2022

I thought recipes are for cooking. And formulas are for chemistry? What is . . . Other People s position on this ? It is a semantic issue and one that is extremely trite. But . . . Go ahead

juan · May 17, 2022

I agree. The use of recipe here has always bothered me. Interested in what others say.

fgorga · May 18, 2022

utsavgupta said:
Hi,

I am new to the alternate processes space and I have started my exploration with salted paper print.

I have made my first print with 2% NaCl and 12% AgNO3 solutions. The image came out okay but it seems to be embedded in the paper and lacks sufficient sharpness.

This is a characteristic inherent to salted-paper printing.

The image is a bit soft because it is embedded in the paper rather than lying on top of it.

utsavgupta said:
I believe this is happening because the paper is not sized. I have attached an image of the print.

Yes, sizing the paper either before salting it or while salting it will keep the image from 'sinking in" as much.

utsavgupta said:
Can someone please share the recipe for a salt solution with gelatin?

I would recommend getting a copy of Chris Anderson's book "Salted Paper Printing. A Step-by-Step Manual Highlighting Contemporary Artists".

She covers many recipes (formula) for sizing salted-paper prints. I am not sure she has a recipe for gelatin sizing but she does cover using casein and various types of starch. This book covers much much more that is very useful to know about.

I can't recommend one particular method as I prefer the look of the original "just soak the paper in salt water" method so I have not experimented much.

utsavgupta said:
Thanks,

Utsav

fgorga · May 18, 2022

wiltw said:
Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you for that.

You are quite welcome!

nmp · May 18, 2022

I like this one (Ellie Young's work) that you can access free:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/15614798.pdf

The first part is an academic study of various aspects of salt printing (thesis work.) The second part at the bottom is a practical guide that has a section with recipes incorporating various sizing materials.

:Niranjan.

Vaughn · May 18, 2022

greg zinselmeier said:
I thought recipes are for cooking. And formulas are for chemistry? What is . . . Other People s position on this ? It is a semantic issue and one that is extremely trite. But . . . Go ahead

Recipes are the directions for using the formulas...

greg zinselmeier · Jun 12, 2022

It is my understanding when reading formulas, that some formulas give directions and others do not. When I am cooking or baking some recipes give instructions and some do not. I have seen some formulas written down with only the chemical name only, and sometimes the weight too. I have read some recipes that list only the ingredients. And others that list ingredients and its’ corresponding volume needed. I rarely read a recipe that gives weight as a measurement. There are so many food ingredients that absorb water that weight would not be as accurate. However with developer formulas, it is always the case that weight is the form of measurement, unless you’re Brett Weston, measuring everything in TSP or TBLSP for his Amidol formulas. Most formulas are written in the order in which to be mixed. I can not say that I have ever seen a recipe whereby the ingredients are listed in that order. I think most chefs would take umbrage with the audacity of the writer to assume such n such course of action. There is so much more freedom in cooking, than in chemistry, to add ingredients to your mixture. Chemistry is rather rigid in regards to time, temp, weight, and order of mixing. I have always found it best to keep cooking and baking terminology in the kitchen and stay with chemistry lingo, when attending to chemistry.

Mixing gelatin with sodium chloride for Salted Paper Printing

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