selenium toning film

[bmac]

What effects can I expect to see on film that has been toned in selenium?

 

[Jorge]

Increased contrast. Sexton is well known for using this technique to spiff up his negs when he wants more contrast. I beleive he does it locally though, not to the entire film

 

[William Levitt]

A dilution of 1:3 (one part toner, 3 parts water or per AA, HCA) will increase the contrast most notably in the highlights. Refix the negs in plain hypo and then direct in the toner for between 3 - 5 minutes.

Run some tests first because the effects are of course irreversable.

I've toned both "regular" negs and PMK Pyro negs with good results.

 

[bmac]

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

Brian

 

[Sean]

I've thought about toning negs as well. Can you can re-wet your negs and tone them later if you want more contrast?

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Yes. I do it when I need more contrast. For T-max 100, I go 8 minutes in Kodak Rapid Selenium Toner 1:3 for a one stop expansion. Be sure to use a non-hardening fixer originally or to re-fix in plain hypo before toning.

I always do it with negatives that have been dried after I've printed the negative straight and decided that it's what I need to get a better print. Very handy for printing on Azo, which only comes in grades 2 and 3.

 

[baronfoxx]

will selenium toning produce simular results to using a staining developer such as pyro, pmk and Dixactol two part system???

 

[William Levitt]

No. It will merely increase the contrast of the image. There is no staining, either iomage or general involved. It'll just give those flat negatives a little "kick".

 

[DKT]

It's sometimes used in archival processing of film, the effect is pretty much the same as that of toning a print. The selenium protects the emulsion from atmospheric pollutants. With some films, it was required in the processing sequence for long-term storage....SO-132 dupe film (and it's predeccessor, SO339) was like this. I used to go straight from rapid fix (with hardener) to selenium 1:19, then later 1:9, then did a regular water wash of about 25-30 minutes. Kodak recommended not using a hypo clearing step with this process. The earlier versions of SO dupe films had some lousy storage characteristics, and would change density over time. It's one of the reasons why alot of people quit using this film.....


FWIW, they used to recommend using selenium toners in microfilm processing as well, but recent studies have shown that you needed to use a rather strong dose of selenium to get complete protection. So strong that the contrast could increase too much--now they recommend using sulfide toners, or proprietary ones like IPI Silverlock. Microfilm is the "gold standard" for records storage in archives, and they use polyester based films with sulfide toning.....the polyeseter based films last the longest , and the toner protects the emulsion (along with good PAT enclosures of course).

KT

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