selenium toning Ilford MG IV FB for archival purposes

[mcilroy]

Hello everybody!

I'm going to be toning some prints made on Ilford MG IV FB, which are meant to be sold. The toning is done primarily to make the prints as stable as possible.

It is often said that neutral and cold-tone papers don't respond to selenium toning that well. Does that only affect the color shifts, or does it also mean that it results in less protection?

Is selenium toner actually a good chioce for this purpose - given that i allow it to tone completely from shadows to highlights - or would a direct sulfide toning make the prints even more stable?

 

[Blighty]

There are plenty more experts on toning here than little ol' me, but my experience has shown that MGIV FB -as opposed to the warmtone version - displays little in the way of colour shift even with quite long toning times: maybe a very slight bluish-purplish tint in the shadows, but nowt to write home about. I believe the protective qualities of selenium are still present regardless of colour shift

 

[Mahler_one]

The paper you alluded to has little tonal response to Selenium toning.

 

[Chuck_P]

Not much color shift in my experience with MGIV FB, but definitely a strengthening of mid to lower print values-----i.e. they will get a bit deeper, strengthening the overal print contrast. Archival protection should be the same.

 

[pgomena]

Ditto CPorter. To my eye the mid to lower values deepen and take on a bit of color. Definitely an aesthetic improvement as well as an archival one, but it's subtle.

Peter Gomena

 

[mcilroy]

Thank you for your input!

Subtle changes in appearance are very welcome indeed, as this will be my first try with toning. I will also try direct sulfide toning and gold toning with different papers, as soon as i get a bit more comfortable with the whole process.

 

[clayne]

Neutral and cold tone papers do respond to selenium - it's MGIV itself that doesn't respond to it much. However, when one says respond they usually mean tonal/color shift. The shadows will definitely be altered.

 

[Casey Kidwell]

I find the color change with selenium and MG IV subtle yet unflattering. I would stick with the dilution/time for permanence. If you know a good toner for permanence that shifts MG IV slightly to the warm, please let me know.

 

[brian steinberger]

I find the color change with selenium and MG IV subtle yet unflattering. I would stick with the dilution/time for permanence. If you know a good toner for permanence that shifts MG IV slightly to the warm, please let me know.

Nelson's Gold Toner

 

[jeffreyg]

Ilford MG fiber paper is my mainstay and my experience is as others have mentioned. I tone with Kodak rapid selenium 8oz:96oz. with some clearing sol. in the mix for 11x14 prints and more for larger trays. To my eye a slight shift is noticed in the mid tones. The permanence is probably enhanced but thorough washing is most likely the key to permanence.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

 

[Marco B]

Hello everybody!

I'm going to be toning some prints made on Ilford MG IV FB, which are meant to be sold. The toning is done primarily to make the prints as stable as possible.

It is often said that neutral and cold-tone papers don't respond to selenium toning that well. Does that only affect the color shifts, or does it also mean that it results in less protection?

"Don't respond to selenium toning that well" only means color shift! The paper WILL be toned just like a warm tone paper, meaning the silver is converted to silverselenide, it just doesn't display the strong color shift. The reason for the limited color shift is the differing size of the silver particles (smaller for warm tone papers).

However, if you tone for "maximum stability", the only way you will achieve it is if you tone to absolute completion. Unfortunately, how much time this requires and when it is achieved is both highly depended on the specific paper used, and can be very hard to determine with selenium toner due to the limited color shifts on some papers like MG IV.

Since selenium toner acts quite slow, it at least means modest dilutions of the toner (probably 1:10 max), and even than you should do good to check for how much time it really takes for full toning. Since, due to the limited color shift in the cold tone MG IV, it is virtually impossible to judge "by eye" for full toning watching for a complete color shift of both shadows and highlights, the only really reliable way to determine the time needed for full toning, is to do some controlled tests. A proposition for a way to do this:

- Ensure you have an untoned control test strip for reference.
- Tone several strips for e.g. 2,4,8,15 and 30 minute in the selenium toner (make sure to mark them on the back with pencil so you can keep track of them).
- Make a second "control" of the longest toning time (30 minutes) only.
- Now bleach all of them (except the untoned and maximum toned controls) in a ferricyanide bath of a two-bath bleach/redevelop style sepia toner (e.g. ferricyanide/thiourea). You will probaly be highly surprised to discover that some shorter toning times showing a pretty marked color shift in the selenium toner compared to an untoned control (e.g. 4 minutes), in fact turn out to be hardly toned at all, and bleach away to a pretty large extent, meaning all that silver was untoned and thus unprotected!
- Sepia tone them in the redevelop thiourea bath. The subsequent sepia toning will reveal even the smallest amount of bleaching that has taken place (and thus silver untoned by the first selenium toning step), that you may not have noticed in the bleach bath.

What to do next?:
- Have a good look at each them and compare them to the maximum, 30 minutes, control. A shift in color compared to the maximum control, means you have not reached full toning.
- Draw your own conclusions based upon the observations
E.g.:

If the 2,4 and 8 minutes toned strips show a sepia color shift compared to the 30 minutes control, but the 15 minutes doesn't, than full selenium toning was reached in between 8 to 15 minutes toning.
If the 30 minutes selenium and sepia toned print still shows a color shift to sepia compared to the 30 minutes selenium-only test strip, than even after 30 minutes, your prints were NOT fully selenium toned.

Another tip:
- Double tonings of selenium and sepia can be especially beautiful, and by varying the amount of each tone step, you can have a lot of creative freedom. In addition, from an archival point of view and to achieve full toning, it may be more efficient as well, allowing for truely full toning with only modest color shifts (especially on a cold tone paper like MG IV)

Marco

 

[Rich Ullsmith]

I cannot remember if I read it in Tim Rudman's book, or if he said this directly: no color shift means no toning has taken place. I am inclined to believe that. Some papers exhaust my tray of selenium pretty quickly. Others seem to last forever. The papers that exhaust the toner quickly also exhibit the greatest tonal shifts.

 

[mcilroy]

@Marco B
Thanks alot for your detailed reply. I will definitely do this test when i can find the time

I cannot remember if I read it in Tim Rudman's book, or if he said this directly: no color shift means no toning has taken place.

That's what i'm wondering. Or in other words: Does a very sublte change in tone also suggest little "archival protection"?

 

[Rich Ullsmith]

If archival protection is your goal, then I would try as Marco suggested, with selenium for the low values and sepia for the higher values. A sepia toner with a high thiocarbamide to activator ratio will produce less of a shift to brown. And I agree, the black-brown split is beautiful.

 

[John Simmons]

Well, this paper does tone and changes color dramatically if you use the right dilution and time. A 1+4 dilution of rapid selenium toner and a 5-10 minute toning time will produce a very strong color change...to a purple eggplant...which I don't really like. Standard dilutions of 1+10 - 1+20 will produce little color change and subsequently offer limited protection when compared to other toning methods.

According to wilhelm a direct sulfiding toner offers the most protection. Take a look at the wilhelm book, it's free and an incredible resource.

Dead Link Removed

 

[mcilroy]

If archival protection is your goal, then I would try as Marco suggested, with selenium for the low values and sepia for the higher values.

Yes, this method seems to offer a very good degree of preservation. I could also try some ready made combination toners like Viradon or Moersch's carbon toner, which would do this kind of thing in one bath - at the cost of less control.

But for the beginning i will let the prints take a good bath in selenium, as i want do add this step more to ease my conscience when selling the prints. A properly processed FB print should last long enough by itself.

According to wilhelm a direct sulfiding toner offers the most protection. Take a look at the wilhelm book, it's free and an incredible resource.

Dead Link Removed

Thanks John, i will take a look at it!

 

[Bob Carnie]

For this paper I tone the highlights with a bleach sepia, to produce a warmth in the highlights, then gold tone which affects upper midtone low highlights to a slight peach , and selenium 1:5 one minute which attacks the shadows.

I love the look with MG4 and gives a wonderful split tone look.

Ilford warmtone, I prefer selenium 1:5 30 seconds with a very slight bleach sepia for highlights.

 

[Marco B]

That's what i'm wondering. Or in other words: Does a very sublte change in tone also suggest little "archival protection"?

Yes it does! There will most likely be hardly if any archival protection. Just do the test as I suggested, and see how a subtly / marginally selenium toned print bleaches away almost completely, meaning that maybe no more than 5% of all silver was toned, leaving the other 95% of the silver unprotected and potentially exposed to attack of damaging aerial pollution like hydrogen sulphide, sulphur dioxide, ozone etc.

As I discovered doing this test, even quite marked color changes across both shadows and highlights, can still mean that about 50% of all silver is untoned... Doing this test was quite an eye opener for me

Actually, the reasoning behind my test using a ferricyanide/thiourea bleach and redevelop toner as a test for the selenium toning step, is simple:

If the ferricyanide bleach is capable of attacking / oxidizing remaing silver (Ag) to silver ions (Ag+) after the selenium toning step, than any other oxidizing agent in aerial pollution, is too!

By the way, don't forget the washing... use a hypo clearing bath and do proper archival washing after the toning stage.

Some good resources on all this:

First, a good "layman's" introduction to silver gelatine print deterioration suitable for anyone to read:
- A Guide to Fiber-Base Gelatin Silver Print Condition and Deterioration by Gawain Weaver

If you are a "science" type person, who isn't afraid of graphs and details, than the following two big reports may be very interesting to read as well:

There is a very detailed large report with tests & graphs by Christopher Gmuender showing the protective results of different toners. It was published on the Rochester Institute of Technology Digital Media Library website (https://ritdml.rit.edu/), however, it seems this site is temporarily down due to a technical issue. The main R.I.T. Library access page still lists the Digital Media Library though (http://library.rit.edu/collections/rits-digital-media-library-dml.html), so I expect it to be up in the near future and you can look it up than using the title below:

- ON BLACK-AND-WHITE PAPER IMAGE-STABILITY ENHANCEMENT by Christopher Gmuender

And another report from that same R.I.T. DML website you can look up once it is back up running:

- THE EFFECTS OF ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTANTS ON LIBRARY MICROFORMS by Edward Zinn

 

[Marco B]

The R.I.T. Digital Media Library seems up again, here are the direct links to the two above mentioned articles. On the pages, scroll down to the "Files in this item", to open the PDF documents themselves:

- ON BLACK-AND-WHITE PAPER IMAGE-STABILITY ENHANCEMENT by Christopher Gmuender
https://ritdml.rit.edu/handle/1850/10950

- THE EFFECTS OF ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTANTS ON LIBRARY MICROFORMS by Edward Zinn
https://ritdml.rit.edu/handle/1850/12484

 

[mcilroy]

Thank you Marco, i will take a look at these also.

I found an interesting thread in the LFPF regarding Gmuender's thesis: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=13859

 

[clayne]

Most people these days are toning for color and dmax changes anyways. If you really want the print to last super long, sulfide or sepia tone it and store it well. I'm of the opinion that storing it well is 90% of the equation.

The reason though there is such a connection between color and toning itself is because of the innate differences in light reflectance tied to the adjoining elements playing a part in toning.

 

[Marco B]

Thank you Marco, i will take a look at these also.

I found an interesting thread in the LFPF regarding Gmuender's thesis: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=13859

Yes, well, Oren Grad's evaluation is I think quite fair. No, it wasn't a perfect study, but yes, I do think there is still a lot to learn from it, and a monumental job as Oren says.

The big problem with this question about archivability/toners/aerial pollution, is that it is extremely hard to study well. If you look at the article of Edward Zinn I referenced, you can actually appreciate how much work and problems are encountered for setting up a reliable fumigation test... it is a daunting task. :confused:

No wonder there is so little real scientific data on the effects of keeping conditions and aerial pollution on silver gelatine prints.

I also think Oren's remark about most papers being discontinued due to the article being older, is actually highly irrelevant, as although papers may have changed somewhat, there hasn't been a miraculous "change" in the archivability, production methods, or chemical make-up of B&W silver gelatine papers, meaning results will still hold value for papers used today. Silver is silver...

The remarks by the "youmustbekidding" fellow in the same thread, is just ridiculous. Unfounded and lacking of any backup of the critic. That is especially ludicrous, as that person uses a suggested lack of proper scientific background of the author of the report as his main critic to Christopher Gmuender's work.

 

[mcilroy]

Most people these days are toning for color and dmax changes anyways. If you really want the print to last super long, sulfide or sepia tone it and store it well. I'm of the opinion that storing it well is 90% of the equation.

I agree, but i don't know where and how the customer will hang the pictures. Maybe it'll be the worst case and they will be exposed to direct sunlight over jears.

@Marco B
Also agreed. Well, in conclusion i think some toning will be better than none and nobody can guarantee me, that these prints will look like they did on day 1 in 20, 30 ... years. Especially as i don't know how they will be treated.

 

[Marco B]

I agree, but i don't know where and how the customer will hang the pictures. Maybe it'll be the worst case and they will be exposed to direct sunlight over jears.

Light by itself is not detrimental to the silver in a silver gelatine print like it is to a colour print, which contains dyes or solid color pigment that can fade under the influence of especially UV light. The paper base is another story though.

You don't see silver jewels fade, do you? (yes, I know this is a huge over simplification...)

@Marco B
Also agreed. Well, in conclusion i think some toning will be better than none and nobody can guarantee me, that these prints will look like they did on day 1 in 20, 30 ... years. Especially as i don't know how they will be treated.

Wise words, nobody knows as there are many factors involved. Fully toning the prints should however give your images a better chance to survive the centuries, as the products formed with sepia and selenium toning (silver sulphide - Ag2S, and silver selenide - Ag2Se) are known to be more stable to chemical attack.

The simple fact that a fully selenium toned print can not be bleached in the ferricyanide bleach, and that a fully sepia toned print isn't affected by strong selenium toner either, is testimony and prove to the fact that the reaction products formed in these toners, are more stable to chemical attack than the "raw" silver of the original print.

 

[mcilroy]

You don't see silver jewels fade, do you? (yes, I know this is a huge over simplification...)

No i didn't, but most of the stuff i've read about protection through toning does mention sunlight - or more precisely ultraviolet radiation - as one of the main sources for silver-image deterioration. Kodaks paper "Toning Black-and-White Materials" is one example.