Selenium Toning The Bridal Falls Negative

[Andrew O'Neill]

This is a follow up to my Bridal Falls Provincial Park video, part 1... (link to part 1)

 

[ic-racer]

Very nice presentation. I was always sceptical how well this would work. Thank you for showing the real density change! I don't do alternative, but maybe I can go back to some thin negatives and save them.

Also, to get a more complete analysis of all the tones, a control strip can be toned too. In fact that is what I'd do, to see how my bottle of selenium affects my negative first.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Very nice presentation. I was always sceptical how well this would work. Thank you for showing the real density change! I don't do alternative, but maybe I can go back to some thin negatives and save them.

Also, to get a more complete analysis of all the tones, a control strip can be toned too. In fact that is what I'd do, to see how my bottle of selenium affects my negative first.

Good idea with the control strip.
I have saved negatives in the past that were meant for gelatin silver. There is a minimum max density, otherwise it won't work well. I remember testing this decades ago, and I was only able to get a slight bump in DR with a negative that had a dmax of 0.81. My rule of thumb was when the dmax was under 1.00, I don't bother, and just try to make a print using higher contrast grade of paper, but many times that wasn't possible. I'm going to start playing around with bleach and redevelopment in pyrocat-hd, to see how this does in comparison, in the very near future...

 

[Vaughn]

I have coupled selenium intensification with a little bleaching (and re-fix) before hand. Works best of negs that have ample exposure in the shadows to begin with.

 

[mshchem]

Great video, I use Selenium on most prints, I've been tempted to do this with negatives.

What is the nice densitometer you are using?

I always learn something by watching your videos!

Best Regards Mike

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Great video, I use Selenium on most prints, I've been tempted to do this with negatives.

What is the nice densitometer you are using?

I always learn something by watching your videos!

Best Regards Mike

Thanks, Mike! It's a Heiland TRD2. I've had it since the late 90's.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I have coupled selenium intensification with a little bleaching (and re-fix) before hand. Works best of negs that have ample exposure in the shadows to begin with.

Why did you bleach? Was it to reduce the min densities a bit for carbon (particularly B+F)? Did you bleach before or after intensification? I can see this being helpful when printing a film with high B+F, like HP5...

 

[Vaughn]

I bleached to clear the small shadow areas (too small to see detail in) to allow them to print a pure black while increasing the density of the highlights with the selenium toner. Like with selenium intensifying, one needs a negative that is well exposed...not lacking shadow detail to begin with...and has enough silver in the highlights to react with the selenium.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I bleached to clear the small shadow areas (too small to see detail in) to allow them to print a pure black while increasing the density of the highlights with the selenium toner. Like with selenium intensifying, one needs a negative that is well exposed...not lacking shadow detail to begin with...and has enough silver in the highlights to react with the selenium.

When I develop HP5 to an appropriate DR, the shadows are very robust...too robust, as you know... so, a little bleaching should be fine. I'll try it sometime.