Sodium Citrate Developer

Andrew O'Neill · Mar 26, 2007

I played around with sodium citrate and rochelle salt developers for kallitype printing. The rochelle salt developer was a nightmare. There always seemed to be a very slight yellow stain. The sodium citrate developer never gave me any problems, giving me nice whites. Anybody else witness this when using rochelle salt developers? Anyone know if I can sprinkle rochelle salt on my fish 'n' chips???

rippo · Mar 28, 2007

i had nothing but problems with the rochelle salt method, which i bought in kit form from a place you often buy kits from. i gave up and switched to Sandy King's method, - you might have heard of him - and it's been really reliable. go with the sodium citrate, i say!

Andrew O'Neill · Mar 30, 2007

Yes, I've heard of Sandy King and have been using his pyrocat-HD and way to do kallitypes. It's so easy using sodium citrate. I do love the different colours obtainable with rochelle salt/borax. Just tonight I discovered that gelatin sizing has a big affect on the colour too and slightly higher Dmax.

rippo · Mar 30, 2007

you can however get varied colors by toning with gold, platinum, palladium or selenium. a little more expensive, but gold at least isn't all that much in the small quantities required...i do it all the time. and it's much more archival to tone the prints. i get tones varying from a rather fruity purple, to a blue black that is stunning, to a nice warm brown that makes me wonder if it got toned enough. not a precise science.

doughowk · Mar 30, 2007

When 1st trying Kallitypes I used the borax/rochelle salt developer (in PF kit); and my poor results were beginner's mistakes. I should probably retry that developer. I've been using either SK's Sodium Citrate developer for warm-tone effect or Dick Stevens Sodium Acetate developer for cooler tone. Following Dick Stevens recommendation, I add 3 grams tartaric acid per liter to both developers - it supposedly helps avoid yellow stain & the lower ph gives better blacks. I also add potasium dichromate to increase contrast & give better whites.

sanking · Mar 30, 2007

doughowk said:
When 1st trying Kallitypes I used the borax/rochelle salt developer (in PF kit); and my poor results were beginner's mistakes. I should probably retry that developer. I've been using either SK's Sodium Citrate developer for warm-tone effect or Dick Stevens Sodium Acetate developer for cooler tone. Following Dick Stevens recommendation, I add 3 grams tartaric acid per liter to both developers - it supposedly helps avoid yellow stain & the lower ph gives better blacks. I also add potasium dichromate to increase contrast & give better whites.

Just for the record, I started using kallitype based on Russ Young's article in Coming into Focus.

My personal opionin is that using different developers to get a variety of colors is not good practice because ultimately kallitypes should be toned with a more noble metal, and when you tone the native color given by sodium citrate, sodium acetate, or Borax/Rochelle salts, etc. disappears and is replaced by the color characteteristcs of the toning metal.

An untoned kallitype print, which consists of fine silver metal particles, is not very archival.

Sandy King

doughowk · Mar 31, 2007

Being still a novice with Kallitypes, I haven't yet tried toning with noble metals. Using selenium as toner, the color resulting from different developers can be retained. Also have been using Selenium for controlling solarization. Selenium before fixing does risk Selenium staining. As Rudman states, one of causes of staining is an acid environment. The clearing bath, being acidic, should make Selenium staining unavoidable; however I've had good luck with Arches Platine. Weston paper does stain, so maybe its acidic (or more readily absorbs the clearing bath).

Russ Young · Mar 31, 2007

Hi Sandy-

Thanks for the credit. Amazing how fast the original source is obscured- a good lesson for historians.

I have a few 22 year old untoned kallitypes that were developed in sodium citrate and thus far, they've remained stable... wish I could live another 80 years to see if they really might be archival.

Russ

sanking · Apr 2, 2007

Russ Young said:
Hi Sandy-

Thanks for the credit. Amazing how fast the original source is obscured- a good lesson for historians.

I have a few 22 year old untoned kallitypes that were developed in sodium citrate and thus far, they've remained stable... wish I could live another 80 years to see if they really might be archival.

Russ

Russ,

In this case it may also be an issue of the greater access of web-based rather than print-based sources of information.

Sandy

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