Sulfide sepia toners vs. Thiourea sepia toners

brian steinberger · Mar 22, 2007

I'm looking to start mixing my own sepia toner. Besides the fact that thiourea toners are "odorless" and hydrogen sulfide gas is bad for emulsions (and the family!), what differences in image tone can one achieve with one vs. the other with neutral and warmtone FB VC papers?

I've read a few opinions so far in the archives preferring traditional sulfide toners, stating that similar affects just can't be acheived with thiourea sepia toners.

I understand that every paper emulsion is different and paper developer choice affects the image color too, but I'm looking for personal experience from those that have used both and now prefer to use one over the other, or who still use both for different reasons. Also, if you're willing to reveal what paper/paper developer combination you use with your sepia toner of choice would be great!

Dan Henderson · Mar 22, 2007

I recently switched from sulphide to thiocarbimide sepia toner, first using the Fotospeed kit. I was very pleased with the ability to tone from a very light yellow through darker brown color by changing the amount of sodium hydroxide in the toner.

I have purchased a beam scale and some chemicals to mix my own bleach and thiocarbimide toner in the future, but since I have not yet mixed any, I cannot report on the results.

dancqu · Mar 22, 2007

brian steinberger said:
I'm looking to start mixing my own sepia toner.

All sepia toners produce the sulfide of silver. So how
would you care to have your source of sulfur. Sodium
sulfide comes with Kodak's bleach and redevelop sepia
toner. Thiourea is the source of sulfur in some home-
brews. Off the shelf?

One you did not mention is hypo alum. One advantage
touted for hypo alum is it's forever life span. Nelson's Gold
Toner is a variation of hypo alum; without the alum but does
need a pinch of gold. Dan

Brook · Mar 22, 2007

I second a recommendation for hypo alum toners, rich dark browns, not sickly yellow like some other sepia toners. Azo is drop dead gorgous in hypo alum.

Mark Fisher · Mar 22, 2007

Thiourea is considerably more pleasant and it allows colors from a very yellow brown to a rich sepia brown. I like to split tone with selenium and partially tone and it works well for that. I've used traditional sepia, but I'd need to get a divorce before using it inside again...... Tim Rudman's Toning Book is definitely worth getting to explain the possibilities of thiourea and just about any other toner you could imagine.

brian steinberger · Mar 22, 2007

I have the Toning Book and have read the whole thing twice. It is a great text on toning and highly recommended.

Hypo-Alum toners should have been mentioned by me in this discussion. I'm not familiar as there is no commercially available kit that I can try.

Dan and Brook, can you go into more detail about the Hypo-Alum toner? Is it a direct toner? Or bleach, like sepia? What are the differences in tones compared to sepia? More subtle?

Thanks!

Brian

Roger Hicks · Mar 23, 2007

Dear Brian,

I've always preferred the tones I get from a traditional stinking sulphide toner. Not just slightly preferred: VASTLY preferred.

Hypo-Alum smells even worse (it's normally done out of doors) and it's a hot, direct toner normally used at 100-120F if you want the prints to tone in less than about 24 hours: it takes half an hour even at 100F, 38C. The following recipe is from a British Journal of Photography Almanac, 1960.

Dissolve 400g of hypo in 2 litres hot water. Add 87g alum (I suspect 90 would make no difference). Stir well, boil for 2-3 minutes, cool to about 150F/65C, add silver ripener (see below). Stir well again, add potassium iodide 2.3g.

The ripener is 1.3g of silver nitrate in 30 ml water to which you add, drop by drop, .880 ammonia until the precipitate formed just redissolves. Stir/shake vigorously while adding the ammonia. If you don't use a ripener, the traditional approach is to tone a few scrap prints before you get into the real toning.

After toning, harden the prints in plain alum (after cooling, ir they may blister or reticulate), swab off the sediment and wash thoroughly.

The toner can be used forever, making up the volume with fresh from time to time but never filtering it.

I've never used hot hypo-alum myself -- the above rigmarole may tell you why -- but the prints I have seen that have been hot hypo-alum toned have always struck me as being the best sepias I have ever seen.

Cheers,

R. (www.rogerandfrances.com)

catem · Mar 23, 2007

I'm not too fond of the 'traditional' sepia look. I have recently been using the fotospeed sepia toner and I really like the way you can vary the tone you want to achieve. I've been using Ilford WT & mostly Agfa NE.

Tim Rudman in his toning book helpfully gives various examples of the results of this sort of sepia toning with different strengths of additive used with different papers. This gives a very good starting point for the kind of effect you want to go for.

ann · Mar 23, 2007

i am neither Dan or Brook, but we use hypo alum frequently. It is a direct toner, use it warm and ignore the odor. It is a warmer brown than the traditional sepia toners, which for me run to yellows, but that is my opinion.
It will split easily which is great fun.

At one time we topped the formula off with distilled water everyother session but have changed and just added a new batch to the existing toner which has cut down on the times, as they can be long.

It is not available as a commerical prepared toner, but can be found in a kit form from several companies .

blaze-on · Mar 23, 2007

The formulary has a hypo-alum toner kit.

ilya1963 · Mar 23, 2007

".880 ammonia" -Roger Hicks

is this also known as 28% Amonia?

Thank you .
ILYA

Roger Hicks · Mar 23, 2007

ilya1963 said:
".880 ammonia" -Roger Hicks

is this also known as 28% Amonia?

Thank you .
ILYA

Dear Ilya,

I don't think so, but I don't know: these things are sometimes a bit nominal. It's the strongest commercially available ammonia solution, specific gravity .880, which contains approximately 35% w/w of NH3.

Cheers,

R.

Bob F. · Mar 23, 2007

Tim Rudman's toning book has a few hypo-alum toner recipes. Only one of them needs boiling as above but all seem a little trickier to mix than the usual cook-book recipes.

I use a thiocarbamide based toner recipe from the book. The paper used is very important: some papers (especially RC ones I notice) can give a very yellow tone, whereas others give a nice dark brown (e.g. MGWT-FB and Fineprint Warm). I can't really compare smelly with non-smelly as I've only used the smelly a couple of times and then stopped...

Cheers, Bob.

mahler · Mar 23, 2007

Sepia toners and Michael Kenna

While we're on the topic of sepia toners, Michael Kenna sepia tones all of his prints, yet in practically all of his works that I've seen (two of his books, and on his website), there isn't even the slightest hint of brown or yellow tone that I can discern. Put differently, if no one had told me that he sepia tones his prints, I never would have guessed.

Anyone know how he's doing this? i.e., how he sepia tones his prints without even the faintest brown/yellow tint?

patrickjames · Mar 23, 2007

I think you can still get Hypo-Alum toner at PF. I tried it once and it is true that is stinks, takes forever and gives a nice tone. Maybe someone here can figure out a way to speed it up? I would love to use it again but it seems like too much effort when you have a stack of prints to tone.

The nicest normal sepia toner I have used is the variable sepia by Fotospeed. I used it for the yellow tones for a while, but it really lightened the print when used in this way. Again I no longer think it is worth the effort. Berg sepia toner works well but is usually a little colder toned.

Another toner you may want to try is Viridon. Not exactly sepia but in that vein. I just thought I would throw it out there.

If you find a formula that works for you let us know. I would be interested to hear what you decide to do.

Patrick

clay · Mar 23, 2007

I have a couple of his prints, and it appears to me that what he is doing is using a neutral to cool toned paper and then using a bleach and redevelop sepia toner where the bleach is extremely dilute, and he pulls them and rinses and redevelops long before the bleach reaches into the shadow zones. The real prints do look toned, but the effect is subtle, and IMO, elegant. This all a guess based on looking at his prints and what I have been able to do in my own toning endeavors.

mahler said:
While we're on the topic of sepia toners, Michael Kenna sepia tones all of his prints, yet in practically all of his works that I've seen (two of his books, and on his website), there isn't even the slightest hint of brown or yellow tone that I can discern. Put differently, if no one had told me that he sepia tones his prints, I never would have guessed.

Anyone know how he's doing this? i.e., how he sepia tones his prints without even the faintest brown/yellow tint?

ann · Mar 23, 2007

the formulary does have the hypo alum in kit form.

Don't boil it, what we do is place a larger tray on a warming system filled with water that is maintained at about 125 degress and then the toner is in another tray that sits within the outer one.

you might try Kodak Brown toner 1:32 , lovely brown tones.

dancqu · Mar 23, 2007

ann said:
the formulary does have the hypo alum in kit form.
Don't boil it,

Hypo alum can be very simple. Two chemicals are
needed. Sodium thiosulfate and potassium alum. The
mix is heated to near boiling until sulfurization takes place;
a cloudy appearance developes. Season using a few sheets of
print paper. Doing that will eliminate bleaching of the image.

The alum is necessary for holding the emulsion together
at the elevated temperature. S. Anchell states that no wash
after fix is needed.

The thiosulfate decomposes and the sulfur set free does
the toning. I wonder now and then that the toner has eternal
life. There is no preservative.

This is the first thread I've ever read where any odor was
associated with hypo-alum. What is your experience? Dan

patrickjames · Mar 23, 2007

clay said:
I have a couple of his prints, and it appears to me that what he is doing is using a neutral to cool toned paper and then using a bleach and redevelop sepia toner where the bleach is extremely dilute, and he pulls them and rinses and redevelops long before the bleach reaches into the shadow zones. The real prints do look toned, but the effect is subtle, and IMO, elegant. This all a guess based on looking at his prints and what I have been able to do in my own toning endeavors.

I am pretty sure that someone else sepia tones his prints, but if you are looking to do something like this, one way is to mix developer in with your toner. This will give a greater overall effect since you can bleach farther into the shadows but still not get as much of a sepia tone since you are redeveloping as you tone. It limits the amount of tonal change.

Patrick

brian steinberger · Mar 23, 2007

patrickjames said:
I am pretty sure that someone else sepia tones his prints, but if you are looking to do something like this, one way is to mix developer in with your toner. This will give a greater overall effect since you can bleach farther into the shadows but still not get as much of a sepia tone since you are redeveloping as you tone. It limits the amount of tonal change.

Patrick

This sounds interesting. Do you have personal experience with this process Patrick?

These are some great responses and a very nice discussion. I think what I might do is run some tests. Using two papers, a warm and a neutral and two developers, a warmtone and a cooltone run series of stepwedge prints, (very similar to the step wedges in The Toning Book). Then try every combination using sepia (full, partial, and split), brown toner, nelsons gold toner, and hypo-alum.

patrickjames · Mar 23, 2007

I think I have pretty much schlopped prints into just about any chemical that would tone them. Adding developer to the toner is probably not the most consistent way to tone a print, but I thought I would throw it out there as one possible method.

If you are going to do some tests do yourself a favor and limit it to one or two papers that you use the most, and have a clear idea what you are going for otherwise the possibilities are so far reaching you will drive yourself crazy. Hope this helps.

Patrick

Sulfide sepia toners vs. Thiourea sepia toners

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