The challenge with Salt Printing

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D_Quinn

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Thanks, koraks!
That makes sense. Let's see how it goes
 

Lemmythink

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What if you have negs that were not made in camera for salt printing, but you wanted to use them? I don't know lots about the process but might there be darkroom methods of intensifying the image that people use? I was wondering about contact printing negative/positives on paper with a different contrast to the point the densities are correct. Then use the paper negative as a the final 'film' or using positives contact to ortho film? I know you can intensify negs but looks like not enough.
 
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Some films can be intensified enough to be suitable for salt printing. I know - I experimented with this a few years ago. I used the Copper sulfate bleach + silver nitrate process intended for wet plate negative intensification, on films like FP4+ and Delta 100. It worked well with FP4 but less well with Delta 100, which took several minutes of bleaching to have any effect. It was much more workable with FP4+. In fact, it was easy to bleach too much and end up with a negative that had way too much density in the highlights, so you have to experiment with this to find a workable process.

Using a paper negative for salt printing would be very difficult and the prints unsatisfying, given the paper density.
 
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koraks

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might there be darkroom methods of intensifying the image that people use?

Yes, I routinely use dichromate intensifier on in-camera negatives. The process works with somewhat less problematic permanganate as well.

You can also do a two-step process using an interpositive as you describe, or even create a direct duplicate negative using reversal processing. I would not recommend a paper negative to print from as the exposure times will be prohibitively slow (many hours).
 
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