The Toner Thread

esearing

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Someone has the instructions on ebay in german but I found the single page a little vague in translation. There is mention of a color developer and bleach. So these are likely dyes combined with the developer for any tone you wish. Bleach was likely a Ferri-Bromide bleach. In other articles I found that dyes were used to form around a silver particle and the silver was then bleached away, but I think it had more to do with color film processing.

It does say direct or indirect toning - so paint a little on a test print and let it sit a while. wash off and see if it changes the tone.

You could also reach out to TetenalUK and see if they have any old literature.
 

Arthurwg

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Is it possible to use gold toner mixed with selenium or must the two be used separately?
 

spijker

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I'd like to tone Ilford FB Classic (neutral) to a subtle brown tone, both in the dark tones as the high lights. I don't really like the split tone look.

I tried the Moersch MT2 toner 1:40 both direct and indirect (after bleaching) but without good results. As a direct toner, I saw the selenium part take affect but no brown tone. As an indirect toner, the tone was more like an (ugly) olive green than brown. Also the bleached parts didn't redevelop very well. Since the unopened 100ml bottle has been on the shelf for well over a year (if not two), I assume the polysulfide part of this toner was dead.

What are people's experiences of toning FB Classic (neutral) with brown toners? Should I give the MT2 carbon toner another try with a fresh bottle? From what I read here, it seems that MT2 direct toning with Ilford MG IV was possible. Or would I be better of with a Thiourea toner like the Moersch MT3? Or the Berg Brown/Copper toner?
 

adelorenzo

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I have never had any success with direct toners or Moersch toners and I tried a bunch of them. I use good old smelly bleach and sulfide sepia toner it works great. If you hit it with selenium after the sulfide then the shadows tend to go more brown instead of going cold grey like they do with straight selenium.

If you bleach in dichromate bleach and redevelop in a cold developer it will make the selenium toner go really brown. I have done this with Art 300 but have yet to try it with Classic. You could also try the pyrocatechin redeveloping toner posted earlier in the thread.

Check out this gallery on my website most of them are Classic FB paper with various toner combinations. If you see something that looks like what you are going for I can tell you how I toned it.
 

Patrick Robert James

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Hypo Alum toner might do what you want. Hypo Alum toner last forever too. I am assuming that MT2 is like Viradon otherwise that would be my other suggestion.
 

spijker

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adelorenzo said:
Check out this gallery on my website most of them are Classic FB paper with various toner combinations. If you see something that looks like what you are going for I can tell you how I toned it.
Click to expand...

Anthony, I had a look at your nice website and think that the look of this image would work for my prints. Although I am planning to use it for a warmer scene. I'm definitely not a winter person.



Can you share the magic behind this print? Thanks in advance.
 

adelorenzo

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That is the Ilford IT-8 Pyrocatechin toner formula that Ian Grant posted earlier in the thread. (The formula is also in the Darkroom Cookbook.)

You bleach in dichromate bleach and then redevelop in a pyro developer. You get nice brown tones in the shadows and midtones, the highlights are less affected.

This will also affect how the paper responds to other toners if you follow it with sepia or selenium you will get a different result than just toning a straight print.
 

radiant

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I took a real bite on toning myself by just careless testing on discarded / bad prints. I used Foma Sepia toner with the 1+9 dilution in 25 degrees celcius temperature.

The bleach is really biting fast on that dilution, way too fast for my liking To get a suddle bleach, I could only submerge the print and then pull out, let the most of the bleach drip out and then submerge to wash. The bleach is quite strage fluid, seems to stick to the print but it doesn't.

The toner itself works much nicer and slower. Altough if I want a suddle toning, the toning is also quick submerge and drip dry and wash. And that is what I found to be the look I wanted. I have looked down sepia toning because the prints I have seen are just pure sepia and it looks in my eyes quite ugly. It depends of course on the print itself, some low contrast prints look actually quite nice in full sepia toning - giving very old look. I did this on some unknown really old agfa paper which hasn't heard of any kind of dMax and was made before contrast was even invented in this world and result was old paper that looked more older!

I also tried only bleaching and then washing and oh man, that opened new door completely. I instantly fell in love with prints that are just fastly bleached without toning. The grit it gives is really nice!

What I found out that the washing in sepia toning is quite important and causes a bit workload. One cannot wash too many prints in same water or even any more than one. I was really careless, I washed all maybe 20 prints in same waters and of course those prints that were just bleached, got part of the toner in the wash. I just dumped all prints in to the same wash water in the end of the washing and the water got quite dirty of the toner, of course. Lesson learned.

So I built myself a washer and now I know to wash a "real" print in general. Probably will do only 1-2 prints in the same water and then dump it. Then I will drop the prints into my washing machine.

I thought toning would be a un-necessary gimmick that I wouldn't use, but my mind was turned around. Many of the test prints looked immediately better when toned. The pure print in many cases look too black&white to me and compared side by side the untoned prints look blueish and cold. Anyways it was fun to cut prints in two, tone the other part and tape them together to see the effect. I had few "complete" prints to compare too and most of the complete prints looked better when toned or just bleached.

BTW: does anyone know the content of Foma Sepia toner bottles? I didn't notice any bothering smell on this toner.
 

MattKing

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vedostuu said:
I also tried only bleaching and then washing and oh man, that opened new door completely. I instantly fell in love with prints that are just fastly bleached without toning. The grit it gives is really nice!
Click to expand...
One caution - if that is a re-halogenating bleach (most are) you need to do something with what is left in the emulsion after you bleach the image.
The "toner" part essentially develops the re-halogenated bits, which behave like exposed but undeveloped parts of the emulsion. If you don't develop them and/or fix them, the print will deteriorate quickly.
If the bleach is in the nature of Farmer's reducer it is unsuitable for toning, but the fixer included in it helps preserve the lightened print it is used on.
To be safe, even with standard sepia toning it is wise to fix afterwards.
If you find that the bleach is working too quickly, just dilute it.
 
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radiant

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MattKing said:
To be safe, even with standard sepia toning it is wise to fix afterwards.
If you find that the bleach is working too quickly, just dilute it.
Click to expand...

Ok, good to know. I thought fixing would bring back the bleached highlights. Surely I will dilute the bleach next time.
 

Ian Grant

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Well the bleached areas will slowly darken with exposure to light although not completely. Fixing may well also lighten the bleached areas but as you say is necessary.

Ian
 

spijker

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I did some more experimenting with toning Ilford FB Classic (neutral) as I found a half full bottle of Agfa New Viradon toner. This is a polysulfide toner that can be used as a direct toner (without bleaching first). I made a working solution of 1+39 and toned some test strips. As I expected, the toning start at the high lights and as time progresses it gets into the darker tones. In the end, I toned one print for 5 min. This print was previously developed in Eco Pro paper developer, stop, fixed and washed without the use of wash aid. This is recommended in the book Way Beyond Monochrome 2nd edition on page 504 in a side note to the Polysulfide Toner Formula.


Here is a photo of the toned and untoned print. The toned print is not bad. However, I would prefer a more subtle toning of mainly the dark tones and less in the highlights. Like a warm tone paper after selenium toning. Also the brown is a bit purplish so colour wise not the greatest to my taste. Plus the Viradon is really stinky so toning indoors isn't fun. And at -15 C, outdoor toning wouldn't be fun either.

I might try the Ilford IT-8 Pyrocatechin toner next as adelorenzo suggested. @adelorenzo ; what do you use for the Hydrochloric Acid? I can get this at Canadian Tire. If I diluted that further down from 31.45% to 10% for Stock B, would that work?

Menno
 
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tezzasmall

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I particularly like three pairs of pictures on your website link, that I wonder which toner you used please?

The first is the pair which are four rows down, on the left, of a snowed in kettle and pot.

Then there is the second and third pairs, which are on the bottom row, being the immediate left and the centre ones, of some trees in snow. I like the overall look of both of these, including the out of focus 'zoom' type look to them. You seemed to have used this on another picture shown.

Then there is the diffused look to just one side of the frame, in the two pictures of the front of and the water paddle of the Klondike boat. Could you explain how were these various tones and focuses were achieved from beginning to end?

Many thanks Anthony.

Terry S
 

adelorenzo

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@tezzasmall All three of those image pairs are actually diptychs printed on the same piece of paper. They are all sepia and selenium split toned. I use sodium sulfide for sepia toning, if you dilute it to be much weaker than the standard formula you get more of a yellow/straw color as opposed to a brown. Two of them are printed on Ilford Classic FB matt paper but the trees are printed on Ilford Art 300 so they have a different look.

For these prints I was starting with dilute selenium toning for 3-5 minutes at 1:19. Then I dilute the sepia bleach 1:10 from stock and then I bleach for 30-60 seconds depending on what I'm going for. You can barely tell the image has been bleached until you redevelop it. I don't measure the sepia toner I just put a very small amount of sulfide flakes into a liter of water.

The two pairs of images were taken with an old Brownie Hawkeye box camera with the lens flipped around. It's a pretty popular way to shoot those cameras, gives that out of focus look on the edges.
 

spijker

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Well, she actually did quit modelling, got married and has a toddler now.

Anthony, thanks for all the info. I'll order the rest of the chemicals and give it a try.

Menno
 

tezzasmall

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adelorenzo said:
@tezzasmallThey are all sepia and selenium split toned.

The two pairs of images were taken with an old Brownie Hawkeye box camera with the lens flipped around.
Click to expand...
Thanks for all the info. I have some Art 300 paper, which I love, but have never tried toning it in any way.

As for the reversal of the lens in a Hawkeye - I should have known, as I've read about this way of shooting before. You've reminded me how much I like it, so I feel a purchase coming on.

Terry S
 

Sauer

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Why is it that a warmtone paper like Fomatone responds so aggressively to toning while Ilford Multigrade does not? Its all just silver by this point isn't it? I've toned a print on Fomatone in Selenium 1:10 and within only a few second it had gone from its usual cream colour to an almost copper tint. The Multigrade on the other hand only shifts a little bit from greenish to purple'ish (to my eye).

Untoned Multigrade on the left, toned Fomatone on the right. It is a little more reddish to the eye very much like aged copper. Its not actually HCA in that tray, just clean water.


Untoned Multigrade on the left, toned on the right.
 
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