Thiocarbamide toning

[Gary Holliday]

I'm looking to tone some highlights with a thiothiocarbamide toner, most likely a commercially made product for convenience.

I checked the Moersch site, but got a bit confused with the German!

I'm not sure what to go for and was hoping that people could post some printed examples of toners.


Cheers

 

[tim rudman]

Most commercial thiocarbamide toners are more similar than dissimilar Gary.
As you are in the UK you will probably find Fotospeed most available. I use it often and it works well. Being thiocarbamide, you can also adjust the colour.

If you want to tone just the highlights, you need to bleach very lightly. You might want to dilute the bleach to get more control and repeatability. It's also a good idea to time your bleach stages and keep notes of the times you used as the bleach (and therefore the toner colour) has always gone further than you can accurately see.
Don't forget, warmtone papers bleach faster than neutral or cold tone papers.
Tim

 

[Bob F.]

I've used the Fotospeed toners a fair bit (probably half my prints in the gallery here were toned in it). The paper, the amount of alkali "activator" used and the level of bleaching gives a range of different colour and degrees of tone. Different bleaches also have an effect, but I've not experimented with that idea.

Tim Rudman's book "The Master Photographer's Toning Book" is the definitive source I think - I've never seen anything even remotely as extensive - and is full of examples and comparisons.

Have fun, Bob.

 

[vet173]

I highly recommend tims book on toning. It will answer all your questions.

 

[Gary Holliday]

Yes I have the book. Your first sentence Tim, more or less answers my question. Fotospeed should do the job.

Cheers

 

[brian steinberger]

Thiocarbamide toners are very easy to mix up from stock chems. I don't usually like to mix up my own chemicals, but for thiocarbamide sepia toner, it's too easy. I bought my chemicals from photographers formulary in MT, and use a formula in Tim's The Toning Book.

Brian