VMI/Mercuric: need to make permanent? Any users?

First of all, I want to make clear that I don't advocate people using mercuric chloride and in fact I would strongly discourage it, especially if you plan on having defect free children; I have sworn the stuff off myself.

That said, I have several negatives that I treated with VMI about seven years ago. They were nearly unprintable without it. Now I have a small dilemma because I never treated them with sodium sulfide to make the stain permanent. They're unprintable without it, and I can't get a good scan with it. So I have to make a decision at some point. If I remove the stain I have no plans to ever replace it.

So my question is this: Just how important is "fixing" the stain? Do I even need to worry about it? I would prefer to keep the negs in the flexible state they're currently in, but there is so little info about this stuff. I do recall in that Lustrum Press Darkroom Technique (?) book reading something a few ambiguous lines about having left negs for a few years in that state.

They still look fine...

One of the negs in question is one of my "key" images, so I hand wring about it a little.

I don't know anything about the mercuric chloride. But why not make duplicates of the valuable negatives? The duplicates could then be used for printing while the originals could be used for scanning.

MMfoto said:

........... They were nearly unprintable without it.....

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Did they print well with the VMI treatment? I ask because I have a roll of negs that I messed up by using some badly formulated developer that I'd like to use VMI on because they're very weak in the shadows and lower midtones, aggravated by some of the subjects being in oblique bright sunlight. I've read that VMI gives the best intensification to underexposed low values.

Someone told me recently that he had some VMI negs that had not been stabilized with sulphide but were still good to print after a number of years.

Did you notice a deterioration in grain? I wonder if the VMI were reversed the grain might be exaggerated, especially for scanning.

Yes, the "Darkroom" book has an entire chapter about a photographer (whose name escapes me now) who used VMI on his negatives. My copy is in storage, but perhaps someone else who has a copy can extract the information you need.

john_s said:

Did they print well with the VMI treatment? I ask because I have a roll of negs that I messed up by using some badly formulated developer that I'd like to use VMI on because they're very weak in the shadows and lower midtones, aggravated by some of the subjects being in oblique bright sunlight. I've read that VMI gives the best intensification to underexposed low values.

Someone told me recently that he had some VMI negs that had not been stabilized with sulphide but were still good to print after a number of years.

Did you notice a deterioration in grain? I wonder if the VMI were reversed the grain might be exaggerated, especially for scanning.

Click to expand...

It went from being grainy to being extremely grainy. It only worked because the images are close ups and from inside a mine, so the grain is 100% compatible with the image. I wouldn't recommend it, and having used it, I think it's very hard to use safely at all. You have to mix from scratch, and the mercuric chloride is a crystal powder; you will almost certainly expose yourself to some quantity of it.

Also, and most importantly, I have found since that time that digital scanning will bring out more useful information in a poorly exposed neg than intensification ever will. If you can live with a scan instead of a neg I would go that route. I'm already wedded to this neg and need to be able to reproduce existing prints, but would not repeat the same strategy again.

You might also find your highlights running away if your images are in the kind of light you describe...