"Lew" wrote in message
...
Ok, thanks for responses to my previous, typographically
impared
thread. The Rudman books are in transit and I've decided
to work
initially with Ilford Multigrade Warmtone FB. While I'm
waiting for
the books to arrive, the following questions occur to me:
1. Suggestions for the developer that will produce the
warmest tone I
can obtain with the Ilford paper. I have a fully stocked
supply of raw
chemicals, so any published formula is ok.
2. Will the choice of developer affect the tones I get
subsequently
through toning?
3. Has anyone had success dying the paper base in
combination with
toning? ... or is this a totally ridiculous idea?
Developer will have some effect on original image color
and toning. In general warm tone paper has somewhat finer
silver grains than neutral or cold tone paper. It is the
size of the grains that largely determines the color of
silver images. Fine silver grains generally tone more
rapidly than coarse grains partly because of the ratio of
volume to surface area, but note that this is not a strict
rule. Any developer that tends toward a warmer image color
will generally promote toning. The warmer the original image
color the warmer (yellower) the toned image will be, at
least in sulfiding toners.
Again as a rule of thumb only the less active the
developer the warmer the image color. Some special developer
exist that will produce very warm silver images but usually
at the expense of speed and sometimes maximum black. Also,
in general, modern paper emulsions don't respond nearly as
much to variations in developers or to manipulation of
development time and exposure as the classic papers did.
About the only way to determine the final results of a
combination of paper, developer, and toner, is to make test
prints.
Indirect sulfide toner, that is, the bleach and
redevelop kind, work well on cold or neutral paper. They
tend to produce too yellow an image on warm tone paper.
Direct toner, that is, single bath toners, are the opposite,
they tend to produce too cold an image color, or no change,
on cold or neutral tone paper but work well on warm tone
paper. At present Kodak makes three toners as described in
my original post. I have no idea of how long these will stay
in production but all work as advertised and are reliable.
Since none of the formulas is a secret others make very
similiar toners. Photographer's Formulars for instance has
several. Most sulfiding type toners are pretty easy to make
from scratch but Selenium toner is not plus selenium is
fairly toxic.
You will find other types of toners. Not all have image
protection properties. The standard for decades for
protection of microfilm images is a gold toner. This is very
effective but expensive. On warm tone paper gold toner tends
to produce a slate blue color. If it is applied to an image
previously toned with a sulfide toner it turns brick red. By
partially toning in sulfide and then retoning in gold the
shadows will be blue and highlights red or yellow-red.
Metal substitute toners, like Iron-Blue toner (Kodak
T-11) or copper toner, produce images which are less stable
than the original silver although the image colors can be
interesting.
Papers used to come in a wide variety of stock tints,
from pure white or even slightly blue-white to old ivory.
For the most part these disappeared when color became
cheaper. The stock tint has a strong effect on appearent
image color. The same emulsion on a warm stock will appear
much warmer whether toned or not than the on a white stock.
It _is_ possible to tint paper stocks but not RC stocks. The
problem is that the tint in the original tinted stock was
also in the substrate of the paper. I don't know what sort
of dyes to use but I am sure there are articles describing
the process. There was a vogue for a time of "toning" in tea
but the tea really only stains the paper and emulsion. I
think this stain is pretty permanent. Its worth trying on a
scrap print. I am not sure if Tim Rudman discusses this in
his book.
--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA