Reflecting on my
original post and my complaint about the thinness of the negative I decided I should try and intensify the negative. There are many ways to to this including a very old technique of using Mercury Chloride (not a good idea!), Chromium, Sepia toner, ot Selenium toner.
- Fotospeed makes a Chromium intensifier intended for darkening thin negatives. I have never tried this but this is one way to go.
- Andrew Sanderson's excellent blog has instructions on using Sepia toner. This involves bleaching then toning the negative. He does a great show and tell to explain the process.
- Finally I use Selenium toner. Why? Mostly because I already have Selenium toner mixed up for my printing use. It is also dead simple. Just dunk the negative into selenium mixed a 1+3. I give it about 3 minutes. I get anywhere from a 1/2 stop to full stop improvement.
I gave a
short write up here but realized though I was satisfied with the improvement I didn't show side-by-side examples.
Below I have a couple of examples. To avoid confusion I should state that the new prints I made from the intensified version (of the same negative) were cropped differently. I wanted to try a different crop at the same time. However since significant portions of the before and after prints overlap the comparisons are valid. They are all printed on the same paper (12"x16" Ilford Classic MGFB) and development times. The reference print is one I printed at f22 #5 54 seconds and #0 0 seconds. The reference print is the top print in each case.
The scans have to be done in sections (4) and stitched together. The physical prints look better!
First is the reference compared to the same exposure (f22 #5 54 seconds #0 0 seconds). The intensified print is noticeably lighter in exposure with the light areas brighter as well so increased contrast.
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| f22 #5 54 seconds #0 0 seconds |
The next is half a stop darker and while the shadows about match the highlights are brighter. This shows at least a half stop improvement and better contrast.
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| f22 #5 64 seconds #0 0 seconds |
The results led me in a different direction, I printed a full stop darker than the original and ended up with striking print with darker shadows but the improved highlights make it work.
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| f16 #5 54 seconds #0 0 seconds |
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