Re: Myths that will not die (was Dmax Blues)

Kevin Crombie ( kcrombie@montreal.com)
Sun, 12 January 1997 1:25 PM

At 10:30 08/01/97, Judy Seigel wrote:
>On Wed, 8 Jan 1997, Kevin Crombie wrote:
>> I had always understood that while hydrogen peroxide "intensifying" is
>> useful for test strips (for those of us unable to judge how a print will
>> look in a week) it affects the long term life of the print, i.e. shortening
>> it considerably.

>Kevin I've never heard that, or seen it,and can't figure why it should be
>(though as we know chemicals are devious and invisible). My understanding
>of what happens is that the extra oxygen in the H2O2 oxidizes the print
>immediately as would otherwise take place naturally in air over time, so I
>don't see any harm there (like an overdose of growth hormone). We also
>give a brief rinse after the H202 as well.

This is interesting, since this is NOT what my friend the instructor at the
Nova Scotia College of Art & Design stressed over and over.

As for the final "darkness" of the print, I have watched several of my
prints darken *considerably* over a period of months -- as much as 20
percent beyond the hair-dryed-and-let-age-for-a-couple-weeks stage.
Consequently, I find estimating the final density of the print to be quite
difficult. I thought at first that I was simply not washing them long
enough, but "Keepers of Light" says that will cause the image to fade, not
darken.

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Kevin Crombie e-mail: kcrombie@montreal.com
387 rue Villeneuve est voice: (514) 849-7601
Montreal, P.Q. H2T 1M1

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