From: Liam Lawless (lawless@ic24.net)
Date: 06/26/00-04:59:16 PM Z
Sandy,
The fogging problem was discussed on Terry K's list some months back, and
while no definite conclusions were reached as to the cause, one remedy is to
give the first wash in distilled water; my guess is that not very soluble
light-sensitive silver compounds are formed from residual silver nitrate in
contact with the chemicals found in tap
water. The problem is worse at certain times of the year, which would
appear to support this theory. I haven't done salt for ages, but POP is
quite similar in many respects (including the fogging!), and I find that a
long (10-15 minute) wash before fixing avoids it; "until the wash water is
no longer milky" may not be enough. You're lucky not to have fog in the
image too, but maybe that's because you're using thinner negs than I used
to.
Sod. and amm. chloride will, I think, give slightly different colours
(redder with NH4Cl), but if you're using gelatin-sized paper this is
probably responsible for some of the brown shift (which is also due to
compacting of the silver and change in refractive index of the gelatin as
the print dries). The salting formula in SOS is rather basic - if you try
20 g sod. chloride + 20 g sod. citrate in 1 litre (from Reilly), you should
get more of a pinky-purple that tones well in gold. (Reilly's formula also
includes 2 g gelatin, but I wouldn't bother with it myself.) Reilly says,
"The addition of a neutral citrate will cause the prints to be more reddish
in colour, and slightly more "brilliant"." [N.B. This solution may,
therefore, demand denser negs!]
'ope this 'elps.
Liam
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