From: Peter Marshall (petermarshall@cix.co.uk)
Date: 02/16/03-09:46:07 AM Z
Niranjan,
I'd forget what Schaefer says, which seems too me to be confusing and
unnecessarily complicated. You might like to take a look at
http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa050602a.htm for a feature
with some simple instructions that I used when teaching workshops. Others
may do things differently and get good results too of course.
You can adequately control the nitrate/chloride ratio by salting the paper
using a consistent procedure and then brush on a measured amount of silver
nitrate solution as evenly as possible. It works fine and avoids the
problems of changing silver bath concentrations.
The Ansel Adams Basic Photo Series was a great publication in its original
format in the 1950s (and I still occasionally refer to it), but each
revision seems to have lessened its utility. I'm pretty sure there was
nothing about alt processes in the original though.
Peter Marshall
Photography Guide at About http://photography.about.com/
email: photography.guide@about.com
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and elsewhere......
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> I am fairly new to this list and newer still to the alternative photo
> processes....having yet to make my first print. I have decided to start
> with the oldest and the most basic of all processes, i.e. the salt
> print.
> So I thought may be I will piggy-pack on this discussion.
>
> I have been reading as much as I can find about this process on this
> list as
> well as other web sources and several books, as I wait for all the
> chemicals/papers/etc. to come together. One book, which is not an
> alternative process book per se, gives a procedure that is different
> from
> what is conventionally reported elsewhere. The book is by John
> Schaefer -his Ansel Adams Guide Part II. In the book, he recommends to
> put
> a coating of the Silver nitrate first, followed by floating in salt and
> the
> finally a short float in a dilute (1%) Silver Nitrate. It makes sense
> (to
> me) that this would result in a more controlled Nitrate/Chloride ratio
> on
> the paper, perhaps giving rise to better predictability in the resulting
> prints, as excess Silver Nitrate is known to play the role of a catalyst
> (from what I have read) in conversion of Silver Chloride to metallic
> Silver
> during exposure.
>
> I was wondering if anyone on the list has tried something like that and
> would care to share his/her experience/opinion on the same.
>
> Thanks for your response.
>
> Niranjan Patel.
>
>
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