RE: Trick for increasing speed of photo papers?

> Judy,
>
> > >
> > > I'm forgetting now who it was, but who was the
> > >> printer who ALWAYS printed so that he could give a light bleach to
> > clear
> > >> up whites?
> > >
> > > Ansel Adams for one, or so he wrote in his book on printing.
> >
> >
> > Are you sure it wasn't Ansel describing someone else? Wherever I
> > read it,
> > it wasn't the author's thing, but some one else's.
>
> This was discussed in his section on using ferricyanide bleach. He
> didn't
> say someone else did it, but rather he said he did it occasionally on
> some
> prints. As I remember I tried his bleach formula as described in this
> section trying to "brighten" a print and after flipping the print face
> up in
> a tray of wash water discovered a blank print. So his formula worked
> perfectly, my print was much brighter.
>
> Don

In his 1968 Basic Photo 'The Print', my bible for some years, he says that
it is needed on many 'modern papers', especially when you increase
development times to get richer tones, as this results in some veiling of
the whites. It's one of the steps ('Clearing the Whites') in his standard
processing sequence rather than a special treatment.

I haven't bothered to do it for years, but I did make better prints back
then. I normally put this down to changes in paper, but it could also be
because I got lazy over things like this.

Regards

Peter Marshall
Photography Guide at About http://photography.about.com/
email: photography.guide@about.com
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Received on Fri Nov 19 06:12:27 2004