[Leica] Toning vs. paper and print color.

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

People pretty much stopped doing it in the 90's. Adding clear to their
selenium. A few did though. The issue believe it or not was whether to do
your hype clear bath before or after the selenium. Kodak says before but
most of the good people I knew or know of did it after. This was before the
internet. A key thing was to have no hardener in your fix.

A sheet of 16x20 fiber cost 5 bucks now at B&H Ilford which is darned close
to what it cost last time I used it a decade ago. I'd add a few bucks of
chemistry to that for way less than ten bucks a sheet cost of materials. The
water in Portland was pretty cheap..
I charged 50 bucks a print to commercial clients for 16x20 black and white.
They got fiber and selenium whether they paid for it of not. In my last 15
years of commercial photography I made my prints to the same specs as I
would for a gallery. No RC and no non archival.

I worked out that it cost me $8.50 cents to mix of a set of trays for
11x14's
Per tray:
$1.43 Dektol
$ .52 KISP (Kodak indicator stop bath)
$1.20 KRF(A)1 (Kodak rapid fix A only no b hardener)
$1.20 KRF(A)2
$3.38 KRST (Kodak rapid selenium toner)
$ .84 KHCA  (Kodak hype clearing agent)
$8.57 Total fiber
$4.35 Total RC

Per print I worked this out:
Print per Tray
$ .044 Dektol
$ .01 KISP
$ .0125 KRF
$ .0125 KRF
$ .035 KRST
$ .008 KHCA
13.1 ? fiber print
26.2? 11x14 fiber
print cost


People ordinarily prints from my body of work paid 200 dollars I think per
print up to the last 90's.
Now they pay $450 for a 16x20.
350 for an 11x14 or 11x17.

Darkroom and inkjet prints cost the same when I last offered darkroom which
was in 2006.





Mark William Rabiner
Photography
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/


> From: Marty Deveney <benedenia at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 10:02:08 +0930
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Toning vs. paper and print color.
> 
>> The trick I learned is to add Selenium to the Hypo Clearing agent, two
>> steps in one...
> 
> If your main aim is improving permanence, this works well, but where
> the colour of the tone, its distribution and consistency of tone
> between prints is really critical, it has shortcomings.  The colour
> and distribution of tone is different to plain toning and it changes
> more from print to print if you add the selenium toner to the Hypo
> Clear, because the pH of the Hypo Clear is different to that of a
> working solution of KRST, and the bath changes more than if you add
> completely washed prints to a KRST bath.
> 
> There is ammonium thiosulfate in KRST and it always seemed odd to me
> to add hypo to hypo clear - a bit like adding paint to paint stripper.
> 
> Marty
> 
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