Tuesday 17 January 2012

Salt print.


It is not too far from albumen to salt printing (albumen is essencially a salted paper print, using albumen as binder). It is actually much easier to prepare salt solution then the eggs' whites albumen, and it's less smelly!
Same fixer and silver sensitizing solution, as for albumen, can be used - at least that's what I did.
Just mixed water, salt and gelatine (- most popular receipt, details below).
The main issue stays the proper negative. This time I've used an old, one of my first collodion portraits, accidentally overexposed - waiting  for printing test until now :)
..a lot to learn on this processes, it's just a record of the first tests..

30 min exposure, halogen lamp 400W, 4x5 WPC negative, water colour paper




Receipts:

5 grams Sodium Chloride
0.5 grams Gelatine
250 ml Distilled Water

Mix gelatine with one fourth of the water and let it bloom a bit. Heat the rest of the water and dissolve Sodium Chloride (Sea Salt) in it. Then mix the two together. Cover the paper with salt solution and leave to dry.
Sensitize with - I've used 15% silver nitrate solution in distilled water, that I've prepared for albumen first. (different sollution can be used, most typical - 12%, but 15% should result in increased contrast). Leave to dry.
Expose. Wash in water. Fix (again - same as for albumen) :

75 grams Sodium Thiosulphate anhydrous
(as I had only ST Peptahydrate I've multiplied the required amount by 1.56 =117g)
500 mL Distilled Water
1g sodium carbonate (washing soda, which you can buy or you can 'do' (like in my case) by heating baking soda) (some receipts do not include it)

Wash well - ca 30 min.





4 comments:

  1. Really cool, Monika!
    Very beautiful portraits and prints.
    Your blog is an information treasure room.
    That's priceless, thanks!
    XXX

    ReplyDelete
  2. cool images monika!(and nice recipe!!

    ReplyDelete