I have a set of instructions from Agfa for their Recipe 501. Is there a dilution of your bath that is roughly equivalent to that?
Yes, with a dilution of +4 parts water, the effect should be similar, although my bleach should be slightly faster because the bromide content is higher.
In practice, this is still too rich for indirect toning with Viradon – the same applies to 501, of course – as the aim is not to bleach through. To bleach in a controlled manner by eye, you need to increase the dilution: BL501 1+1 to 1+4 – and so on.
The second part of my guide to sulphur toning describes how polysulphide toners work. The MT4 Siena is not entirely dissimilar to Viradon. If only the highlights and upper mid-tones are to be bleached, times of 20 to 60 seconds at a dilution of 1+20 to 1+40 are sufficient.
The colour tone depends not only on the bleach and toner dilution. Warm-tone papers develop colour even without a bleach; cooler emulsions may require a bleach to develop colour, or to reveal a direct toning previously applied. Like all polysulphide toners, Viradon tones metallic silver and silver salt, even if this does not result in a noticeable colour change with every paper. In such cases, although silver sulphide has formed and the print is ‘protected’, the effect of the toner is visually discernible only through an increase in density. If, for example, a paper with a high silver content and ‘Kraft grain’ such as ADOX Fine Print is bleached after toning, the degree of conversion to sulphur silver becomes visible. Prints that were previously fully toned lose hardly any density; the tone is dark brown, whilst after shorter toning times a luminous coloured tone emerges with a decrease in density.
If bleaching is carried out before toning, an intense colour tone appears almost instantly in the bleached areas, regardless of the toner dilution; as the toning time increases, the toner also reaches the (only slightly bleached) shadows – visible to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the paper used.
Regards
, wm
