Thanks for your reply.
What strikes me is that the print smells of fixer. I must not have rinsed it properly.
Bingo! When properly fixed, the image looks similar. If you then rinse out the excess fixer (along with its silver salt complexes), you won’t end up with a combination of silver haze and sulphur haze.
The print is a write-off, even though I actually quite like it as it is. Do it again and then apply a sulphur tone :-)
Insufficient fixing looks different. Firstly, it isn’t evenly distributed across the image, and secondly, it’s more pink/violet because undissolved silver halides are undergoing physical development.
Hold a sheet of photographic paper up to the light and observe it – don’t develop it or anything. That’s physical development, and under-fixing looks similar (just slightly weaker) after sufficient exposure.
Incidentally, physical development is utilised in ‘printing-out paper’ (formerly known as ‘copying paper’ or ‘gaslight paper’). Many alternative printing processes (e.g. cyanotype) are also based on physical development, even the good old daguerreotype; there, the mercury vapour merely brought about a kind of ‘reversal’.
Best regards,
Franz
