FSA Toner

I had a bit of a play the other day making some home-brew toner.  Commonly known as FSA and not strictly speaking a toner but a re-developer.  The nice thing about being able to mix your own from raw chemicals is the ability to vary the relative quantities of the ingredients and then observe the effect.  But these prints are just a first step into the world of FSA.

These probably weren't the best prints to use but they were at hand. The process can be summarised as follows.  They’d already been dried so first they got a soak in water. Then bleached in a potassium iodide solution followed by a good wash - you can either bleach to completion or if you want a split-tone effect then pull the print whenever you want. Then into the toner for a few minutes before another fix and then a final wash.

Portstewart Harbour

FSA toner is a strange brew as once mixed, the toner takes an hour or so to activate and then only has a lifetime of between 1 to 3 hours.  So a bit of planning is required to ensure you're ready to rock within the timeframe. For the record, the toning mixture I used was 5g of thiourea with 30g of sodium carbonate and then 1000ml of water.  Apparently a little heating of the tray during the toning helps things along a bit.  All this information taken from Tim Rudman's Toning book, by the way.

For the initial bleach stage there are a few options depending on the colours you want in the final print.  I went for the 'red' potassium iodide bleach, which is 9.6g of potassium iodide and 35g of potassium ferricyanide again in 1000ml of water.  It's a slow starter but once it gets going it's quick enough.  Prints need to be fully fixed beforehand to avoid staining and need a good wash before the toning stage.  After toning prints should then be re-fixed - preferably in a non-rapid fixer which uses   sodium thiosulphate rather than ammonium thiosulphate.  I only had Ilford Rapid Fixer to hand so used it.  And if you bleach too much you can always re-develop the print and start over.

In this second print the highlights were already pretty faint in the middle of the print and the bleach has almost but removed them completely.  I probably should have redeveloped the print a little afterward bleaching to bring back a little more detail.  I think the ideal would be to over-print the negative slightly in the first place so that's what I shall try to remember to do next time.

Portstewart Bay, towards Donegal

Anyway I like the colours - these were both, I think, on Adox MCC paper.  The nice thing about FSA is that since it's really a redeveloper it is supposed to work on all papers, not just ones that tone easily.   I think with the right print there could be a lot of mileage with this mixture.