I've been using Centennial POP from Chicago Albumen works for a little now with great success using the two part gold toner sold by Photographer's Formulary. My results are consistent and as predictable as they can be using POP, with anything from a warm-toned orange-brown to a very cold blue-grey tone possible with amazing regularity. Anyway, my question relates to other toners, specifically sellenium. When I attempt to sellenium tone, my results are less than pleasing. The prints seem to lack sharpness (accutance, really) in comparison to the very sharp gold-toned prints. Does anyone have any experience relating to this or any theories?

-- Chad Jarvis (chad_jarvis@yahoo.com), May 17, 1999

Answers

I've only used pop once and I didn't try to sellenium it, but a fellow student did and his image disappeared. Sorry, no theories. Sellenium just does weird things sometimes, some good and some bad.

-- (Fluttr22@aol.com), April 29, 2001.

This is probably because the Kodak Selenium Toner contains Ammonium thiosuphate, which bleaches the image away. Most POP processes use very dilute alkaline fixers. Cheers, DJ.

-- N Dhananjay (ndhanu@umich.edu), June 22, 2001.

... Try using a much more dilute Selenium Toner than the package says. We do this in VanDyke printing and Argyrotype to stop degradation of the image.

-- Matthew Parker (m_parker68@hotmail.com), July 12, 2001.