Early Work In Photography
A Text-book For Beginners

CHAPTER IL FIRST LESSONS IN TONING. Materials required:—One tube of gold (price about 2s.) ; one oz. bicarbonate of soda (price id.) one lo-oz. graduate (cost about 1/3); two 20-oz. bottles (cost about 2d. each). IN the last chapter we dealt witli the simplest method of producing pictures by light, and gave formula for a fixing bath to prevent such pictures undergoing further change under the influence of light. It will be noticed, however, that the color of such photographic prints, after removal from the fixing bath, is not agreeable, but ranges from a more or less impure white, through various shades of yellowish brown, until it ends in a deep reddish chocolate altogether different from prints made by professional pho tographers. We suggested the use of the fixing bath in order that students should early become acquainted witli the simple method of checking the change that light produces upon sensitive silvered paper, and we advise students to become thoroughly familiar witli this action before entering upon the more complex change brought about in the toning bath. We will take for granted that the color of a print, simply fixed and washed, is objectionable; let us now consider how it may be altered (previous to fixing) so that it will assume the pleasing purple and black tones* so peculiar to photo- grams made by professional workers. The principle of the so-called “toning” action may be simply described thus:—After all the free nitrate of silver has been removed from the print (as it comes from the printing frame), by washing in several changes of water, it is then treated with a weak alkaline solution of gold chloride. In its alkaline state (and this is why an alkali should always be present in a toning bath) the gold present in solution is attracted by the metallic silver present in the print (which forms the picture) and becomes deposited upon it in a finely divided metallic state. These fine particles of “See Glossary.