Well I ordered the Fomabrom Variant III FB from Freestyle in Los Angeles. As far as I can tell they are both the US supplier and the only outlet for Variant III FB in the US. It just arrived and I hope to be back in the darkroom soon to give it a whirl. In the meantime, I accumulated enough prints made from the Arista EDU Ultra to make a toning session worthwhile. My practice is usually to make 3 final prints of every image I like. That way I have one or more extras for the portfolio, a possible sale, or just in case something goes wrong, like defect in the paper, a mistake when trimming or mounting, or a bad spotting attempt.

So as you can imagine it is easy to quickly have a nice stack of prints. Not a problem because toning is a pretty straightforward and fast procedure. Here’s how I do it. First I presoak the prints in water for 10 minutes. Then they are placed in straight Hypo for 3 minutes. Next they go into the Selenium Toner. For the Arista EDU Ultra I used 6 ounces of Selenium Toner to 122 ounces of water (1:20) for roughly 4 minutes. This provides archival permanence and a slight tonal shift to the cooler side of things. Individual prints might take more or less time in the toner so you have to watch things carefully! Once this step is completed, the prints go in a Hypo Clear bath for 2 minutes and then finally into a water pre rinse for 5 minutes. The final step washes the prints for about an hour and a half.

Gee what a surprise … more of the insidious and strange molting of emulsion around the paper edges. Thankfully it didn’t affect the image area on any of the prints! Nothing like watching little pieces of emulsion floating in your solutions #$^%&$%^&

So what was the final result? My initial excitement concerning image quality was reconfirmed. I stand by everything I said in my previous entry. With Selenium toning I am fully convinced! See the image above. If all goes well with the new box of Fomabrom, it will become my new go to paper!