Fix undeveloped paper?

[jtons]

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone can give me advice with the following issue:

I had a couple of leftover sheets of Fuji color paper which I took out of the darkroom and exposed to full light. I was really surprised by the beautiful blue color of the sheets. I noticed if I left an object on the paper it left a faint afterimage.

I'm wondering how I can fix the paper to stay in that state. Would it work to just run the paper through fixer and skip using the developer? What will happen to the paper if I do nothing?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Josh

 

[orlovphoto]

Hi Josh.

If you do nothing at al the paper will go darker and darker every time you will take it out into the light so you can keep your image that way if you don't show it in bright light and for not too long, but eventually it will be lost due to chemical fogging (probably will take 10-20-30 years though)

If you out in the developer it will of course go completely black.

I have never really tried fixing that faint image (though I have seen it plenty after leaving paper out over the years). My guess though is that it will not work and your paper will go completely white as the fixer takes out unexposed/undeveloped silver. Now, if you leave an object on the paper for a LONG time in pretty bright light and will achieve a pretty high contrast it MAY stay, but I bet it would soften as the chemical reaction of the developer is a lot stronger than just the one induced by light alone so I would expect most of that exposed silver to be ready to leave the paper as soon as the fixer hit it.

Try it, I'd be interested to hear the results. Try leaving a sheet out by the window with something really opaque and heavy so it sits in one place on it for a day or two (you'll get some really dark values in the exposed area)

Good luck!

 

[jtons]

Thanks so much for the response. Now I am really curious how long it will take to turn total black.

I will try some things out and share my results.

 

[christopher walrath]

If you're just curious, try a fix bath, then pop it in the developer for a few seconds and then fix again. Might keep it from getting too dark as a lot of the halides will have been rinsed leaving a much more faint version of the latent image to be converted to metallic silver. Never tried it personally, but given the inkling that's might be what I would try for poops and grins.