Simple, they said! One of the most straightforward alternative processes to get started. Well, I can tell you otherwise. Salt prints might be an easy way into alternative photographic methods, but to tame the process and get consistent results, that is a different matter altogether.
I have made many mistakes over the last couple of weeks, and instead of showing only my successful prints, I will try to share some fails and how they look. Hopefully, somebody can learn something, and my waster of paper and chemistry can come to some benefit.
So let’s look at the two prints above.
So, who ordered those black vertical dots I have circled out on the left print? These are called “pizza wheel marks” and result from the Epson P800 printer’s paper advance mechanism. People all over the internet complain about this. Just google “Epson pizza wheel,” and you can read for hours.
The printer has wheels with tiny spikes that grab the paper to move it forward. For robust paper and matte surfaces, this is not a problem. But, with glossy paper and transparencies, it’s a different story. The internet has told me to try different settings on the printer, load the transparency differently. I’m still working on this and have not reached a conclusion or solution yet. I certainly hope to get this fixed since the only alternative is to swap the printer for a canon that uses a vacuum to hold the paper - or go forward with analog negatives.
The next fail in these prints is the brown marks in the highlights of the left photo. If you leave the paper in the first salt wash without agitation, the Silver nitrate that accumulates in the water will stain the print this way. This issue is fixed if you babysit it for the 4-minute wash with constant and gentle agitation. It’s also a good idea to swap the water frequently, and since saltwater is cheap, I decided to remove the variable from the equation altogether and now use fresh 5% saltwater for each print.