Liquid Light

I've also been struggling with LL, trying to get an image onto metal for a sculptor friend of mine. If you're using the VC stuff it seems to be quite sensitive to safe light. We had some success (though still not brilliant) switching from red to amber and much lower wattage. Might be worth a try.It's tricky stuff.

About the VC LL. It is recommended that one use a red safelight. At first I used the non VC type and had no problems. When I got to try the VC type, I had fogged results under an amber safelight. I then proceeded without a safelight. That worked. I have an entire book on hand coated emulsions. They also suggest adding developer to the emulsion to increase speed. I would make fog tests before I did that though. My advice to my students was, don't expect perfect results, you will get some coating streaks and possibly bubbles. That's part of the charm, IMHO.

My 2c:good suggestions above - but maybe a little confusing?To me the image (which is a little hard to see due to the low res) looks (read: shouts) like you have to problems:Too thin emulsion. Then the silver can't "cover" the whole area and the dark areas look spottet. reason: Your emulsion might be too hot... the hotter, the thinner... be carefull.Or the use of the roller - I have never had good experience with that. It soaks up too much emulsion (which is a waste) and when you make the rolling motion then try and watch what is happening at the "backside" of the roller - it will tend to lift up the emulsion, and thereby make a mottled pattern.I always - as OMU and Artonpaper - use a HAKE or SUMI brush - and then I most often put two layers on the paper.Make a test with this method - if it still is flat, then think developers. (I'm betting it is the coating - not the developers..)(And when you get really frustrated, then consider using a really good emulsion.. it is called FOMA....... ;.) )

May be one year ago , someone had been bought foma emulsion from an distributor and they had been put in to white thin containers and half pf the emulsion had been exposed. If you buy foma emulsion from distributor , dont forget to warn them to put it in black containers in dark.I liked the image as it is , its like marble sculpture modern.

This perhaps belongs to another tread.One of the containers I bought had a blue lid that was not light proof. Took a while before I figured out what was the problem and I had to throw away a lot of that emulsion.