Wood Pile

Great shot and very nice series again Miles!

- Bert

Great tones and composition Miles. I'm not sure I caught the thread about vintage wine developer. Could you explain more?

thanks Bert and RPippin,

RP the reference to wine has to do with the color ( now pinot noir) of my gallon of heavily used, heavily replenished, now 8 week old Moersch SE 5 lith developer. It seems to have stabilized and prints on Forte and Foma seem to be very colorful with great black densities. In fact very similar to Moersch Omega lith with it's speed , colorfulness and deep blacks. The joke is that while sipping on a glass of wine while pondering whether to toss this gallon of developer, that still had some kick to it , I noticed that the color of the wine was identical to the color of the developer. Enjoying both I decided to keep the developer..... LOL .... and weeks later I'm glad I did. Also , as a secret , I think this method of use of Moersch lith SE5 probably is unnerving to it's inventor and that's great fun for me ....LOL ......

Miles

Thanks Miles,
I'm going to try the same thing with replenishing my old lith developer. I usually use 25A + 23B + 1000 distilled water. How much do you replenish with? I'm thinking of a 50/50 old lith and fresh stuff for a start. Using the Omega intensifier has been another learning curve with the deep, hot earth tones and the OD greens, something a little less intense would be nice. When the tones turn into a nice Chianti, I'll have some Fava Beans and ponder my next shoot...

The tones will not turn into Chianti but the developer color will if you keep it aged but replenished. The trick I think is to start with fresh developer mixed with about 75:25 used but not exhausted developer then add 5 to 10 ml per liter each of A and B (straight ) at the start of the next printing session. A very little of D ( I use 10 ml per 4 liters ) every 2 weeks for the hell of it . If the solution is brown it's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking red/purple ( Sangria to Chianti if you please) ... It seems then it is stable and process times are 5 to 6 1/2 minutes. The blacks are very strong and deep like Omega but the hot earth tones are a bit less than Omega. In fact the results are similar to Omega but single tray. Interesting, Kentmere fineprint is more neutral to lavender. The print above on Forte is in hand very colorful with peach,pink, brown and black and actually not yellowish. I should rescan it (turn off all the auto settings).

Miles