I love how you replicated both the green of the leaves and the orange of the flower with your lith chemistry. I knew Fomatone was capable of this, as I've had similar results in the past, but not with grain this fine.
When I have pushed the paper by exposing it for a very long time, I get a much coarser appearance than this, and I suspect it's due to the chemistry. I used Fotospeed LD20.
- Thomas
Wolfgang, amazing colors in this, I like it a lot! I am very curious about the Omega toner developed for use with Foma papers in the SE5 kits. I just ordered a set from Freestyle to try. Is there any info on what the 'omega' toner does?
Yes shadows become green - in combination of overexposure and the oxidizer omega.
The normal procedure for strong chromaticity is a highly diluted developer, 3-6 stops overexposure and a prolonged development time. There is a border of overexposure, if you exceeds it, the grain increases, the appearance get coarser.
With short development time, no graininess can originate with a paper like Fomatone, but normally also no color. The developer must be fat, so that sufficient HQ can be transmitted to the oxidation bath. "Fat man" needs a brake to control speed: a greater amount of Lith D or bromide.
As soon as (or better before) the first black appears, the print is transferred into the second bath for 30-90 seconds. All densities will increase, lights turn yellow to red, shadows to green or cyan depending on grade of overexposure and developing time in the first bath. Green can be toned to magenta with selenium.
Looks great but sounds quite complicated. We've got one good book on toning from Tim Rudman. It seems to me that we would benefit from another toning book from W Moersch. His materials are becoming available and all we need now are his words