2 bath lith - how concentrated soft developer?

[mrtoml]

I tried 2 bath lith printing yesterday for the 1st time. Using a strong lith developer for the 1st bath to lay down shadows and then a soft normal developer (Centrabrom-S) to build up the highlights.

Even though I ended up with the second bath diluted to a quarter normal strength it was still way too fast and uncontrollable so I temporarily gave up. What strength do other people use? Any suggestions?

I also found it very difficult to work out the snatch point from the first developer. I think I probably missed it every time. But in any case when into the second bath it was way too strong.

 

[Wolfgang Moersch]

Soft developers like Centrabrom (or other metol developers) are quite fast - too fast because of the overexposure for the lith-prozess. Dilute 1+50-1+200, however it would be better to take a harder and slower (or normal) developer.
A description of the bases you will find here: http://www.moersch-photochemie.com/daten/lith-zweibad-eng/lith-zweibad-10.htm

 

[2F/2F]

I agree. Use a highly diluted one shot developer for the second bath. Remember that if your paper were developed to completion, it would be near totally black (if not entirely so) in the end. Thus, your highlights are in peril at anything other than very high dilutions. Make it so diluted that it would not even fully develop a sheet of paper, in my opinion. To make a liter, I use 100mL of Ilford Multigrade working solution (which contains 10mL of syrup), and 900mL of water. This means the final liter of solution has only 1mL of syrup in it and 999mL of water; not even enough syrup to fully develop a sheet of 8x10 fiber.

 

[mrtoml]

Thanks for this advice. I just had no idea of a starting dilution. I will try again soon maybe with a different developer.