2-bath lith: Moersch Siena alternative?

Hi All,

I have been playing around with Moersch's Polychrome kit and really like the flexibility it can provide.

Does anyone know of an alternative developer to use instead of Siena (the second dev)? I ask because it doesn't seem to be available without buying the whole Polychrome kit again, at least I don't see it on Freestyle...


Thanks

Rob

After a decade, the situation will have probably resolved itself one way or another. But I came across this thread as I've been exploring the polychrome/2-bath lith thing a bit over the past few days.

For those who are still searching: a fairly accessible alternative to the Moersch Siena developer is the metol version he describes in the first polychrome pdf on his website. I've been playing with it a bit lately and it seems to work, although quite a bit of tweaking is required to match the chemistry to the paper. Also, I'm sure the real thing (using glycin instead of metol) yields better colors, but metol is just a little easier to get hold of.

These are some of my attempts so far:

Untoned; Fomatone MG:


Selenium-toned, Fomatone MG:


Selenium-toned, Adox Variotone:


Fomatone seems to like a very dilute second 'polychrome' developer; much more so than any other paper I've tried so far. I ended up using the metol formula published by Moersch without the bromide and chloride mixed into the stock, diluted at about 1+100 (the pdf says up to 1+10, but this is far too strong for Fomatone even if the prescribed bromide is included) and with extra ammonium and/or sodium chloride added.

One thing I have not been able to figure out is to get a polychrome print to tone in selenium to the bluish/purple hue reported by Moersch back in 2003 on Fomabrom (I believe that paper has since been reformulated). If anyone has experience with that particular approach and result, I'd be all ears...

koraks said:

... the metol version he describes in the first polychrome pdf on his website. I've been playing with it a bit lately and it seems to work ...

Click to expand...

With the risk of making a complete fool of myself ... I can not find the PDF file you're refering to. The "Know how" section contains three articles named "Polychrome development" part 1, 2 and 3. But I do not see a PDF file. Care to share a link?

https://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/artikel/anleitungen/124

You're not a fool; it's categorized a bit oddly in the English section and it's under the toning heading for some reason (apparently because this technique can be thought of as "self-toning"...): http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/files/articles/moersch_creative_toning_techniques1.pdf
You'll find the developer formulae on the last page. I leave out the chloride and bromide from the concentrate, bringing the ingredients down to just metol and sulfite. I add the chloride to taste and generally leave out the bromide altogether.

Edit 6 Feb 24: the link above no longer works, but the same document seems to be available here at the time of writing: https://www.moersch-photochemie.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Two-bath-development-with-Lith.pdf