Accentuating paper grain at printing stage

noeru · Jun 25, 2019

Hello all!
I'm looking for a way to introduce a grainy texture when printing, presumably with some sort of home brewed developer as I don't expect anything available nowadays would do that, or perhaps adding something to regular developer? Lithing Ilford MGFB WT gloss is pretty much the look I'm after, it's grainy and greenish but it doesn't have that high contrast, high colour and infectious development look of regular lith. Problem is that's one expensive paper and I wonder if I could get something similar with a different combination. I mostly print on Foma.
Any thoughts appreciated!

Rudeofus · Jun 25, 2019

There is a regular lith capable paper made by Foma, why not use it?

noeru · Jun 25, 2019

I do, but as I explained I just want grain and not everything else that comes with with (including the insanely long development times).

koraks · Jun 25, 2019

The grain in paper is several orders of magnitude too small to see with the naked eye. This remains true even if you develop it in the most arcane ways imaginable. Hence, there is no amount of emphasizing you could to on paper grain to make it visible.

If you want grain, you're stuck with either printing small format high-grain negatives, lith and perhaps exposing a second image of just grain over the actual image prior to development.

As to your issues with lith: if you're only looking for grain, try a fairly concentrated lith formula at very high pH and little overexposure. It's easy to get development times of under a minute if you don't need the color that lith brings. Try papers like Fomabrom or Adox MCC110 if you want baseball-size 'grain' (infectious development centers). I think this does precisely what you're describing...

Anon Ymous · Jun 25, 2019

Perhaps you could add another piece of film above the negative you are printing. It should have coarse grain, which you can take care of, but I doubt it will be nicely focused, so it won't give sharply defined grain. Worth a try IMHO, not much to lose.

noeru · Jun 26, 2019

Koraks, I think I may have tried high concentration lith in the past and wasn't pleased with the results, but I might be confusing it with using Slavich paper, which has that bad photocopier look when lithed. I'll give it another try with different papers and exposures.

Anon, I've considered doing this but somehow it feels so much like an instagram filter I don't really want to. I was hoping there's a chemical way about it, like the kind of unpredictable magic you get with lith.

koraks · Jun 26, 2019

noeru said:
Koraks, I think I may have tried high concentration lith in the past and wasn't pleased with the results, but I might be confusing it with using Slavich paper, which has that bad photocopier look when lithed. I'll give it another try with different papers and exposures.

I haven't tried Slavich, but I suspect it could be quite similar to other bromide-dominant papers like the ones I mentioned. In that case, my suggestion is not much of a solution for you. Although I'm not sure if I recognize the 'photocopier look' in what I've seen; perhaps we're talking about the same thing, or perhaps not. In case you want somewhat more smoothness and much more flexibility, Fomatone MG is certainly one of papers to consider (and perhaps, THE paper to consider). It can do just about anything from smooth, velvety pink-yellow to grainy, black/green harshness depending on how you (mis)treat it.

noeru · Jun 26, 2019

I've tried 123 and 542 from Foma and love them both, especially the latter (so naturally, it's discontinued haha). I'll make some lith prints on Ilford WT tonight and post the results to show what kind of grain I'm talking about cause I think I'm not explaining very well! As for Slavich in lith, it def looks like a photocopier on acid, bit of an acquired taste! Here's a random example I just googled up
https://www.flickr.com/photos/martinhughes/14750984167/

koraks · Jun 26, 2019

Oh yeah, that look; I recognize it. No, I don't get exactly that with MCC110 or Fomabrom - still pretty grainy/crunchy, but distinctly more photographic than the quite graphic example you linked to.

pentaxuser · Jun 26, 2019

It's colour of course but is the jnantz "Abandoned Gas Station " look anything like what you are after in B&W? I have asked jnantz how how obtained this look in the comment section. If interested in this as a "look" keep an eye on his picture.

pentaxuser

voceumana · Jun 26, 2019

A long time ago when I was in college, I did some printing in a darkroom that was at an ambient 90+ degrees F, as were all the solution's temperatures. It wasn't practical to cool the solutions, as I couldn't get the tap water temperature down. My prints were of horrible quality until I realized that my developing times were way off for the temperature. I compensated developing time, and got down to a development time of 15 to 30 seconds--I don't recall the exact time.

With the elevated developing temperature and vastly shortened time, my tonality was fine. But I experienced, for the only time in my life, visible print grain.

So try increasing your developing temp to around 100 degrees, and shortening your developing time and see what you get.

Rudeofus · Jun 27, 2019

One thing you could try: wash the paper before you put it into the developer. Modern photographic paper has lots of embedded developer accelerators and whatnot, and if you wash it before development, it acts very differently and sometimes in the way you look for.

pentaxuser · Jun 27, 2019

Rudeofus said:
One thing you could try: wash the paper before you put it into the developer. Modern photographic paper has lots of embedded developer accelerators and whatnot, and if you wash it before development, it acts very differently and sometimes in the way you look for.

I am going to give this a try just to see what effect it has. How long a pre-developer wash do I need? Thanks

pentaxuser

ericdan · Jun 27, 2019

I thought MCC110 doesn’t lith

koraks · Jun 27, 2019

ericdan said:
I thought MCC110 doesn’t lith

Nearly every paper I've tried liths - the question is if it does so in a desirable way. That makes it personal/subjective. In any case, MCC110 certainly does lith in the sense that it can be developed in such a way that infectious development occurs.

Rudeofus · Jun 27, 2019

koraks said:
Nearly every paper I've tried liths - the question is if it does so in a desirable way. That makes it personal/subjective. In any case, MCC110 certainly does lith in the sense that it can be developed in such a way that infectious development occurs.

I have made just about the opposite experience: you can throw lith paper at just about any paper and it will develop slowly but to normal contrast. This observation is shared by Tim Rudman. I have wasted multiple evenings trying to get any type of lith effect from Fomatone MG, until I ran across Tim's statement, that Foma changed their emulsion. Fomatone MG Classic, on the other side, lithes with beautiful colors.

@pentaxuser : a brief wash cycle (1-2 minutes) should do the trick. Development will be much slower and contrast goes down. Not sure whether you like the effect, but it may be worth a try.

pentaxuser · Jun 27, 2019

Rudeofus, thanks for the information on washing time

pentaxuser

ericdan · Jun 27, 2019

I’ve tried Lith with MCC110 and it didn’t work. I even tried normal developing then complete bleach and Lith redevelop and even that came out with normal contrast. Didn’t look like Lith at all.
I’m using moersch easy Lith

daleda · Jun 27, 2019

In the negative not the paper. Duh.

ic-racer · Jun 28, 2019

This print is from a 4x5 negative,all the grain evident is from the paper.

MattKing · Jun 28, 2019

ic-racer said:
View attachment 226004
This print is from a 4x5 negative,all the grain evident is from the paper.

Or maybe more accurately, from the combination of the paper, the printing procedure and the process used to develop the image.
The artifacts that make the print appear grainy are fundamentally different than the grain inherent in the paper itself.

ic-racer · Jun 28, 2019

No additional silver was added to the printing paper to make the print in post #20, all the grain evident is from the paper; huge visible clumps of silver. Nothing but the grain inherent in the paper is visible.

koraks · Jun 28, 2019

What kind of paper and what kind of development?

Accentuating paper grain at printing stage

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