Lith bleach and redevelopment

Well, I tried this for the first time this evening. I only tried Kentmere Fineprint (neutral tone version). It definitely did not exhibit infectious development that I see with regular lith printing on the warmtone version of that paper. It ended up a very chocolatey brown in the shadows and midtones with pretty neutral highlights. It looked pretty interesting but odd in the landscape photo I was doing. It looked like a sepia split toned print in reverse, but not really like a lith print.

I'm interested in hearing other people's techniques and experience with various papers.

Mark Fisher said:

Well, I tried this for the first time this evening. I only tried Kentmere Fineprint (neutral tone version). It definitely did not exhibit infectious development that I see with regular lith printing on the warmtone version of that paper. It ended up a very chocolatey brown in the shadows and midtones with pretty neutral highlights. It looked pretty interesting but odd in the landscape photo I was doing. It looked like a sepia split toned print in reverse, but not really like a lith print.

I'm interested in hearing other people's techniques and experience with various papers.

Click to expand...

One of the beauties of this process Mark is the wide range of alternative appearances that can be achieved. Don't look at it as just a way of making an exact conventional lith print duplicate but rather as a way of expanding your lith printing repertoire with usual LP papers and also utilizing other papers that don't LP very well but can be very attractive using this route.

The results vary a lot from a LP lookalike to very different effects and the main controlling factors are

• 
  The paper
  The first developer
  The 2nd developer
  How it was processed (you can do B&W to lith or Lith to Lith for example)
  Usual lith contols like dilution, additives etc
  Especially the snatch point!
  Which bleach you use

There are other controls but these are the major ones IME.
Some results can be ugly (all in the eye of the beholder of course!) and some very delicate whilst others quite wacky with solarization and widely split colours.
I particularly like MGWT in MG bleached in ferri/KBr and redev in most dilute liths. It will give black shadows, soft tan midtones and delicate cool grey upper tones. The longer the snatch is delayed the further the grey creeps down the range so a variety of interpretations is easily controlled. Not like a lith print as you know it but very lovely with clear lith look in parts and BW in others a sort of lith-B&W hybrid but when the B&W aspect is kept to highlights is has great delicacy.
Tim

Thanks for the reply. I didn't mean to imply that what I saw was bad, just unexpected. I find it interesting enough that I expect to be experimenting with it more in the future. I'm glad to hear that it varies considerably with all those variables....gives me more to experiment with

Mark, here's what I've done and it works well.
1. Ilford MGIV fiber, matte.
2. Process in Ethol LPD (1+2, replenished), one half stop overexposed in the enlarger and normal processing time (2min for me). So the print is too dark by normal standards.
3. Wash well.
4. Bleach in pot ferri + bromide
5. Wash.
6. Re-develop in highly dilute, but warm single shot lith chemistry. (I normally use 1+1+28 with AristaLith, but used 1+1+56 at 85*F for this).
7. Snatch and stop as usual, but of course you can do Step 4 and onward in daylight so it's easier.

The idea is that you don't fully re-develop the original image. If you do, you'll end up with a print that looks very much like the original. And this is why you need to overexpose the print at the original printing stage. Ilford MGIV is the best paper I've tried for this, but MGWT is neat too, and I'm pretty keen on trying some Fomabrom papers too. I've got 112, 132, and 542 at the house.

Good luck,

- Thomas

MarK, I've tried Kentmere, Oriental, Fotospeed and Tetenal papers and could only achieve the results I wanted with Foma 131 which gave a very gritty look in the mid-tones along with a soft apricot in the highlights - just what I was looking for so I think you may have to try different papers to suit your own style. I always overexpose by half to one stop in the first exposure and process normally. The snatch point in the bleach is as crucial to the end result as the snatch point in the lith, and only trial and error and copious note-taking will sort this out over a few sessions. It seems to be a pretty idiosyncratic process as there are so many variables with paper, chemicals and one's own personal end vision- in my case I've found that even with Old Brown in the lith dev. I still have to sacrifice the first 4 or 5 prints until the infectious development gets up to full steam then I can produce at least half a dozen good prints with subtle variations.
Good luck with it, Patricia

I tried Adox Fineprint VC over the weekend. First development was in Harman Warmtone. Bleached in pot ferri bleach from the Tetenal Triponal kit (dil 1+14). Second dev was in Moersch SE5: 40ml A + 60 ml B + 2.5 ml C made up to 2 litres, used at 32 deg C. Results don't look lithy - just warmtone but the fixer seems to kill the colour so you end up with a muddy brownish grey. Best results came from quite a short bleaching stage only affecting the highlights and light mids to any degree.

I had better results with Ilford postcard stock (first dev in Harman Cooltone), which gave a pleasant grey - brown split. Fixing is still a problem. The most satisfying results came from bleaching until the blacks remained solid but everything else was biscuity - much longer than the Adox.

In both cases I should have exposed longer and perhaps at a softer grade - the prints were ok for the straight print, but highlights got a bit lost in the redevelopment.

What might one expect if the print is bleached minus
the bromide then redeveloped? Dan

Don't know. Never tried it.

dancqu said:

What might one expect if the print is bleached minus
the bromide then redeveloped? Dan

Click to expand...

Doesn't the bromide rehalogenate the silver? Without it, what would there be to redevelop? Or is my understanding of the chemistry too naive?

Pete H said:

Doesn't the bromide rehalogenate the silver?
Without it, what would there be to redevelop?
Or is my understanding of the chemistry
too naive?

Click to expand...

The result at end with bromide present is silver
bromide. Without bromide or some other highly
insoluble combination salt of silver present, the
result at end is silver ferrocyanide. The last is
though a highly insoluble salt of silver.

I might have asked, why bother
with the bromide? Dan