Lith developer, making it

earlz, why put bromide in the stock solution you'll slowly add? It doesn't get used up like the sulfite and the hydroquinone (or does the hydroquinone?); won't the rising bromide content in the working solution change the results every time? Does a bit of vitamin C help with preservation or does it get in the way in this formula? You write in your blog that it helps preserve your modernlith developer.

grain elevator said:

earlz, why put bromide in the stock solution you'll slowly add? It doesn't get used up like the sulfite and the hydroquinone (or does the hydroquinone?); won't the rising bromide content in the working solution change the results every time? Does a bit of vitamin C help with preservation or does it get in the way in this formula? You write in your blog that it helps preserve your modernlith developer.

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You can definitely leave bromide out of the stock solution, but it absolutely is needed in your working solution. Per sheet of paper doesn't really add much bromide, from behavior I've observed I'd estimate maybe 0.05g per 8x10 sheet at most... but that of course depends on paper type and a huge number of other variables. You'll get fogging with most papers when using less than 0.2g/L of bromide and development can be difficult to control if you happen to not get fogging. 0.5g tends to be a good starting point. You can add more for slower development and more color, but note that there is a "sweet spot" of bromide. Too little bromide gives fog and uncontrollable development. Too much bromide results in very slow development times AND (more importantly to me) gives black levels that are less deep than possible (often shifting toward green or brown). Note that the black level shift isn't possible to correct by any method, the only solution is to use less bromide in the first few minutes of development. I've not tried it but it's theoretically possible to do a 2 bath solution. 1st is low bromide and builds the induction period image. As soon as that seems done, switch to a high bromide bath. Result should be very colorful and slow development, but with proper deep blacks.

Vitamin C can definitely help, but it is probably easier to use an ascorbic acid salt rather than ascorbic acid itself due to pH concerns. Ascorbic acid salts are known to be pretty much impossible to keep from oxidizing in aqueous solutions while ascorbic acid itself is only "slightly impossible" (ie, see also Xtol). If you're mixing the solution with the vitamin C just a day or hours before (or mixing dry powder directly into the working solution) then this of course isn't a concern. If using ascorbic acid you'll need to add extra carbonate to your working solution. Note that even if balanced to be exactly the same pH or using a neutralized salt, the byproducts of ascorbic acid oxidation/development are also fairly strong acids, so you need more carbonate to keep those acids produced neutralized. It definitely does increase tray life (by 1-2 hours), but it's a difficult thing to work with honestly. Some papers don't mind it being there and others can give really weird results. I'd start with 1-2g/L and an extra 2-4g of carbonate. It tends to change tonation some as well, shifting things more toward cooler colors, and on some papers can significantly lengthen the time it takes to get proper infectious development

Maybe I've made a wrong assumption, do you dump the working solution and mix new as soon as it's exhausted or do you add more stock solution? I assumed the latter, that's what my concern about rising bromide level if its in the stock solution refers to. I suppose I'll just start mixing individual chemicals directly to working solution, and make a stock solution only if I notice the need.
Vitamin C does sound difficult. But I take it one can just add pinches of sulfite to keep the working solution alive?

You can do either one, but typically it's hard to get consistency with a replenishment method like that. Specifically sulfite and alkali also build up, changing the characteristics of the developer. I've only done replenishment a few times and when doing so used only hydroquinone+sulfite as the replenisher.

The one thing for working solution vs stock. If you want to go directly to a working solution you should at least mix the hydroquinone+sulfite separate from carbonate. As soon as you mix those two together a timer starts on the life of the solution. It's much better to mix those two parts separately and combine them right when you're ready to print. The reason I use glycol for hydroquinone is because it will keep it from decaying, but also is very easy to measure out in the darkroom with no long stirring process needed. A 10% hydroquinone in glycol solution is very stable. It is less stable in triethanolamine, but still quite stable (found a 4 month old bottle of it recently. Was dark reddish brown, but it still worked just fine for lith printing)

Both the sulfite and hydroquinone are used up as the developer oxidizes (ie, both through exposure to air and developing paper). If you add sulfite it only replaces lost sulfite but does not replace the lost hydroquinone. In addition sulfite converts hydroquinone as it decays into hydroquinone-monosulfonate, a weak but stable developer that is likely the key component of "old brown"... so you can't just keep adding sulfite to keep the solution alive, but maybe hydroquinone+sulfite might at least until you get to some kind fo threshold. Again, consistency will be difficult to get out of replenishment like this though

Thank you all for the help, I've had success with the developer and I'm getting the hang of it! A concoction of 2g Hydroquinone, 1.5g Sulfite, a heaping tablespoon of washing soda, 1L water and 1/4L old brown is working reasonably well for me. It takes very long however, 13-15 minutes at 25°C. I've also tried adding NaOH, doesn't make it much faster. I'm abstaining from KBr as it's slow enough as is.
For now I have five questions:
*Is there anything I can do to make it faster, other than increasing temperature?
*For more color, I should aim for even longer dev times (dilution and bromide), correct? I'll experiment with more old brown next time, as there was more color later in the life of the developer. That was more of a stain however, it is also on the margins. Anything else I can do to get more color in a single bath?
*The tones I'm getting are pretty smooth, I'd like a bit more grittiness in these shadows. Any ideas how to get that?
*Is the seal of my hydroquinone jar critical to its life expectancy? It seems like I'll be using it up pretty fast anyway at this rate (if the 2g only give me 4-5 prints because they take so long), but it doesn't look like it's absolutely airtight.
*Do you experienced lith printers make several prints in parallel, i.e. expose another neg while the previous prints are in the bath? Seems like I have to go that way, I consider myself patient but nursing a single print for 13 minutes isn't fun.

earlz said:

You can do either one, but typically it's hard to get consistency with a replenishment method like that. Specifically sulfite and alkali also build up, changing the characteristics of the developer. I've only done replenishment a few times and when doing so used only hydroquinone+sulfite as the replenisher.

The one thing for working solution vs stock. If you want to go directly to a working solution you should at least mix the hydroquinone+sulfite separate from carbonate. As soon as you mix those two together a timer starts on the life of the solution. It's much better to mix those two parts separately and combine them right when you're ready to print. The reason I use glycol for hydroquinone is because it will keep it from decaying, but also is very easy to measure out in the darkroom with no long stirring process needed. A 10% hydroquinone in glycol solution is very stable. It is less stable in triethanolamine, but still quite stable (found a 4 month old bottle of it recently. Was dark reddish brown, but it still worked just fine for lith printing)

Both the sulfite and hydroquinone are used up as the developer oxidizes (ie, both through exposure to air and developing paper). If you add sulfite it only replaces lost sulfite but does not replace the lost hydroquinone. In addition sulfite converts hydroquinone as it decays into hydroquinone-monosulfonate, a weak but stable developer that is likely the key component of "old brown"... so you can't just keep adding sulfite to keep the solution alive, but maybe hydroquinone+sulfite might at least until you get to some kind fo threshold. Again, consistency will be difficult to get out of replenishment like this though

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The thing is that consistency is non-existent without replenishment. That the things one adds to replenish build up isn't an argument against replenishment, only against too much replenishment. Depletion/oxidation is so fast that each print turns out different in tone, later ones more colorful. Can't be hard to beat that. Replenishment will likely increase consistency at least a bit. Adding a pinch of sulfite 1h in seemed to help keep things alive. I'll experiment further in my next session, with also adding HQ.
I will try the stock solution if replenishing doesn't work out. But I've found mixing from dry chems to be no hassle, not compared to the long dev times...

Another update: More soda has made my developer faster! It could also be the freshness of it though, bought a new package. This has lead to pretty much neutral tone prints, I'll need to experiment with less HQ or more KBr.
Adding a bit of sulfite seems to help keep the developer alive indeed. It doesn't get much slower this way, however it does get softer working over time.

Still hoping for replies to me questions in post 30, especially tricks to get more colour!
And a little update:
I've settled in the following recipe for now: for 1L of developer, 1g hq, 1g KBr, 2g sulfite, 5 tablespoons soda. I replenish with a pinch of sulfite and hq every other print, I guess it must level out to about 1g sulfite and 0.5g hq per print. The latter helps against the dev getting softer working over time. Yesterday, I managed to keep it alive for over 2h at over 30°C, making something around 7 prints and including a break, with more sulfite.
Not happy about how fast I'm going through the hq.
Next steps will be trying Vitamin C as a preservative, and preparing a 2 parts sulfite/1 part hq stock solution.

grain elevator said:

Thank you all for the help, I've had success with the developer and I'm getting the hang of it! A concoction of 2g Hydroquinone, 1.5g Sulfite, a heaping tablespoon of washing soda, 1L water and 1/4L old brown is working reasonably well for me. It takes very long however, 13-15 minutes at 25°C. I've also tried adding NaOH, doesn't make it much faster. I'm abstaining from KBr as it's slow enough as is.
For now I have five questions:
*Is there anything I can do to make it faster, other than increasing temperature?
*For more color, I should aim for even longer dev times (dilution and bromide), correct? I'll experiment with more old brown next time, as there was more color later in the life of the developer. That was more of a stain however, it is also on the margins. Anything else I can do to get more color in a single bath?
*The tones I'm getting are pretty smooth, I'd like a bit more grittiness in these shadows. Any ideas how to get that?
*Is the seal of my hydroquinone jar critical to its life expectancy? It seems like I'll be using it up pretty fast anyway at this rate (if the 2g only give me 4-5 prints because they take so long), but it doesn't look like it's absolutely airtight.
*Do you experienced lith printers make several prints in parallel, i.e. expose another neg while the previous prints are in the bath? Seems like I have to go that way, I consider myself patient but nursing a single print for 13 minutes isn't fun.


The thing is that consistency is non-existent without replenishment. That the things one adds to replenish build up isn't an argument against replenishment, only against too much replenishment. Depletion/oxidation is so fast that each print turns out different in tone, later ones more colorful. Can't be hard to beat that. Replenishment will likely increase consistency at least a bit. Adding a pinch of sulfite 1h in seemed to help keep things alive. I'll experiment further in my next session, with also adding HQ.
I will try the stock solution if replenishing doesn't work out. But I've found mixing from dry chems to be no hassle, not compared to the long dev times...

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I'm almost positive I've read this post and intended to reply to it, but then forgot. Either way, I'll try to give you some tips here

For your questions:

* To make it faster, increase pH and/or add more alkali. Be careful as too much can cause uneven development and short tray life
* Color really depends. It's hard to make sense out of. However, in my own observations, it's a careful balance. Additional bromide will add color but shift things toward olive. Personally I use only enough bromide to prevent fog and uneven development and use absolutely no more than required because bromide can also cause a decrease in black depth and decrease in overall contrast IFF not balanced with alkali. Either way, it's a complex topic. The most colorful developer I tend to get uses a high enough pH that it'll give proper blacks, but otherwise very weakly buffered. This could mean a tiny bit of hydroxide to pump the pH, then just enough carbonate to keep it working. Also the lower the amount of hydroquinone, the more color. Less hydroquinone also leads to worse tray life kinda. There's so many concerns here.
* I accidentally discovered that grit can be had without changing the pH by adding sodium sulfate (NOT sulfite). I added 10g/L and got significantly more grain, but also faster development oddly enough. I have no idea how this works other than sulfate should reduce emulsion swelling. Otherwise though, it seems like higher pH will typically give more grit.
* Hydroquinone won't go bad quickly, but it should be kept air tight. It'll discolor to yellow if it goes bad as a powder (and becomes the more toxic benzoquinone chemical, which sublimes at room temp)
* Patience is the name of the game for lith printing. I've never done prints in parallel. The most crazy thing I've done in the past was using extremely diluite lith developer with a sous vide in it to keep the temperature very high, like 120F. It would develop prints in 2-3m and due to the natural turbulence that comes with a sous vide, it was typically not uneven. Don't expect to get more than 5 prints out of the 4L of working solution required for this though. It gave very nice colors though. This was done before I formulated my own developers though, specifically I used EasyLith, I believe using 50ml of each part to 4L of hot tap water

Now then, for general advice etc. Yes, soda (carbonate) will increase speed as you add more. It also will decrease tray life and less color though as you observed. I believe that more weakly buffered solutions AND lower pH tends to produce more color.

I'll let you in on the secret to getting that special "snap" with your own lith printing developer. Try to find polyethylene glycol (PEG), typically available in molecular weight of 3350. This is sold in the US as an over the counter laxative drug called MiraLAX in 100% USP grade form. Most countries have some equivalent sold over the counter. Any molecular weight between 800 and 8000 should give similar improvements though. How much you will need depends on the developer though. I've found high pH developers balanced with hydroxide will require as much as 5-15ml of a 1% solution, while lower pH developers require as little as 0.5ml of 1% solution. The effect it gives can be seen here: https://imgur.com/a/Qs0zJ6Q Specifically it will hold back upper midtones and highlights and allow you to develop the blacks and shadows more specifically. Both prints were developed for the same overall aim. This is absolutely essential with ascorbic acid (vitamin C) using developers, as the PEG seems to disable ascorbic acid as a developer and makes it so it only preserves the sulfite and hydroquinone. Too much PEG-3350 can cause infectious development to weirdly stop in the middle of development and progress no further even with room lights on.

One thing to keep in mind with formulation is that the amount of sulfite you can use and still get reasonable results highly depends on the pH used. Higher pH means you can use more sulfite. This oddly can mean that a higher pH developer can be sustained for longer.

My recent super simple lith developer consists of the following:

* 1L water
* 30ml of 10% hydroquinone dissolved in propylene glycol (ethylene glycol can also be used, but is toxic)
* 25ml of 10% sulfite
* 5ml of 10% bromide
* 5ml of 1% PEG-3350
* 13ml of 10% sodium hydroxide

This surprisingly active and simple developer will give a tray life of around 1.5 hours. Can be "revived" with 2-4ml of hydroxide solution, but I've never tried HQ/sulfite replenishment with it. Most papers will develop to a proper stopping point in less than 10 minutes, a few in as little as 5m. Add a few drops of 20% citric acid if it is too active and uneven development occurs. Use at room temp, not heated. I haven't tested old brown with it. The core formula is kinda similar to Kodak D-85, in that they're both hydroxide based

The pH of this solution will be very high, about 13.5 according to pH paper, but since it is so weakly buffered it'll give a reasonable amount of color. The alkali will run out before the HQ is dead. This will be apparent by weaker black tones. Not seen to give pepper fog easily and can work well with some papers which tend to give snowballs due to the high pH used. More contrast can be had with up to 15ml of 1% PEG-3350.

Btw, just in general nearly every useful compound for lith developers can be mixed into a solution. Both hydroquinone and ascorbic acid are soluble in propylene glycol and will be very well preserved in it, though it does require heating and stirring. glycol will evaporate some so keep the container covered loosely (don't pressurize it!) and aim for a target temperature of around 165F-180F. This might make mixing test solutions a lot easier for you. For my situation my "lab" and my "darkroom" are separate rooms, so using % solutions is a lot easier for me to work with. Glycol has minimal effects on the developing action (and is often used in lith developers because hydroquinone can be much more concentrated in it)

I aim for a different kind of lith developer (specifically one that works on modern papers), but I've had my best results by NOT adding more sulfite than hydroquinone, so I think your 2/1 part solution might be a bad idea and either way severely limits your formulation abilities.

Finally, for ascorbic acid. It's a very tricky compound to balance within a lith developer. Adding ascorbic acid is very similar to adding sulfite. I've even made some developers that used no sulfite and only hydroquinone and ascorbic acid before. The hard thing to fight against is that ascorbic acid likes to retard developer, and also seems to generally give less color when in a developer, if that is your aim. It also can react very weirdly with some papers. I personally gave up on it because of how difficult it is to keep alive in a water based solution. I can't say I don't recommend trying something with it, but it's a painful thing to try to fit into a lith developer. Also you'll likely need to bump the pH to 12 to get good results with ascorbic acid in solution

Thank you earlz, that is a lot of valuable information. I'll report back when I get around to trying some of these things.

Yesterday, I experimented with ascorbic acid. Well, I made one experiment and was quite happy with it. I concur with you, earlz, that it gives less colour. Otherwise, my experience was different from yours.
Recipe I used, for 1 l of developer:
1 g HQ, 1 g AA, 1 g KBr, pinch of sulfite, 5 tablespoons carbonate.
This worked without issues on Agfa Brovira grade 4. Deeper blacks and a bit more grit than I got with my soup that used sulfite as the preservative. Basically as I had hoped, because apparently sulfite can be responsible for weak blacks, smoothness, and in higher concentration can inhibit infectious development. Developer was kept alive over 3 hours at over 30°C with some hearty pinches of AA and a little more HQ! Interestingly, it seemed to become harder working over time (the opposite has happened with sulfite preserved developer). That would indeed point to byproducts inhibiting highlight development, but not infectious development. But I could be wrong, as conditions weren't very controlled; the negatives toward the end were quite different from the first ones.
Highlights are a bit more mushy, lack the differentiation I got with the sulfite soup, but that could be the negatives I printed from.
More black particles form in the developer, but seem to cause no problems.

grain elevator said:

A concoction of 2g Hydroquinone, 1.5g Sulfite, a heaping tablespoon of washing soda, 1L water and 1/4L old brown is working reasonably well for me. It takes very long however, 13-15 minutes at 25°C.

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Old thread but since I followed this formula I'm replying to it...

I had the ingredients for this so it is what I mixed up. My formula ended up being:
1L water
2g Hydroquinone (bottle labelled Quinol)
1.5g Sodium Sulphite
30g Sodium Carbonate

I used some old Ilfobrom G3 which I had used with some commercial Lith (Fotospeed LD20). It had required approx 30mins to get a print. 20mins when I heated it up to about 30C and maybe 15mins when I heated up to 'hot'. The hot print was very blotchy... I overdid it I think!

This batch, which I have labelled "grain elevator lith 1", produced a print in 3 and a bit minutes @ roughly 20C! (room temp) I can't remember having to actually snatch a print but these were, reef em out or loose them style. I did 8 6 1/2" x 8 1/2" prints and the times didn't change much, however the 2nd last had pronounced grain and the last significant 'grain' and blotchiness. The developer had also discoloured to the extent that I had to lift the few prints out of the soup to see what was happening. At that point I called it quits, however I am excited about my 'success'. Will review that once they dry.

Nige said:

Old thread but since I followed this formula I'm replying to it...

I had the ingredients for this so it is what I mixed up. My formula ended up being:
1L water
2g Hydroquinone (bottle labelled Quinol)
1.5g Sodium Sulphite
30g Sodium Carbonate

I used some old Ilfobrom G3 which I had used with some commercial Lith (Fotospeed LD20). It had required approx 30mins to get a print. 20mins when I heated it up to about 30C and maybe 15mins when I heated up to 'hot'. The hot print was very blotchy... I overdid it I think!

This batch, which I have labelled "grain elevator lith 1", produced a print in 3 and a bit minutes @ roughly 20C! (room temp) I can't remember having to actually snatch a print but these were, reef em out or loose them style. I did 8 6 1/2" x 8 1/2" prints and the times didn't change much, however the 2nd last had pronounced grain and the last significant 'grain' and blotchiness. The developer had also discoloured to the extent that I had to lift the few prints out of the soup to see what was happening. At that point I called it quits, however I am excited about my 'success'. Will review that once they dry.

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Great to hear, but I don't deserve to have it named after me, I just played around a little with info from others. I hope I'll get around to it again some time.