lith film progress

I finally got around to establishing some basic establishment of film speeds and development times for the huge lot of lith film I have.

First, the bad news: it appears that, at least on the box of 10x12 I'm starting with, there is some substantial fogging on all 4 sides. the good part is that it's less than 1" and I can cut to 8x10 easily enough. I'll have to open the 16x20 at some point (2 boxes of 300 sheets) and snip the 4 corners and see what I'm working with.

Now on the results:

film: Kodak Graphics / Polychrome CGP
Film speed is ASA 6 (for the time being, I'll update as I get some of the processing bugs worked out and fine tune my process)
Development was in D-76 1:1, 6 min; though quite honestly I'm not crazy about the way the negs look yet and I'm sure it will change.

I shot a few sheets of 4x5 and 8x10, cut before I found out about the fogging issue, i.e. the easy way to get an 8x10 out of a 10x12 sheet..

I posted a couple of quick scans, only inverted, corrected levels and converted to jpg. (ignore the fingerprints, dust and scratches, it was a late night last night, I hung up the last neg at 2:30). They can be found in the photo gallery of my website: www.eriepatsellis.com filed under the film test folder.


erie

Nice alcohol...er...I mean photos!

Eh, fog. Just pretend that you meant to do that. Artistic, don't you know?

well, my room mate came home with a couple of milk crates of liquor, it was handy....

I'll probably save the fogged pieces I've already cut and do a series of high key 8x10 still lifes...yeah, that's it..


erie

Hi Erie.

I have fooled around with lith film quite a bit in 4X5 and 2X3. I shoot it at iso 6 too, but I develop it in rodinal at 1:150 and watch it under the safelight. I find it gives much better tonality and less contrast than d76 or dektol, which some people prefer. Any lith film I've tried has lattitude thinner than water on a plate. Sure can't beat working with the safelight on though.

Rick

For the time being I'm working in an improvised, microwave cart gets rolled into the bathroom kinda darkroom, it is nice to work under a safelight. The sad thing is I have 4 enlargers, 2 durst D2's and 2 8x10 enlargers, but progress on building the darkroom has been slow. I'm finding the lattitude to not be too much of an issue, judging contrast in the developing tray is getting easier. Since I'm using 9x12 pyrex cake pans for trays, I'm thinking about building a safelight/lighttable to make it easier to judge neg density.


erie

erie