Lith Printing Troubleshooting: Paper Staining

After a bit of a hiatus, I recently got back into the darkroom to do lith printing, and experienced something new to me with this process. Paper (not image) staining. In all my years of doing lith, I've never had this happen and am curious as to why it did.
So I started with Fuji's Fujibro RC paper (not available outside of Japan and now discontinued - that said, I have several images in my gallery made on this paper, and anyone who has been part of the postcard exchange has likely received a print from me on this paper as well). I've used it for lith in the past and while slow (in normal 20C lith - think 30-60 minutes), in hot lith it will develop within 5-10 minutes, although it is prone to pepper fogging after the 4th or 5th print. The paper base is extremely white. However, in this session, I developed two prints simultaneously (wanted to check the effect of different filtration levels). They were the first prints in the developer, and it was about 35C. The one with filtration (1A) came out around minute 11, and has a little bit of staining. The second one with no filtration (1B) took a lot longer and came out around minute 16 or 17, but has an incredible amount of staining on the edges of the paper.

After that I tried a third print (2) - after 10 minutes no image was showing up (developer too cool) so I added an extra 500ml of hot water to the developer (which was 1+1+25 to start, slightly more B than A, no OB, 2 litres total solution) and finally pulled the print around the 20 minute mark. It has some staining but not as bad as 1B.

I was a little concerned at this point so decided to test with some other papers (not shown) - include Foma 532 II, Oriental WT, and Fotospeed Lith. They all came out around the 5-7 minute mark and lithed beautifully with no staining whatsoever on the edges of the paper (exposure times were identical to the Fujibro paper, which was +2.5 stops overexposed (based on the normal Fujibro paper).

Now, I know most people don't do a lot of lith printing, and few, if any, have used this paper, but from a chemistry standpoint (I'm assuming), any ideas of why this happened to one paper but not the others? I've read about developer exhaustion as a possibility, but that doesn't make sense to me if they were the first prints in, and that subsequent prints/papers don't exhibit this phenomena. And of course, this is not the first time I've used this paper for lith, and it is the most recent paper (age-wise) paper I have for lith printing.

In the first photo you can see the Fujibro paper - top left is normal B&W, top right is 1A, bottom left is 1B, and bottom right is 2.
The second image is a close-up of the B&W print and 1B side by side. As mentioned above, 1A and 1B were the first prints put into the developer, with no OB, less than 15 minutes after the B&W image was produced (just needed to swap out the developing trays). The third image is another close up of the stain at the bottom of 1B.
The fourth image is a variety of lith prints I've done with the exact same paper in the past, with similar conditions (hot developer, no OB, etc.) Borders are clean and white (although in this example they don't look that way due to the lighting, or rather, my shadow across the prints).

I wish I could help you. I spent all afternoon and evening yesterday dealing with strange lith results that did not happen as recently as 4 days ago. I’m in the process now of ruling out variables like, did the city I live in change their water chemistry? Is my old brown that I top off each time slowly building up something that’s changing my results? In my case that’s all I can come up with…..

I get stains on the edges like that when the paper floats on the surface of the developer for a while. Oxidation I assume. Could that have happened when you precessed two at the same time?

I've not done much lith myself, only just returning to it recently to try Easy Lith, alongside making up various brews from books and the internet.

I haven't had this 'problem' during the lith process so far, but have had it during b/w paper developing. I put it down to the age of the paper.

And tbh, I quite like the look you are getting on this paper. I think the tainted borders actually add to the picture, but understand it may not be to everyone's / your taste.

Terry S

I have this kind of white border stain when lith printing on old Forte Bromofort. Applying K3[Fe(CN)6] bleach helps to remove the stain with almost no effect to the image.

Thanks everyone for resurrecting this thread. I was never able to figure out what happened with the paper, but since I'll have time to get back into the darkroom in a couple of weeks, it'll be interesting to see if the same thing happens again.

Just to answer a few points brought up here - I constantly agitate my prints, and if printing two at a time will flip them every 30s throughout the session. The prints are constantly in the developer, so I don't think oxidation is an issue. I never use OB anymore since I like the more subtle colours of earlier prints, so I don't think that's it either. I haven't tried bleaching the prints yet, but that'll be the next thing I do, once I get my darkroom reorganized.

Some time has passed since this thread was started and Ive done a lot of lith printing since then. I also get the very same paper staining problem completely at random. It happened to me last night. (see the example below) I made 11 prints total and only one of them has the staining. It was the 2nd print in the dev. The paper is Fomatone 133 and the dev is Kodalith Super RT. This has happened with another paper I use also, a Russian paper called Brom Portrait. With that paper it stains the entire sheet image and all. I actually like it though, looks like it's 200 years old. My stained print like yours had no filtration.

Interesting that your print with filtration developed faster. I would have expected the opposite since most people avoid filtration to get max light faster. I was also experimenting with filtration last night. for me I'm getting more intense color than ever before. I was at grade 2.5 or so. My head is the ilford 500 with green and blue light by the way. What was your conclusion regarding using filtration or not?

D

When you push materials that are way beyond their expiration date, and try to do things with them they aren't designed to do in the first place, well, you might get some staining.

Or, sometimes you get something remarkable.

mooseontheloose said:

f printing two at a time will flip them every 30s throughout the session

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That action introduces a lot of air into the developer and to the paper surface. Also, if your print is face down at the bottom of the tray, it might be in contact with some sediment that has precipitated from the developer or residue that is on the tray.

Don Heisz said:

That action introduces a lot of air into the developer and to the paper surface. Also, if your print is face down at the bottom of the tray, it might be in contact with some sediment that has precipitated from the developer or residue that is on the tray.

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I don't always flip (only if I do 2 at a time) but I've never had the issue of staining before in all the years I've done lith. I know a lot of people like to flip specifically for the oxidation, although that's not why I do it - in fact, the first time I ever saw it done was at a Tim Rudman workshop. In most cases I do one print at a time. I've made hundreds of lith prints before, so I'm not quite sure what happened here. That said, I haven't had a chance to get back into the darkroom to do any lith printing since then, but rereading everything here it's clear that the culprit must be the paper. I'll have to try my other boxes of Fujibro to see if they exhibit the same problem - if so, it may be that, as the paper ages, it's more prone to staining (I'd still like to know why though).

Edit - I don't keep prints face down in the tray, but your post made me realize that I should probably give them a really good scrub/cleaning and/or use dedicated trays just for lith and see if that makes a difference.

Rich Ullsmith said:

When you push materials that are way beyond their expiration date, and try to do things with them they aren't designed to do in the first place, well, you might get some staining.

Or, sometimes you get something remarkable.

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The paper isn't that old, relatively speaking, (I bought a couple years ago), but it is RC paper so that may have something to do with it.

Dwayne Martin said:

Some time has passed since this thread was started and Ive done a lot of lith printing since then. I also get the very same paper staining problem completely at random. It happened to me last night. (see the example below) I made 11 prints total and only one of them has the staining. It was the 2nd print in the dev. The paper is Fomatone 133 and the dev is Kodalith Super RT. This has happened with another paper I use also, a Russian paper called Brom Portrait. With that paper it stains the entire sheet image and all. I actually like it though, looks like it's 200 years old. My stained print like yours had no filtration.

Interesting that your print with filtration developed faster. I would have expected the opposite since most people avoid filtration to get max light faster. I was also experimenting with filtration last night. for me I'm getting more intense color than ever before. I was at grade 2.5 or so. My head is the ilford 500 with green and blue light by the way. What was your conclusion regarding using filtration or not?

D

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That's really interesting - the staining looks identical to what I experienced as well. Like you, I don't find it a problem since the stain works with lith, but the lack of clean borders bothers me for some prints.

I haven't had a chance to do work in the darkroom for some time (too hot in the summer with no air con in the room) but I hope to do some work during the Christmas/NY break when I'll have a chance to experiment more. The problem is, a lot of my papers are no longer manufactured, so I'm reluctant to use a lot of this precious paper for testing, OTOH, it may not matter much if the staining is random and can't be controlled.

I've not done enough lith printing to be very sure of anything. I know that paper would need to be quite old to no be lithable (due to the nature of the process) and even then should not stain like that unless it was contaminated by some other developer. If the trays were not completely clean of previous developer, it could have been contaminating the edge of the paper as the paper bumped against the sides of the tray.
I had very distinct marks on the first lith prints I made from my developer tongs (which had not been cleaned).....

I get stains like that with some RC papers when using hot developer. Stains like this, grey and seemingly random banding, or orange and yellow. Strictly around the borders typically.. You didn't say what lith developer you are using, but if the paper previously worked and is kept preserved (frozen etc) since then, I'd be rather stumped. It's possible that the lith developer itself has gone off. This happens by a decrease in sulfite levels (depending on the developer formulation) and can lead to older lith developer actually having higher activity levels but lower stability. If your lith developer is especially old it may be decaying

grainyvision said:

I get stains like that with some RC papers when using hot developer. Stains like this, grey and seemingly random banding, or orange and yellow. Strictly around the borders typically.. You didn't say what lith developer you are using, but if the paper previously worked and is kept preserved (frozen etc) since then, I'd be rather stumped. It's possible that the lith developer itself has gone off. This happens by a decrease in sulfite levels (depending on the developer formulation) and can lead to older lith developer actually having higher activity levels but lower stability. If your lith developer is especially old it may be decaying

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I hadn't thought about the age of the developer, but that could be it. I only use Moersch lith developers so I wonder if some from my older stores are the culprit. I'll have to see if I get the same results with a developer bought more recently.

grainyvision said:

I get stains like that with some RC papers when using hot developer. Stains like this, grey and seemingly random banding, or orange and yellow. Strictly around the borders typically.. You didn't say what lith developer you are using, but if the paper previously worked and is kept preserved (frozen etc) since then, I'd be rather stumped. It's possible that the lith developer itself has gone off. This happens by a decrease in sulfite levels (depending on the developer formulation) and can lead to older lith developer actually having higher activity levels but lower stability. If your lith developer is especially old it may be decaying

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When you say hot developer how hot do you mean? Just curious...My system in a air conditioned room keeps it about 87 degrees, I would call that warm I guess.

I'm pretty sure I have had the random staining problem with brand new Moersch and expired Kodalith. I'll have to dig through my notes to confirm that though.

D

Dwayne Martin said:

When you say hot developer how hot do you mean? Just curious...My system in a air conditioned room keeps it about 87 degrees, I would call that warm I guess.

I'm pretty sure I have had the random staining problem with brand new Moersch and expired Kodalith. I'll have to dig through my notes to confirm that though.

D

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My typical printing temp is around 74F. "warm" for me is around 85F and "hot" would be 105F.

With some papers warm produces the edge fogging effect. With hot, it's very common unless I decrease the pH (add acid). Bromide oddly enough does not control this kind of fog for me, in fact bromide often makes the problem worse. The only solution I've found is using a lower pH.

I agree with Ashley. Some papers cannot stand warm developer (stain, overall loss of contrast due to fogging). I try to keep the temperature pretty low (75F) to avoid negative effects as much as possible.

Dali said:

I agree with Ashley. Some papers cannot stand warm developer (stain, overall loss of contrast due to fogging). I try to keep the temperature pretty low (75F) to avoid negative effects as much as possible.

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Although, some papers REQUIRE high temperatures, depending on the exact developer. For example, I can typically get reasonable results with the very difficult to work with Ilford MGFB paper, but only using custom formulation developers with low bromide and moderate pH, and high temperatures above 90F. Colder developer with that paper produces mottle and other issues