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Lith prints not toning the same anymore

ericdan

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Feb 28, 2014
Messages
1,359
Location
Tokyo
Format
35mm RF
I make Lith prints on Fomatone MG131 with Moersch Easy Lith.
Usually used A20ml + B20ml + water 700ml + a tiny bit of old brown.

My prints would come out orange with dev time of about 5mins. They toned quiet nicely. Selenium alone would take all of the orange out and make it a little cooler. Usually I do Bleach/Sepia, Gold, Selenium. It was quiet difficult getting the bleach step right so I diluted to 1+40 now. It immediately takes all the warmth out of the print after 10 seconds but it doesn’t seem to tone much to Sepia anymore. I’m wondering if my bleach is too weak or if my toner is exhausted. Following with gold I barely get that reddish effect I used to get.

Thanks
 
Just to verify, but you do wash for a few minutes with a few changes of water before bleaching?
If so, I'd start with trying some freshly mixed bleach.
In any case, the sepia toning step would be the first thing to sort out. Does your sepia bleach & toner work with a normal print on any kind of paper?
 
Are you saying it doesn't tone right because you changed the bleach step? Or that this was always your process and it's not working anymore? If it's the latter, maybe it's time to make up a new batch of toner.

On a side note, do you have any examples of what the final product looks like? I've rarely toned or bleached my lith prints (even though I too am not a fan of the orange-y colour produced by Foma, except in a few circumstances), but now that I'm working in the darkroom again I should be doing something with all the toners I've got stored in there!
 
The prints aren’t as responsive to the toner anymore. The bleach seems to only take the orange color away. Maybe it’s too diluted? Toner itself is fresh.
 
Going to Moscow next month and will get some slavich paper. I can try and see how that tones, but from what I’ve seen that works quite differently. Very grainy and less colorful
 
What kind of sepia toner are you using? If you are using thiourea, it changes colour over storage time (and also ph). After a few days, it will produce a totally different tone than when freshly mixed, even if it is not exhausted at all.
 
If you are mixing from scratch, these materials are cheap and your time is valuable . . .start fresh.

You didn't ask, but me I would not go in the same order, that is, gold followed by selenium. The selenium, which is relatively cheap, is coating some of the gold, which is expensive.
 
I use MT3 Sepia toner.
Maybe it’s exhausted.
Reason for gold after Sepia is to get red tones in highlights. Selenium I do at the end to tone the shadows.
 
Sepia after bleach pretty much works mostly on highlights. Gold will turn the yellowish Sepia highlights reddish and give a lot of contrast to mid tones. Selenium seems to shift the shadows most. I only do one minute and don’t see it affecting mid tones and highlights much.
 
ericdan said:
I use MT3 Sepia toner.
Maybe it’s exhausted.
Reason for gold after Sepia is to get red tones in highlights. Selenium I do at the end to tone the shadows.
Click to expand...

MT3 is a thiourea toner. If you store the working solution, it will tone more towards yellow and less intense than when freshly mixed.
Try mixing the bleach and toner fresh, that should do the trick.
 
Really? Even the bleach? The instructions say that the bleach has almost indefinite shelf life even after mixing.
 
Yes, the bleach has a very good shelf live.

But at 1+40 it exhausts quickly from use, and you mentioned in your op that the paper visually responds differently than expected to bleaching. I always do bleaching by inspection, and throw the bleach out once I don‘t get the results as expected or in a reasonable time any more.
 
Last edited:
Good point. I’ll mix up both fresh and try again. I forgot to take prints out of the washer and the emulsion came off. Have to redo it anyhow.
 
I've never been a fan of Thiorea toners. Sulfide toners give a richer brown. They also don't drift. On top of that, Sodium Sulfide is cheap so you can just mix it fresh every time. The only downside is it stinks, but I've always done the toning outside.

If you mix your own bleach, that gives another level of control over the tones depending on what bleaching agent you use and what re-halogenating agent you use. The standard Ferrocyanide/Bromide bleach works fine though and is what I generally use.
 
Can you point me to a starting point recipe? I see farmers reducer recipes on digitaltruth but don’t know if that’s the same.
 
It's just potassium ferricyanide and potassium bromide. Take eg 1% of both, that should do the trick. Dilute if it's too fast. You can vary the bromide/cyanide ratio which according to some influences the tone of the final print, but I haven't systematically tested that.
Farmers reducer is ferricyanide plus thiosulfate, which will permanently bleach the image (cannot be redeveloped).
 
ericdan said:
Can you point me to a starting point recipe? I see farmers reducer recipes on digitaltruth but don’t know if that’s the same.
Click to expand...

For a weak bleach to just bleach the highlights I use 2.5g of Potassium Ferricyanide and 2.5g of Potassium Bromide in one liter of water. That gives some control over how far you bleach. The formulas that you will find online are way too strong. You can adjust of course to suit your experience. The Sodium Sulfide part doesn't have to be exact. The old formulas say 40 or 50g per liter. I just throw some in water usually. Like I stated above, when I am done toning I toss it.

You can vary the tone a little as well if you change the bleach. You can use salt in place of the Bromide for example, or add salt along with the Bromide. You can also use other bleaches beside Ferricyanide. i'd recommend though to just stick with the basic bleach since you have to print to the other bleaches. Some lighten or darken the prints and you have to adjust for it.

Here is an example of different bleaches used with Sulfide.



Hope that helps you.
 
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