Looking for a replacement for Fotospeed LD20

[Jersey Vic]

I'm willing to spend $ on good products but the recent 50% price increase has me looking elsewhere. What's everybody else using these days ?

 

[gurkenprinz]

Hi,

I use Rollei Vintage - but I don't know if this is available in the U.S. of A.

It is cheap, and works really well. I have not experienced any problems so far, and it seems not to expire too fast when used hot.

 

[Jerevan]

I like Moersch Easylith. The Rollei Vintage Creative is sold by Digitaltruth (and probably other places too) in the US.

 

[Dan Henderson]

Vic: I have used the Moersch master set, as well as Rollei. Moersch gave me the same result as Fotospeed, but it is substantially more expensive (or at least was.) Rollei was not quite as colorful as Fotospeed for me. But did Fotospeed recently really go up in price? I bought some from B&H at the end of November and it was still $29.99; a reasonable price in my view, especially at the dilution that I use it.
Dan

 

[Jersey Vic]

Thanks for the information.
A friend is using the Rollei Vintage and getting good results and I would like to give Wolfgang Moersch as much support as possible.
RE: Fotospeed-I bought 2 boxes in Nov at that price and found it raised to 44.99 on both B&H & Freestyle when it's in stock. I can understand the gold toner and silver based products going through the roof but this crossed a line for me that has me looking for alternatives.

 

[Dan Henderson]

You are right; the Fotospeed did take a huge price jump. I am glad I just bought some. I guess when that is gone I will have to think about going back to Rollei, or even try Arista.

 

[Guillaume Zuili]

If you can fine tune it to your taste Arista lith is quite cheap.
Also Clayton lith (which is not arista) is available on Digitaltruth.

Moersch is more expensive but has so many additives and options that, value for the buck in the end, it is very good.
And the best.

 

[An Le-qun]

My sympathies--I was on a similar quest about a month ago, up until which time LD20 was my favorite. I ended up spending (definitely not wasting) time working with various homebrews, many of which were based on old patents for lith developers. After a chemistry guru straightened me out on an important point with respect to sodium formaldehyde bisulfite (thanks again, PE!), I settled on one formula that is cheaper by the print than LD20 was for me. You may not be looking to go primitive now, but keep it in mind.

It is adapted from Arista's old lith developer, which the MSDS says is Naccolith. The ingredients listed were given in terms of percentages, so I had to tweak things somewhat, and I made some changes of my own. Here's the formula I'm currently using, provisionally referred to as pseudo-Naccolith:

Part A
200 mL distilled water at about 120 degrees F
Hydroquinone 8g
Sodium Sulfite 2-3g
AmQuel* 225mL
Water to 500mL
*the ammonia remover, available at any pet store that caters to aquariums, is dilute Sodium Formaldehyde Bisulfite; not cheap, but still better than prices on...let's just say "some products."

Part B
200 mL distilled water (cold! about 38 degrees F)
Sodium Hydroxide 11g (dissolve this first, and carefully)
Sodium Bicarbonate 3g
Sodium Carbonate Monohydrate 5g
Sodium Metaborate 10g
Potassium bromide 2-3g
Distilled water to 500mlL

I'm making it in 500mL batches because the results seem to change with the age of the stock solution, and I like the colors of the younger stock a little better.

I do not yet have extensive experience with this concoction, but so far, I love the results I'm getting, especially on Forte Polywarmtone Gloss. BLACK black, chocolate brown, very cold gray (think blue), vivid orange, pale pink, and white--often all in the same print.

I think the colors were a little better when I substituted 80mL of the distilled water in part A with 80mL propylene glycol, the RV antifreeze (I was using it to try to maintain a stock solution of 10% Hydroquinone, a scheme that did not work with the brand of propylene glycol I was using--evidently it does contain some water). I'm going to reincorporate the antifreeze in the next batch and see what happens.

Colors seem to be the best in the 1:1:30 to 1:1:40 range, usually with 1 part old brown.

 

[PVia]

Interesting formula, An...thanks for sharing it. How long does that stock last for you. I don't mean in the tray, but in the bottle?

I wish I could find something else to use besides a formaldehyde substance. Supposedly Moersch does not incorporate formaldehyde, and I don't think there's an acetone in there either.

Why are these lith formulas so hard to homebrew?

 

[pentaxuser]

Why are these lith formulas so hard to homebrew?

I don't know but it might help explain why Fotospeed thinks it can get away with such a price rise unscathed

pentaxuser

 

[An Le-qun]

As to the shelf life of the stock: I make it in such small quantities (500mL A, 500mL B) at a time, I run out of it within 3 weeks. FWIW, I haven't had any batches go off in that amount of time. Can't say anything beyond that.

As to the difficulty of homebrewing, I think it has to do with the nature of infectious development. If you ain't got infectious development, you pretty much ain't got lith, and infectious development requires that a lot of variables be kept within a fairly narrow range. That's hard to do, e.g., with a scale that doesn't measure to within .1 gram....