Mixing things up (lith prints and hypo fixer rant)

[Jerevan]

During the past few weeks I have done 20 - 25 lith prints, fixing them in plain hypo that I mixed up. Tonight I realize that mixed up is the correct wording ... because Mr Chemist himself poured in 10 gram rather than say 100 gram to a liter of water.

So, refixing is what I'll do pronto and hope nothing's gone to waste. Sometimes you just learn things the hard way.

The reason I started with the hypo was that I can see bleaching and loss of colour on the prints. I don't know if anyone else is seeing this with normal fixers and lith prints?

 

[Robert Hall]

I'm afraid that after "a few weeks" you may be a bit too late, but you won't hurt anything by re-fixing.

 

[Rich Ullsmith]

Yes, you will get bleaching. If you work under the same darkroom light conditions long enough, you can eventually judge a snatch point that will bleach back to where you would like it to be. That said, I have found that even massive amounts of exposure won't flatten the print out enough. Please try pre-exposing the paper, and I don't just mean flashing it. I use a portable light box for anywhere from 5-15 seconds, in addition to massive exposure. All papers are different, but I think the value of pre-exposing (or post exposing . . .sometimes I do it in the developer tray at early stages of development) in lith is underappreciated.

If you take a look at my gallery, most of those prints have been pre-exposed to some degree.

 

[Jerevan]

Thanks for the tips, Rich! I'll have a look at your gallery and try the pre-exposure idea.

In the case of "a few weeks" I mean 5-10 days maximum. It is not so much the bleaching as the loss of colour that I mourn. I'll refix anyway, for my own peace of mind.

 

[An Le-qun]

A related question: does the extent of bleaching in fixer perhaps depend to some degree on the developer used? I noticed none when developing Forte PolyWT FB in Arista lith chemicals or LD20, but quite a bit when I used Dupont LD-1 (with formalin + sodium hydroxide instead of Paraformaldehyde). An unpleasant surprise, but--as already observed--manageable once you get used to it.