Trying Lith for the first time

jimjm · Sep 3, 2025

Guillaume Zuili said:
Beautiful prints !

Thank You Guillaume! I admire your work as well.

ic-racer · Sep 3, 2025

I have put on some Lith printing workshops. This is a syllabus for one of them.

NE OH Gathering: July 27-28-29, 2012

We had our best gathering yet in May 2012 and three wonderful gatherings in October, August and May of 2011. We missed a few regulars and gained a few new folks. It is time again for another NE OH Gathering, to get out shooting film, come together to see recent work, climb ledges, walk the OH &...

www.photrio.com

Guillaume Zuili · Sep 3, 2025

ic-racer said:
I have put on some Lith printing workshops. This is a syllabus for one of them.

NE OH Gathering: July 27-28-29, 2012

We had our best gathering yet in May 2012 and three wonderful gatherings in October, August and May of 2011. We missed a few regulars and gained a few new folks. It is time again for another NE OH Gathering, to get out shooting film, come together to see recent work, climb ledges, walk the OH &...

www.photrio.com

Perfect syllabus you said it all.
Few years back I got a 10 sheets 8x10 kodalith paper box. Amazing stuff.
But my favorite of all, another kodak paper, is Opal. Insanely beautiful.

bedrof · Sep 4, 2025

Prest_400 said:
Do you have any Fortezo and Bromofort tips? I think I had an available couple big boxes of the latter. Didn't experiment much as these appear to be slow (very high contrast, no color), within the limited parameters I have tested. IIRC, used to do a lot of 10A+10B+980ml Moersch Easylith; hot, and for just a few (3-4) prints.
Managed to try a few scavenged sheets of Polywarmtone and oh, that is a beautiful paper in Lith for portraiture.

Fortezo (white package) starts in Moersh lith with no extra efforts. Older Bromofort (yellow package) wants water bath before developer and a stronger and warmer solution (sometimes I make new dev midway). Bromofort in white packages though rather hard to find, didn't resist to lith in any considerable way. It takes 5-7 min in standard dilution of Moersh lith to a snatch point.

Bill Burk · Sep 7, 2025

Having a mix of fun and fury.

I have reduced my developer to Moesrch 15ml A 15ml B and 375ml water. I get two 11x14 out. First print comes out with almost normal Silver Gelatin tonality but with some pronounced grain. About 8 minutes.

Second print gets the “Lith” high contrast super grainy effect in about 10 minutes.

Third doesn’t develop much at all in 30 minutes.

Using Kodabromide F3 11x14 SW.

Kodabromide F4 11x14 SW didn’t “Lith” but came out with a faint creamy color. (Maybe it was the third print?) - Going to give F4 another chance because I have a nearly full 250 sheet box of it and if it works I will have a good supply.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Sep 7, 2025

Bill Burk said:
Having a mix of fun and fury.

I have reduced my developer to Moesrch 15ml A 15ml B and 375ml water. I get two 11x14 out. First print comes out with almost normal Silver Gelatin tonality but with some pronounced grain. About 8 minutes.

Second print gets the “Lith” high contrast super grainy effect in about 10 minutes.

Third doesn’t develop much at all in 30 minutes.

Using Kodabromide F3 11x14 SW.

Kodabromide F4 11x14 SW didn’t “Lith” but came out with a faint creamy color. (Maybe it was the third print?) - Going to give F4 another chance because I have a nearly full 250 sheet box of it and if it works I will have a good supply.

Just curious. Is there a reason why you're not taking Second Pass Lith route as it is supposed to work with all papers and gives you more control as the first pass print's characteristics circumscribe what the lith development in the second pass can do?

Bill Burk · Sep 7, 2025

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:
Just curious. Is there a reason why you're not taking Second Pass Lith route as it is supposed to work with all papers and gives you more control as the first pass print's characteristics circumscribe what the lith development in the second pass can do?

Still new to this, when I am disappointed with a particular print, the thought of bleach/redevelop certainly occurs to me.

But just now I got it to work and will say Kodabromide F4 SW is going to be my favorite. The second print is the one I can count on. In one development bath it comes out with warm gold background highlights and black shadows while paper borders remain white.

ic-racer · Sep 8, 2025

Some of my favorite Lith prints came from Minox negatives. Unfortunately the Hungarian paper on which these were made is long gone.

Bill Burk · Sep 9, 2025

Cool museum shot. That’s kind of the color I get with F4. F3 comes out neutral gray.

Bill Burk · Sep 9, 2025

First Result. Can you believe it???? OK this is literally print number 2 because the first one has serious issues because of the ridges in my tray.

But right off the bat! Just hit it with two minutes exposure for an illumination level that would have normally been 32 seconds.

I used 2 minutes exposure for all subsequent prints to date. Wild that print exposure time is "meaningless" when you do Lith printing.

Story time: While catching up on development backlog I went against my principles from APUG and scanned as I was cutting up developed film to put in pages.

When I got to some of my pictures, I hated how they looked with normal treatment, so I jammed up the contrast. I really liked the amped up contrast.

But when I tried to get that contrast in the darkroom, I was left feeling the same as when I was scanning. They lacked oomph.

I told some of the rest of the story earlier. But... This was one of the negatives that really needed the contrast treatment.

Before I did the sailboat, I looked through my recent scans and I got to this one and "chimped".

I

Bill Burk · Sep 9, 2025

11x14 Kodabromide F4 Single Weight.

2 minutes exposure, second print in Moersch 15ml A + 15ml B + 375ml water, about 8 1/2 minutes. KRST 1:20 ( but the selenium toning didn’t change the tone much, it came out of the fix like this).

jimjm · Sep 10, 2025

Bill Burk said:
View attachment 407130

11x14 Kodabromide F4 Single Weight.

2 minutes exposure, second print in Moersch 15ml A + 15ml B + 375ml water, about 8 1/2 minutes. KRST 1:20 ( but the selenium toning didn’t change the tone much, it came out of the fix like this).

This looks great Bill! It has much more of a "vintage" look than your straight print. Often, I've found that Lith just adds a different mood to a print. It seems to work really well with some negatives, but not so much with others. Some of my favorites have been images that never worked for me as straight prints but took on a different character with Lith. This has given new life to a lot of negatives that I never felt really excited about.
You've gotten plenty of great technical advice here from others, but my 2 cents is that longer exposures will generally provide a greater density and range of tones in the mids before the shadows start to get too dense. Many papers will also be more colorful with longer times. Toning can also have a great impact on the final print color.

These two were printed on Fomatone 131 paper with Fotospeed LD20 developer (sadly discontinued).
First image was not toned, but the second was toned with selenium to give a cooler look.

Bill Burk · Sep 10, 2025

Thanks jimjm

That’s quite a scene!

How strong was the selenium? I hardly see any difference with KRST 1:20

mshchem · Sep 10, 2025

Bill Burk said:
View attachment 407130

11x14 Kodabromide F4 Single Weight.

2 minutes exposure, second print in Moersch 15ml A + 15ml B + 375ml water, about 8 1/2 minutes. KRST 1:20 ( but the selenium toning didn’t change the tone much, it came out of the fix like this).

That's great!

mshchem · Sep 10, 2025

P.S. I routinely use KRST at 1+3, especially with cold tone papers. 1+3 is way too strong (well it's harder to control) with warmer papers like Fomatone.

jimjm · Sep 10, 2025

Bill Burk said:
Thanks jimjm

That’s quite a scene!

How strong was the selenium? I hardly see any difference with KRST 1:20

I generally use Kodak Selenium toner at 1:15 and I think this print was toned for about 5 mins.

Trying Lith for the first time

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