Trying Lith for the first time

[jimjm]

Beautiful prints !

Thank You Guillaume! I admire your work as well.

 

[ic-racer]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

 

[Bill Burk]

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

 

[Bill Burk]

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]

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]

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]

Thanks jimjm

That’s quite a scene!

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

 

[mshchem]

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]

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]

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.

 

[Dwayne Martin]

I also use the one shot method except I take it a step further by priming a big batch of developer in a big tray, usually about 2000 ml. (Maybe that’s not a big batch for some of you but it’s enough for me to make 3 or 4 prints in an evening). Depending on the paper I plan to print I will add a certain amount of old brown to the mix. Some papers need a lot of bromide and some will barely tolerate it without pepper fog. I also throw in a sheet of some junk paper like some old fogged RC. Then I let it rock for a while. I use a laboratory tray rocker (also heated) so that does the work for me while I do other things like set up the enlarger. When you’re printing long expired hard to find papers, the name of the game is not to waste a sheet if you can so getting the developer seasoned like that gets you past the first one or two not so interesting prints. Once I have it ready I pour it back into the pitcher, switch to a smaller tray and start making prints with about 600ml per print, give or take. Assuming I have my exposure time just right and I don’t have to adjust it, I can make multiple nearly identical prints without wasting valuable paper.

Here is an example, 3 sheets of 16x20 Ektalure made with one batch of developer.

 

[Reginald S]

I have reduced my developer to .. 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.

Lith developer wast fast, especially tiny amounts in tiny solutions. So your regardings are typical.
As said by Dwayne better use a two or liter bath which will lead to more consistency.
Plus a better learning curve, which will save the money later.


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

I always make a normal print, then giving 2x or 4x exposure to the Lith exposure.

But: This print of approx. 24x30cm took 480seconds for an unbelieveable sloth of paper,Fomatone 532, still missing dense in the highlights:

 

[Elmarc]

This is absolutely beautiful. Congratulations. Has inspired me to look into lith printing again. My only concern was/is wasting materials through trial and error.

 

[jimjm]

This is absolutely beautiful. Congratulations. Has inspired me to look into lith printing again. My only concern was/is wasting materials through trial and error.

Thanks! With practice, the materials waste can be minimized but sometimes the results can be magical and this makes it worth the effort and time for me.

 

[tezzasmall]

An interesting thread, but especially for newbies to the lith process, I'll repeat the link given at the beginning of the thread, as it has a lot of good info in it:

The lithprint process – AlternativePhotography.com

www.alternativephotography.com

Terry S