Warm Lith Prints

schrochem · Jan 8, 2012

Hey y'all,
I've been bugging Guillaume in PMs and starting to feel guilty about it....
So I thought I'd throw out a request.
I've done three sessions with lith and I'm hooked. I'm out of paper.....
During this time I've begun to learn some of the behavior.
That of course has given me a better idea of what i'm after and how I want it to look.
The main thing I'd like to tackle first is the tone.
Although some of these crazy lith colors are pretty damn cool, I'd like to find the tone I'm after.
Here's where I need some help.
I'm using easylith and foma 131.
I got pretty close to the tone with heavy dilution and short exposure.
The tone I'm after is a golden brown sort of ochre hue. It's basically the tone I get in wet plate.
In the world of RGB its in the area of R 124 G 103 B 68
If you reduce the blue down into the 40s then you can get an idea of the range I'm talking about.
What I'm NOT after are oranges, reds, pinks, purples or blues.
Yellowish browns start to get there....
I definitely don't like cool or neutral. So far selenium has been way too cool or purpley. If I've used it it was just for a few seconds.
On unblinkingeye Tim Rudman had a list of papers but that was in 2004.....
I need to place an order for more paper so I thought I'd ask first.
Perhaps SE5 will give me a little more flexibility than the easylith?
In the gallery I like the tone Marianne has in her prints so maybe she could chime in
I have no problem with experimenting but i'd like to get a ballpark combination of dev,paper, and/or toner to get me there.
I really appreciate any thoughts or advice you might have.
Thanks
Scott

RPippin · Jan 8, 2012

Foma 131 or 132 is what you want, some people like Emaks as well. Don't forget your old brown addition to the Lith bath. Try more dilution and longer exposure. I find my best results are near the end of the print session when the developer is going a bit south. The prints are in the developer longer and have more of the color I'm looking for. Good luck.

ath · Jan 8, 2012

You know the lith books of Tim Rudman?
And maybe you want to ask the creator of Easylith and SE5 or look into his sample gallery: http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/galerie/easylith/14
He has also a more complex chemistry kit for lith prints which allows quite a bit of tuning: http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/shop/lith

keithwms · Jan 8, 2012

Hmm, let's see, who is this I see on youtube....

[video=youtube;qMMEOGs_9CE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMMEOGs_9CE[/video]

Sorry Richard I had to

36cm2 · Jan 8, 2012

Awesome video.

schrochem · Jan 8, 2012

Of that sample gallery, this tone is most appealing to me:
http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/galerie/easylith/11

Does less B lend itself to that tone?

keithwms · Jan 8, 2012

36cm2 said:
Awesome video.

Thank you. In all fairness to Richard, I showed up at his house, unannounced, caffeinated, and with a new digicam and manual focus lens. And I forced him to make a video on the spot, with no script. Richard was ad libbing and I think he did a fantastic job, under the circumstances. You don't see the cats complaining at his feet nor the geese complaining in the background. Plus it was my very first video, ever, and I had no clue what I was doing.

Jerevan · Jan 8, 2012

Scott, that example above is from an Adox paper, so maybe you should try that. There are other toners than selenium, like gold or copper or combinations that might give you the tones you are after. You have to experiment more, maybe as I said before, with longer snatch times to cool down the colours a bit.

mooseontheloose · Jan 8, 2012

The tone I'm after is a golden brown sort of ochre hue. It's basically the tone I get in wet plate.

Of that sample gallery, this tone is most appealing to me: http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/co...ie/easylith/11

These two statements are a bit contradictory -- the example you showed is not a golden brown ochre hue at all -- it's very cool, and I think very difficult to achieve with any Fomatone papers. Fomabrom, (and Emaks, Adox, and Slavich) on the other hand, produces nice tones like these, as Marianne produces, but I don't know how she does it. I tried and could not get anything useful at all out of Fomabrom. That begin said, I haven't worked with it much.

I've used both the Easylith and SE5 with different combinations, but there was very little difference between the two, other than a more neutral colour, longer, with SE5 than with Easylith. Most of the images in my gallery are of a Foma 131 or 132 with Moersch variety and I think fall to the warm salmony colours Foma is known for. A few are more neutral, and those were probably the first prints pulled out of the printing session. Anyway, I went to Tim Rudman's workshop last September and he seemed to indicate that the best way to tame the colour with Fomatone was to tone it, but you would need to experiment with gold, selenium (or combination of) and/or sepia. One of the workshop participants got some nice sandy colours after a bleach/sepia dip.

schrochem · Jan 8, 2012

Thanks for the comments. I would love to experiment with all sorts of papers, developers and toners if they were on my shelf. However, I really need to get in the general area for money reasons. I hate trying to use examples on the internet because the darn screens....
I was reading about moersch mt3 toner. It has variations out to dark brown. I'm wondering how that would work out. Has anyone used it? It sounds like the amount of bleaching can also give flexibility.
http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/galerie/mt3
#8 is pretty cool http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/galerie/mt3/8
Thanks

Stan160 · Jan 9, 2012

Hard to tell from scans, but the print you like looks similar to what I've achieved with Fomabrom 123 http://www.flickr.com/photos/nord_modular/4360222870/

Ian

trotkiller · Jan 9, 2012

Have you tried a sepia toner?
I have used it on this image http://www.flickr.com/photos/trotkiller/6606013387/
I bleach until all the soft tones disappeared, which freaked me out, but after 10 seconds in the sepia it all came back
A Thiourea based variable toner may give you the fine control over the image tone that you want

Mark Fisher · Jan 9, 2012

Try fresher developer or a paper like Emaks. It was hard for me to get a decent black with Emaks though. Maybe I didn't play with it enough, Also, a developer like Arista liquid seems to have more restrained colors.

schrochem · Jan 9, 2012

I keep hearing good things about fomabrom but also a lot of people having a hard time with it.
I am interested in sepia toner if it gets me there. That or the MT3.
I gather the length of bleaching effects the toning. Does it literally remove the color created prior to bleaching or is it still a factor?
The reason I ask is because if that's the case, it would seem the colors a paper produces would seem less important and other paper properties could be chosen.
My real goal is to use my glass wet plates to make lith prints. I'm not having much luck right now with those so I want to get the process down with some pyro negs. I really like the warmth of my plates and want to carry that over to the print and create a nice marriage.
Here's a typical wet plate tone that I like
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)
Thanks for the help

Mark Layne · Jan 9, 2012

schrochem said:
Thanks for the comments. I would love to experiment with all sorts of papers, developers and toners if they were on my shelf. However, I really need to get in the general area for money reasons. I hate trying to use examples on the internet because the darn screens....
I was reading about moersch mt3 toner. It has variations out to dark brown. I'm wondering how that would work out. Has anyone used it? It sounds like the amount of bleaching can also give flexibility.
http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/galerie/mt3
#8 is pretty cool http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/galerie/mt3/8
Thanks

Scott
The one thing I can say is:- Higher dilutions with longer development with Fomatone 131 will give pinker colours. Stronger and shorter give browner
Mark

trotkiller · Jan 9, 2012

schrochem said:
I gather the length of bleaching effects the toning. Does it literally remove the color created prior to bleaching or is it still a factor?
The reason I ask is because if that's the case, it would seem the colors a paper produces would seem less important and other paper properties could be chosen.

Yes and yes. The indirect/bleach then tone sepia toners generally strip the image colour during the toning step. If you used a really dilute bleach, you might not loose all of the original colours but the level of sepia toning will be much less. A direct sepia such as LegacyPro Brown Toner, MT4 or 5 would also be interesting to try, the lack of a bleach step should mean that a brown tone will be added to the underlying image colour, rather than replacing it.

schrochem · Aug 23, 2012

I'm pulling this one out of the depths.....
Because I'm printing lith again.

I'll admit I didn't have much luck with the bleach and tone. I know it will work but I'd like to get back to a more simple approach first. I'd like to find a few papers I like and go from there.

I really like the tone I'm getting with fomabrom and a stronger 30:30:1000 ld20
I like the grittiness as well but want to find a paper that has a similar tone but smoother grain.
It seems my searches and descriptions I find keep turning up ADOX papers.
Anyone have comments on ADOX vario classic, MCC 110, or variotone warmtone?
I'll definitely try MCC because freestyle has a 5 sheet sample pack. If they all did I wouldn't be asking? ;-)

I have been dabbling with some old film negs but my main goal is printing with ambrotypes. What I've found out is the density is quite thin compared to film negatives. I'm only doing contact prints and I'm down to using a 7.5W bulb (no enlarger)to give me more time/control. I'm starting to learn more about just how far you have to go to get the blackest of blacks.
I spent an entire print session with (there was a url link here which no longer exists) learning about detail in the highlights (her face and shirt) and getting the blacks in the background. I'll be doing the same thing tonight with this plate to see what else I can learn....

Anyway, I got sidetracked there. I appreciate any comments on papers in general and also the ADOX papers.
Thanks
Scott

mrtoml · Aug 24, 2012

Here is a print on adox vario classic:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alt-digital/2786172603/in/set-72157605319016659

My gallery at Flickr has a set of prints with different papers and Moersch dilutions/toners:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alt-digital/sets/72157605319016659/

Might be worth a look.

Guillaume Zuili · Aug 24, 2012

If you want the same colors for a whole series your best bet is to bleach and tone.
Selenium first to keep your black.
Weak bleach to hit the highlights in sepia or else.
Middle tone keep the lith colors.
Then you get a tri-tone.

G.

Mark Fisher · Aug 24, 2012

Marianne uses foma123, I believe. It behaves very differently than 131. Guillaume's thought is also square on....personally, though I'd probably do light sepia first on 131. 131 is very responsive to toning for all kinds of different looks. There are some older papers like Kentmere Warm tone that give a similar look.

schrochem · Aug 26, 2012

Thanks for the comments. I am definitely going to be exploring the toning route. I have MT3 right now but ordering some thiocarbamide so I can fine tune ratios at minimal expense.
I think the main color I'm after is a shade of raw umber, but I also think a hint of green is also needed.

Doing some googling I found a thread on LFF where someone (Jan Brzeski)had used fomatone for this gallery. However, the dilution was much, much less at 1:1:12 to 1:1:14 and said at 1:1:18 it got too orange/pink in his opinion. I do want to stay away from the orange and pinks....
Anyone here printed fomatone at that strong of solution?

For me to conceivably attempt that I would have to order some arista concentrate powder to be able to afford it. On the freestyle website they even mention the 1:14 dilution.

schrochem · Sep 10, 2012

I have this 'feeling' in my head but can't quite put my finger on what makes it like that.
Having created many more prints I think part of it is in the shadows. I don't want deep cold blacks.
I want speckly, warm shadows. I think there is a fine line there....I don't want it to looked fogged or washed out but prominent.
I think the link to that gallery in the post above had some good examples of it. I have noticed that I even like the greenish blacks.
I guess the 'look' I'm trying to achieve is stippled, greenish, warm shadows and warmish ochre, raw umberish highlights....
Sheesh, sounds like a description from a fashion show or something ;-)
If I can kick up the grain in the shadows (just enough) I think I can accomplish this with MGWT.
I did like fomabrom but it's just too much grain for this particular look I trying to create.

Mark Fisher · Sep 11, 2012

I dunno....you can get the green shadows, no problem. Grain.....it is the least grainy lith paper I know of. (there was a url link here which no longer exists)is what I typically have managed to get from it using Maco/Labor Partner/Rollei or Moersch SE5. Fomatone using fresh developer might bet you what you are looking for. The old Forte warmtone is pretty much exactly what you are looking for.

schrochem · Sep 11, 2012

Thanks Mark. Yes I'm just looking for subtle grain like in the link (very cool print). Same goes for the subtleness of the green or ochre or whatever color I can't describe ;-)
It's just the one particular look I'm after but I'm finding others along the way.....

schrochem · Sep 11, 2012

Are the following points true (in general and dependent on paper) to shift toward warmer tones?
-higher dilution
-which needs more light
-early snatch (not to deep cold blacks)
-exhausted dev (or just add Br?)

Thanks

Warm Lith Prints

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