What Developer for Lith printing expired Portriga Rapid

[zesbaugh]

I was going through boxes of old darkroom equipment from a garage sale 10 years ago (soon to be pressed back into service) and found a few uncracked boxes of old (no idea how old) Portriga Rapid PRN 117. Was going to toss it all due to age and storage conditions, but then thought the better of it (yay hopefully).

Seems Lith is my best bet for getting anything useful out of it. (? very open to other suggestions...)

Being a total newbie at Lith (and fairly green at normal B+W) I thought best to go to the experts. What developer should I go for here? Don't really know what I want image wise yet - so looking mainly for ease of use to get me started - keep in mind I've never mixed chems from scratch, only premixed packages.

Thanks!

 

[jscha]

The Moersch / Maco Easy Lith kits spring to mind, but never tried the Portriga myself with Lith, you get 2 solutions which you mix together and dilute with water, instructions included in the pack ;-) Pretty straight forward to do, but hard to get the same print twice.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Any lith developer will make this stuff sing in lith. Try Fotospeed LD-20. Freestyle's own Arista Premium Liquid Lith is a lot cheaper, but gives pepper fog easier, and it's not stellar with Portriga. I've tried it.
Overexpose like mad when you print it. If you can't control contrast with your main exposure, preflash.

- Thomas

 

[zesbaugh]

Thanks for the advice, will give LD-20 a shot. Now if I can just get that darkroom finished so I can actually try all this out instead of dreaming about it (maybe by the time the chems arrive in the mail!).