Here his description
Even translated it was a clear as mud.
Thanks for the information! I first noticed Lobotypes with Wolfgang Moersch's posting on Flicker. All this work and prints are beautiful.
Salt prints are fun. I bought some salted albumin from Bostick and Sullivan then gold tone the prints. I’m attracted to silver processes due to its low cost.I don't know what the advantage is of this method is though - if one wants a POP silver process, there is the salt prints, kind of mother of all POPs.
I find all his images very nice, made by many different methods with various toners that he sells. I bought one of his selenium toners designed for salt prints that I have yet to try.
:Niranjan.
If someone translates, I'd like to know if he solved the problem of using FAO and silver nitrate without the silver oxalate precipitating..... I know you can do it if you add enough FAC or maybe citric acid, something I've been meaning to play with but haven't gotten to. The combination of FAO and FAC is a little faster than FAC alone....
Thanks Niranjan! The German version was hard for me to interpret. I saved the article.Hi, Ned:
Here is an English pdf that I found on his site-
https://www.moersch-photochemie.de/files/articles/Lobotype (June 2021).pdf
He doesn't really solve the problem of muddy sensitizer, he does recommend adding some citric acid but mostly just uses it anyway....
I also figured out what is "lobo" in lobotype: lobo = wolf = Wolfgang (Moersch.)
:Niranjan.
Yes, thanks Niranjan, I saved too, and intend to explore this process more.
I've added a small amount of AFO to Sepia/VDB-like prints a couple times, but always keeping it below the level where the precipitate forms ( so still mostly AFC ). I haven't done it enough to have much to say, the only things I noticed were slightly faster printing and slightly colder tones... but there are a lot of variables, and both of those things could depend on paper/acid type/etc. I'm particularly interested if it might change the characteristics for platinum toning ( before or after fixing ). I've been making a lot of these kinds of prints the past couple weeks, so I'll add this to the list of various things I'm trying. At the moment I'm still working out some things about exposure, and am not at the stage yet where I'm toning, but when I get to there I will change up the AFO/AFC ratios and see what happens. ( Naranjan: I've been meaning to PM you about some things I'm trying related to UV-blocking in the negative, it might be relevant to your POP printing, but am waiting until I have more results! )
About 6 or 8 months ago, I spent a good amount of time working with AFO/AFC in gelatin. I've got a pile of about a hundred test strips! No silver nitrate, I wanted to see if it could be used in Winther's process and was hoping that using AFO would speed things up enough to make in-camera use feasible. In this case, "feasible" means anything less than 6 or 7 hours in full sun. I didn't get there. I have suspicions about air re-oxidizing the ferrous back to ferric and making longer in-camera exposures an exercise in diminishing returns... and I have some ideas about things that might help ( mount the paper between sheets of glass and use a plate holder, or coat it in agar or something else to exclude the air ) but it gets fussy not as fun and not quick like making the paper and sticking it out on the back porch in the sun to see what happens!
Edit: Recently I did notice something odd about AFO in those tests. In this process, after washing and clearing the gelatin relief, you let the gelatin dry, paint it with potassium chloride, let it dry again, paint it with silver nitrate, dry, then expose to the sun until you see the positive image you want ( then fix and wash like a salt print ). Looking at the test strips months later, I noticed that the ones made with more AFO had silvered out more... some of them have extensive bright silver. Weird, because this must be something different the AFO does to the gelatin... the iron salts are completely washed out earlier in the process.
If someone translates, I'd like to know if he solved the problem of using FAO and silver nitrate without the silver oxalate precipitating..... I know you can do it if you add enough FAC or maybe citric acid, something I've been meaning to play with but haven't gotten to. The combination of FAO and FAC is a little faster than FAC alone....
I gave Lobotype a try with Ferric Ammonium Oxalate synthesised as per Mike Ware's prescription (it has Ammonium Nitrate in addition to FAO) and suitably diluted. The sensitiser does become muddy or milky due to the precipitation of Silver Oxalate but adding Citric Acid as per Moersch's website helps. Coating the paper with the milky sensitiser was not a problem. Exposure is short and there's a strong printout. Moersch says the exposed print can be developed like Kallitype but I didn't. What I noticed was that the colour tone of the print was closer to neutral grey than the POP brown and this corroborates with Moersch's experience with Lobotype. Any idea why Lobotype produces neutral grey and how a similar colour tone can be obtained with VDB?
Thank you for sharing! I make cyanotypes all the time, but never tried it like this!Don't know anything about this Winther's process - but it seems it requires way too much patience than I can muster up...
If in-camera negatives is what you are after, have you considered any of Dan Aetherman's methods that he has on youtube, for example:
:Niranjan.
Several years before Moersch published his Lobotype pdf, I tried the same when I got some FAO for New Cyanotype and figured I could try substituting it for the FAC in Van Dyke. So I got the same muddy sensitizer, the same somewhat neutral print tone, but mostly just a fairly weak dmax. So I never pursued it any further given the availability of better (to my taste) options. Anyway, I can confirm the more neutral image tone.What I noticed was that the colour tone of the print was closer to neutral grey than the POP brown and this corroborates with Moersch's experience with Lobotype.
Yes, that's what I'd expect, too.Probably something to do with the cloudy nature of the sensitizer - resulting in larger grain sizes.
Several years before Moersch published his Lobotype pdf, I tried the same when I got some FAO for New Cyanotype and figured I could try substituting it for the FAC in Van Dyke. So I got the same muddy sensitizer, the same somewhat neutral print tone, but mostly just a fairly weak dmax. So I never pursued it any further given the availability of better (to my taste) options. Anyway, I can confirm the more neutral image tone.
Yes, that's what I'd expect, too.
Btw, the present location of the German version of the pdf is now: https://www.moersch-photochemie.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Lobotypie-WEB.pdf
Probably something to do with the cloudy nature of the sensitizer - resulting in larger grain sizes. Using that rationale, if you can make collodial VDB sensitizer (play with amount of tartaric acid?,) you might get more neutral color.
Did you use 40-45% FAO as recommended by Moersch or 30% as used in Simple Cyanotype?
There's an optimum w.r.t. tartaric acid IME. Beyond a certain point, dmax reduces and prints get grainy.An article on VDB says that increasing Tartaric Acid in the sensitiser moves the colour towards neutral gray but also increases contrast.
I really don't remember, sorry. It's been several years and I didn't take notes. I also don't think I've kept the fee test prints I made back then.
There's an optimum w.r.t. tartaric acid IME. Beyond a certain point, dmax reduces and prints get grainy.
I suppose; I never really tried that apart from doing some limited experiments to find the optimum in terms of dmax, which has always been one of my main concerns with many alt. processes. I find they often have a narrow optimum where the tonal scale of the print is the biggest and no matter what you change, the blacks (darkest tones) always seem to slide off once you stray too far from that optimum. I did try dichromate as a contrast enhancer, but found the same - contrast is boosted, but quite quickly image tone shifts to reddish hues and dmax reduces.Maybe that's why the recommended process for contrast control in VDB is to add Ferric Citrate to the sensitiser which makes me think if Mike Ware's Simple Cyanotype Part A lends itself naturally to contrast control in VDB.
Any idea why Lobotype produces neutral grey and how a similar colour tone can be obtained with VDB?
Why not try the two-step method? First, apply the photosensitive agent onto the paper for exposure, and then use silver nitrate for developing. My research has shown that by adjusting the ratio of ammonium ferric citrate and ammonium ferric acetate in the photosensitive agent, you can achieve all the tones from cool black to warm black. My favorite method is to mix 20% ammonium ferric citrate and 20% ammonium ferric acetate in a 1:1 ratio and apply it onto the paper. The exposure time is half of that for new cyanotype, and then use 1.2% silver nitrate for developing, which will result in a very beautiful black.
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