2023 First Darkroom Work (Part 1)

After much upheaval in my personal life living a semi-nomadic existence in the USA and UK I have not been in the darkroom for some time. My last effort was at the very end of May just before my move to the USA. I am back in the UK for Christmas and New Years and found some time to do some lith printing. I had to look through the back catalog to find some subjects to print. 

Lith Printing Recap

In many ways lith printing is easier than conventional printing. The exposure is not critical, and I learned some important techniques back in 2021 that made lith finally click for me. For instance, I meter the exposure on the easel at Ev 4 (ISO 100) in the highlight areas of the image using an incident light meter. This corresponds to about 45 seconds of exposure. I usually bracket this +/-1 stop to start with. Burning helps a lot to balance the exposure on the print. Any sky wants a stop or 2 of burn to bring the tones in line with the foreground.  I also crop out areas that are too light if that makes sense in the composition. 

I use Moersch EasyLith because well, it is easy. I start with 300ml of 'old brown' from the last batch of developer. I then add 20 mg of Part A and 30 mg of Part B. These are equal volumes but I find using a scale is easier for measuring small amounts of developer. (I estimate the specific gravity by measuring out a larger quantity by volume and weighing it.)  I then add about 600ml of water to make a liter or close to it. 

Again, these measurements are not critical in lith as the developer is very diluted and getting more diluted and loaded with bromine with each use. Every piece of paper and moment of time changes the developer. 

The point at which you remove the print from the developer is the critical time.  After 2-4 sheets have been developed, I refresh the developer with 4mg Part a and 6mg Part B. Finally, I heat the developer for 2 minutes in the microwave. I use an accordion bottle to accommodate any expansion from heating. Typically, I expose my paper first before heating the developer. This way the developer is as hot as possible. Heating the developer means the time to development shifts from 10's of minutes or more to 2 - 5 minutes. As the developer cools and gets used the time draws out more. Then it is time to refresh and reheat. I find this regimen keeps the pace of work at a good tempo. 

Papers

I was fortunate to have bought 4 boxes of Oriental Seagull on eBay a number of years ago. This paper liths excellently with a slightly warm pink-taupe tone. It is what I usually start with. I also picked up a few sheets of Fotospeed Lith paper. This is gorgeous paper with a rich salmon pink color. Alas I am down to perhaps one 8x10 sheet. Finally, I bought some old ORWO (East German) paper a number of years ago. This is the BN118 type. I have a box of 5x7" and a packet of 9 1/2 x 7". I have seen mixed results, but this paper does show infectious development and exhibits neutral to slightly warm tone depending on the lighting. I had some good results this session with the ORWO paper. 

Images 

The first image is one I took on my Fuji GSW619 camera in Monk's Wood. The scraggly oak stands at a junction of trails and has always captured my attention with its crazy shape of the limbs. I made three exposures on Oriental Seagull paper. 

F4.5 60 seconds

This was a little too dark. I should have snatched it sooner.

f8 45 seconds

Much better. Less exposure helped and my timing was better. 

Finally, I didn't wait for infectious development on this last one. 

f8 90 seconds

The next image is what I call 'Sunrise over Wistow Road'. I remember this morning well. I was heading to Wood Walton Fen and noticed the sunrise and diverted to capture the following images before completing my journey. 

This first image is about orientation. 

f11 at 23 sec

f11 at 45 sec

The negative seems denser on the left side. This is a perfect reason to crop this edge out rather than try and burn this area to compensate. I also decided to burn the sky for an extra stop. 

f5.6 23 sec burn sky 23 sec

This is nicely balanced, captures the range of tones and keeps the outline of the sun in the upper right corner. 

Next, I switched to a different image from the same morning and moved to different papers. First was the 5x7" ORWO paper. 

Two different versions of the same exposure. The difference is how long the development was allowed to proceed. 

ORWO BN 118 f16 23 sec burn sky 45 sec

ORWO BN 118 f16 23 sec burn sky 45 sec

Next I made a couple of prints using my Fohar Raster paper. This can get some nice results but seem more suitable for darker more complex images. It does not deal with subtle shading in this example. It also has this strange dimpled texture which is where the name comes from. 

Fohar Raster f22 22 second burn sky 22 second

This first has only one stop of sky burn. The paper always exhibits a warm age-related tone to the paper. I have found that a short soak in potassium ferrocyanide clears this without impacting the density of the print visibly. I did not do this for these prints.

Fohar Raster f22 22 second burn sky 45 second

This next one has two stops of sky burn. 

Next I tried one scrap of Fotospeed Lith paper. This shows the characteristic pink tone. 

Fotospeed Lith f16 22 second burn sky 45 second

Finally I tried the larger sized ORWO BN118 paper. This achieved a very nice result. 

ORWO f11 23 sec burn sky 45 sec

The paper wrapping must have a tear in it as the lower right corner exhibits a light leak. This is why borders in lith can be important. Leaks can cause runaway infectious development across the adjacent portion of the image. I was fortunate that it did proceed very far. This paper warrants a 1/2" border in future though.  

I then ran the same image on some Oriental Seagull. Both have the same exposure but different snatch times. I am conflicted as to whether to let the infectious development force the foreground to black or retain detail. Different looks to each.

Wistow Seagull f5.6 23 sec burn sky 23 sec #1

Wistow Seagull f5.6 23 sec burn sky 23 sec #2