Printing Mathematical Trees Study: Lith Developer
This is the second in the series exploring the images from a study I did on some trees in the Cambridgeshire countryside. This post contains a lot of detail notes of the process a more readable summary of the project is here.
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| Blog Post Cover Image |
This time I am looking to lith developer to see if I can improve contrast. I have a love/hate relationship with lith as I have found it very difficult to get consistent results. This is often what makes it attractive to others however. I also don't like the long development times and in the past resorted to heating the developer. Never-the-less I embarked on this branch of the journey of these prints with such low contrast.
I found the results so good at one point that I kept venturing deeper into lith territory. I found the rewards of persistence and research.
Lith Prints
I mixed up a batch of Fotospeed Lith developer 15ml+485ml water for each part A and part B per instructions.
I started out with the Ilford FB Classic paper and made 2 prints. I overexposed the first by 4 stops and used the same timings as the previous conventionally developed print. The first traces of an image formed after 4 1/2 minutes and I pulled it at somewhere shy of 15 minutes. Neither image had any dodging or burning done.
It had a salmon pink color and very light tone that reduced significantly when I placed it in the fixer. I have never experienced this before with lith developer but it happened on the second print as well which I exposed with only the hard filter. I only archivally washed these images.
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| First Attempt FB Classic |
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| Second Attempt FB Classic |
Printing Notes Ilford FB Classic Lith
Ilford FB Classic 6 x 8 1/2 on 8 x 12"
60w 0xND
First Attempt
- #5 54"
- #00 22"
- Dev about 14 minutes
Second Attempt
- #5 54"
- #00 22"
- Dev about 14 minutes
There is a mottling from the developer and the results are not good. I didn't get the sense of infectious development the hallmark of good lith prints. So I moved onto other paper (Art 300) which Wolfgang Moersch has declared lithable!
I had a few scraps of paper so I started with a 3 stop over exposure this time and ran the hard filter for 54 seconds again and 4 seconds of soft filter. Again I made no dodge or burn. I did get infectious development almost 20 minutes into development which was encouraging. You could see the development proceed from the ground up the tree trunk and branch out which left me thinking this might work.
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| Art 300 #1 |
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| Art 300 #2 |
In both cases the tone has a greenish/olive cast to it. I only archivally washed these prints as well. Bleaching marginally improved the contrast.
I see some promise with lith developer. Re-reading about lith developer I realize my instinct to reduce the exposure is good as it should allow for more contrast. I am considering re-cropping to remove some left and right parts of the image and may go for a square crop. This can help limit the gradient of light cross the image somewhat.
Fotospeed Lith Paper
I have some old Fotospeed Lith paper that I don't know the state of so this may be a good application of it. I cut 2 sheets of 16x20 Fotospeed Lith paper into 8 sheets of 8x10. I mixed a fresh batch of Fotospeed Lith as before. This time I heated the developer in the microwave in hopes of speeding up the development time. The developer was just starting to steam as I poured it out so perhaps too hot!
The first print I re-cropped to 6 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches as I contemplated earlier. I used a hard filter but this was stupid I later realized as the paper is graded at about 2 1/2 contrast grade so the filter just attenuates the light. I kept it in place even after my realization just to stay consistent.
I made a test strip at f4 at 11, 22, 45 and 64 seconds. What was apparent was this was a mess. The paper was fogged and there were patterns on the paper that seemed to indicate it had been exposed to light as well. The image came up quickly within a couple of minutes so heating the developer worked in that sense. In the fix again I noticed a decrease in density particularly in the highlights.
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| Fogged Test Print on Fotospeed Lith Paper |
I followed the test print with a full print at f4 at 32 seconds. This looked similar as the test print with fog and straight line of differing exposure that looked like light had gotten on the paper at one time.
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| First Fotospeed Lith Paper Print |
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| Art 300 Paper with hot developer |
While I did this I exposed one more sheet of the Fotospeed paper as before and started to develop it. I then put the Fotospeed paper away as I basically wrote it off as expired and I had seen lith developer on heavily fogged paper before and didn't want to waste anymore time on this avenue.
By now the developer was quite cool and development times were getting longer. The last piece of Fotospeed paper was taking on the order of 15 minutes to get fully developed. And it turned out nicely! Little to no fog and a good range of tones.
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| Good Lith result Fotospeed Lith paper |
This encouraged me to take the Fotospeed paper back out and give it another whirl. So I made 2 more images one with about 15 seconds gradual dodge on the right of the print and another without. The developer was becoming expired and thee two required over 30 minute before I pulled them.
The first I pulled too soon and the fix again reduced density and this was too much. The second sheet I judged better but the paper had some problems in it.
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| Pulled too soon. |
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| Better but paper has some blotches. |
Conclusions
I think I learned two things. Heating the developer probably lead to the fogging on the Fotospeed paper as it probably defeated the restrainers. Heating did not help the Art 300 paper. I also think one 16x20 sheet was probably compromised in some way in the past leading to the different shadings. I think the Art 300 paper is a dead end as I don't like the mottling and the Fotospeed Lith paper is showing more promise.
Tomorrow I will mix a fresh batch developer and exercise my own restraint to allow this paper to really shine.
I will also take the test prints and run some bleach and tone experiments to enhance contrast and tones.
Toning Experiments
I spent the morning torturing the earlier test prints with bleaching and Selenium toning. I got a range of promising reactions. The Fotospeed Lith paper reacted strangely to selenium 1+3 toner in that the highlights seemed to bleach out, then the tone turned colder towards black before lightening and finally stabilizing to a brown color.
Two examples are below, the first is the 'pulled too soon' print I experimented on. It went through the lightening then colder tones before settling on the warm final tone. The lightening of the image is quite significant.
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| 'pulled too soon' with selenium 1+3 to completion |
The next is the subsequent image above which was the best for the day. I decided to pull this early during the cold tone phase of selenium toning.
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| Early pull from selenium 1+3 |
An Afternoon of Lith Printing
I then spent the rest of the day trying to refine the lith print. I could see the contrast potential if I could control the process somewhat. I made three initial exposures again on the Fotospeed lith paper. They were each one stop apart at f5.6 #5 filter, f4 #5 filter, and f4 with no filter. I developed the first two in fresh developer holding over 200 ml of yesterday's developer (old brown). They showed significant problems with what I finally diagnosed as peppercorn fog. The most highly exposed did not suffer from this so I took this as a hint to use no filtration and stronger exposures.
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| F4 64 seconds no filter (photoshop borders) |
It really did extend the development time for the next prints to about an hour! I nearly gave up at 20 minutes as the developer was probably expired but alas I could just make out an image so I stuck with it doggedly and I am glad I did. I burned these at about 105 seconds and 128 seconds progressing for about a 1/3 of the time slowly left to right before letting the rest of the time for the entire image.
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| Shorter exposure |
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| Longer exposure |
As with most of my lith work it is hard explain difference in the results. These were developed at the same time but the second one sat under the first in the tray. I am not sure if this accounts for the lighter right edge.
They are both fantastic images. They seem to have a backlit glow. To think this much contrast could come from the same negative as I used in the earlier non-lith prints. I am very pleased with the results and completely unexpected given where this journey started.
Tomorrow I plan a more concentrated developer and another round with this and at least one other negative from the series.
Next Day
I mixed fresh developer but slightly more concentrated. The recommended is 15ml (19g) of part A to 485ml water plus 15ml (19.6g) or part B to 485ml of water then mix the two together. I mixed 30g of part A with 33g of part B basically 50% more.
I ran one more print of Fotospeed but overnight I decided to breakout some more old paper. Years ago I bought a pile of old Oriental Seagull G-2 and G-3 paper graded paper. It is quite fogged for normal use but Seagull has a reputation as a good lith paper. This first print is again on the Fotospeed paper based on the previous days work.
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| Fotospeed, f4, 128 second, no filter Slow burn left to right finish at 70 seconds whole image. (Photoshop borders) |
Since I was starting out with the Oriental Seagull paper I started with the same exposure as above.
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| Oriental Seagull 1,f4, 128 second, no filter Slow burn left to right finish at 32 seconds whole image. (Photoshop borders) |
The good news is that the paper does exhibit infectious development. It is also clear the exposure was much too long as the contrast was not good. I proceed to make subsequent prints with one stop less exposure. I followed the same left to right burn plan.
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| Oriental Seagull 2,f4, 64 second, no filter Slow burn left to right finish at 32 seconds whole image. (Photoshop borders) |
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| Oriental Seagull 3,f4, 32 second, no filter Slow burn left to right finish at 16 seconds whole image. (Photoshop borders) |
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| Oriental Seagull 4,f5.6, 32 second, no filter Slow burn left to right finish at 16 seconds whole image. (Photoshop borders) |
This last one was to my liking.
I remixed more lith developer by the same formula as the last image above was taking an hour to develop. I used the same dilutions but added 1g of KBr and 1g Sodium Sulfite. I did this as the last print showed some evidence peppercorn fog. I was also interested in see if I could get a warmer tone. This will push out development times so I was torn but I am resigned to spending the time to get the best possible images.
I made one more Oriental Seagull image and as I was waiting I remembered I had some old ORWO paper (the problem with having lots of time on your hands in the darkroom...). The Seagull was good. I tried dodging the foreground as it gets blocked up. I moved to f8 to get the exposure time out to 64 seconds. I dodged the bottom for 32 seconds then burned left to right the remaining 32 seconds. It was too much but left a kind of low fog/snow look which wasn't too bad. I need to reduce this though.
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| Oriental Seagull,f8, 64 second, no filter Slow burn left to right finish at 16 seconds whole image. (Photoshop borders) |
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| ORWO ,f4, 64 second, no filter Slow burn left to right finish at 32 seconds whole image. (Photoshop borders) |
The ORWO I am not sure about. It didn't seem to have infectious development. I tried different lighter exposures at f8, and f11 but the result seemed no different. The strange triangular shadow is apparent in the other versions so it seems there is some flaw on the paper.
Toning the Liths
I ran some simple toning experiments focussed on trying to bring warmer colors to the Seagull liths. I took the two darkest versions Seagull 1 and Seagull 2. Seagull 1 I toned in selenium 1+19 for 60 seconds then toned in sepia 1+100 for several minutes essentially to completion.
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| Seagull 1 before and after |
I then took Seagull 2 and toned it in selenium 1+3 for 30 seconds. This brought a lavender cast to the shadows. I then bleached it until the bleaching was quite apparent in the highlights. I then sepia toned again lith 1+100 toner essentially to completion. This showed a more definitive change in color with the highlights getting a light yellow/green color.
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| Seagull 2 before and after |
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