MorseBlog

When I first began to learn printing in the darkroom, I went through a phase of picking up different expired papers. Partly because they were cheap and also to experience what the properties and history of these old papers were like. Eventually I came to the conclusion that most papers are too fogged to be worth the effort and whatever characteristics they had once have long since diminished with time.  Of course, I use a number of these for lith printing and toning with some great results. Papers like Fohar Raster with an embossed pattern of dots I suppose was to suggest the idea of a CRT? ORWO, Oriental Seagull, Agfa-Gevaert Rapidoprint are some other examples. One paper that stood out for me was Negra Portrene made in Barcelona. At the time I bought some I researched the paper as best I could here ... and determined it went out of business in the 1970's when Spain was still ruled by a fascist dictator.  I bought the paper because it was unopened and 16x20" and I wanted to t...

I have returned to this old paper recently and have decided to try lith printing it again. It is a single grade warmtone paper from the 1970's. When I first bought it I found it lithed well and this has been born out again. I used Fotospeed Lith developer in that first trial and now I use Moersch EasyLith and have learned a bit more about lith printing since then.  Everything I learned in that original post bore out in my work today. The paper develops really fast in hot lith developer within seconds for the first print at a +3 stop overexposure. The developer settled down as the developer cooled and I reduced the exposure. I actually managed to get good prints (indeed the best) with very little exposure. As a gauge of this a reasonable conventional print was made at f8 for 32 seconds. The second print was made with less exposure at f8 for 22 seconds.   I used a negative from my Fuji GFX 50s ii digital camera made at Gammatech . This was an image I took at night during a...

In previous posts I explored using expired 4x5 film emulsion as a basis for making salt prints. I reasoned that if better results were had with sized paper then it should be possible to use expired film as 'sized plastic'. This worked though it is difficult to achieve consistent results. I then extended this to expired photographic plates and achieved some success there. The next 'frontier' is to apply the same techniques to expired paper. Preparing the Paper Again I took a few full sheets of ORWO black and white paper and fixed it for 5 minutes in rapid fixer.  Then I washed for 10 minutes as one would a developed print. The point of all this is to remove all the silver from the emulsion. I then dried the paper thoroughly. Salting the Paper Next I immersed the paper in salt solution for about 10 minutes. Previous work with film found that insufficient time in the salt solution levels the result insensitive as the salt has not fully been absorbed into the gelat...