Update to yesterdays post ...
Hey, now I found out, that what I meant to be the search terms on this sites search was in reality the search terms which were used on some search engines (like google). So this is even more ironic, that people who searched for digital lith were pointed to my little blog. So much on the power of internet search.
I tried these search terms myself on google and my little blog showed up nearly top of the first page. Fascinating. But by this test I found another interesting site (also not about digital lith) which shows some really nice lith prints (an some other alternative print methods). It is a site by Paul Dougherty: Click!
Week 11: Schloss Bruchsal / Bruchsal Palace ...
Now this week it was a tough decision for me. The overview or the details? Both somehow attract me but in the end I had to do a decision and it was for the overview.
This is Schloss Bruchsal or Bruchsal Palace. Its construction started in 1720. It has been rebuilt after WWII when it was destroyed on March 1st 1945 by an allied bomb raid only two months before the German capitulation and the end of the war in Germany. Bruchsal palace is well known because of a staircase from Balthasar Neumann. Here you can find more information about Bruchsal Palace: Click! There is also some English information.
Now, the image itself. It is one of the images I did last year for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. I used the Zero45 and developed the negatives to be suitable for doing kallitypes. So in my last printing session I tried some of them as lith prints and I like them more than the kallitypes I did last year. Here they are. The image on the right is a facade detail of the palace.
Variations on Castle Altdahn and Adox Fineprint Classic ...
I did some testing the other night. I never tried lith redevelopment before. So I wanted to give it a try and also did some regular prints which I toned. I used a negative from last year. Or was it the year before? I did 8 prints on Adox Fineprint Classic in 5×7". Pretty small, but I anyway needed a postcard, so one of the prints might be it.
This is the straight print of the negative. It went a bit soft, so next time I might go with a little bit more contrast.
This is the same exposure, but this time it is selenium toned. This brings in a bit more the blacks and it also removes the little bit of a greenish cast from the image.
This print got a bit more exposure, was bleached back a bit and then sulfur toned.
This print was exposed like the one before but bleached back more and then sulfur toned.
This print was light bleached, sulfur and then selenium toned.
Now the more interesting part of it. Lith and lith redevelopment.
This is the straight lith print. It got 3 stops more exposure than a normal straight print and was developed for about 9 minutes in Moersch SE5Lith. It shows some pepper fogging and a lot of grain - very dominant grain which is probably too much for this size of paper.
This was the first attempt for a redevelopment. The print exposure is one stop above normal and a bit softer than the straight print. I bleached back in copper bleach and then redeveloped in SE5Lith 1+50 with a second bath in Ω-lith which brought back nearly the original print very fast. So that was a failure. To have a bit more fun with the print I bleached again and used some sulfur toner. But that did not help. So I count this as a total failure.
This was the second attempt of a redevelopment. I used the same exposure, bleach again in copper and then used SE5Lith 1+40. This time I used a bit more bromide and no sulfide. That gave a bit of grain and the bromide slowed down the process a bit. I did not use a second bath this time.
So this is the print that I liked most. But the more I look at the straight lith print the more I like that one.
One more remark: After looking at the scans now, it somehow happened that most of the scans appear to dark on my monitor. Maybe I have to rescan the prints. But maybe I don't.
The Östringen Camera Fair ...
This Saturday the local camera club had the annual camera fair. This is a kind of exciting event if you are interested in old cameras. You can buy cameras which are more than a hundred years old. A lot of traditional stuff, things you probably have never seen and never will see again and almost no digital cameras. They somehow seem not to be the best choice when it comes to collectible items. Not yet.
I took the opportunity to buy what I always buy at the camera fair ... lens caps for my Nikon lenses. I do not know why, but I loose one or two of those caps every year. Something that never happens with a pinhole camera. I do not know how they get lost but at the end of the day I realize - they had disappeared. That is always a shock for my Continuous Creation Theory. You may be interested in this not so serious theory. It says that matter is created continuously. And it contradicts somehow the principle of conservation of energy. You may ask for a prove of this theory? Well that's an easy one, look into the glove compartment of your car and you will see that matter is created all the time out of nothing. But maybe it is created out of my lost lens caps ...
The camera fair took place in a sports hall of the local school center. There is also a stage which was used as a studio. There was a photographer who set up some studio flashes, and there were some models around and visitors of the fair could sign up for an hour of photographing with their own cameras using that studio flash system. Well nothing for my pinhole camera, so I decided to take the other direction, towards the camera fair. I used my 8×10" pinhole camera with some Fomapan 100. This has a reciprocity failure which allowed for a really long exposure time. The above image shows 100 minutes of the Östringen camera fair. What you see is a straight print on Ilford MG IV RC.
Week 12: The Dung Fork ...
These are two images which I photographed last year, but never found the right time to print them. What a fault. But sometimes the good things need their time to grow. I did these on Kentmere Kentona with SE5Lith and Ω-lith. What I found in the fixing bath when I switched on the lights in the darkroom really pleased me from the first second on. It was one of those Wow situations in the darkroom when you not really await something great to happen. For this image, the little bit of light in the top left corner makes it for me. It produces some kind of magic. Well, enough excitement from my side, maybe you will find it totally boring and maybe you are right. Who knows.
The image on the right shows the outside of a stable window with lots of old tools. Also nice in my opinion, but for me not nearly as absorbing as the dung fork image.
The Dung Fork (revisited) ...
This is another try on the dung fork. Yesterday evening (night might be the better word - yawn) I took out the dung fork negative again and did some kallitypes. This is the same negative I used for this weeks lith print. It is a bit thin, so I was afraid that I might have not enough contrast for kallitypes. But thanks to the Tanol film developer (which is a staining developer) the contrast came out OK with a little bit of dichromate in the developer. So here is a bit of a different interpretation of the the negative. Not as contrasty as the lith print. Unfortunately I can not show you the nice structure of the paper, it is Arches Platinum, a paper I like very much because it needs no sizing and other special handling. Just put the emulsion on, let it dry and print.
Week 13: Lenswork ...
Lenswork is the only photographic magazine that I read regularly. And it is the best magazine about photography that I know of. Since my subscription started I collected 40 issues so far. And here you see all of them.
What I like about Lenswork is, that it is not about cameras, lenses and other equipment. It is about photographers and their art and about craft. The print quality can rival the print quality of every photographic book that I have seen. Give it a try, visit their web site, you won't regret it.
This image is done with the rsph810 on HP5+ which I developed in replenished XTOL. I then decided to use some paper I have still left, but do not usually use and probably will not buy again. Not because it is a bad paper, but because I do not want to stick with too many different papers and I like other papers more. It is contact printed on Fomabrom 112 using Wolfgang Moerschs SE2 Warmtone. I bleached the highlights a bit and did a sulfur toning.
There are no side prints this week. Well I could show a failure to redevelop this paper in lith. But I will show this probably in another post together with a redevelopment that looks better (but still has to be done).