Some Words About Lith Printing ...
Just back from the darkroom and after so many lith prints shown here, I should probably talk a bit about lith printing, what it is, how to do it and of course where to find more information and materials. when reading on, please keep in mind, this is a very brief introduction to lith printing. Well I would say it is not an introduction at all because the very details of the process are too much to be covered in a single blog post, so have a look at the references I give at the end of this post.
Some Words About Lith Printing ...
Just back from the darkroom and after so many lith prints shown here, I should probably talk a bit about lith printing, what it is, how to do it and of course where to find more information and materials. When reading on, please keep in mind, this is a very brief introduction to lith printing. Well I would say it is not an introduction at all because the very details of the process are too much to be covered in a single blog post, so have a look at the references I give at the end of this post.
When I show my images to others and mention that these are lith prints, if these folks are photographers who used to work in a darkroom before they went digital, I almost always get to hear "Ah, lith, I know, I also used lith film to produce contrast masks in the darkroom." Oh well, then I always look into clueless faces when I tell them, "No, although you can start with a negative on lith film, lith printing has nothing to do with lith film."
Lith printing is not so different from ordinary B&W printing. As in standard B&W printing you start with a B&W negative (or a color negative if you want) and you use a B&W paper (be careful here, not every paper is suitable for this process). The difference is in the developer. Instead of using a normal print developer, you use lith developer - highly diluted lith developer. And that makes the difference - a big difference.
Since we use high diluted lith developer, the process is slow and the paper needs a lot of light. It is not uncommon that you need 3-4 stops of overexposure on the paper as compared to the standard printing. The paper will only be partially developed which will take time in a high diluted lith developer. The development is infectious, which means that the development by-products will speed up development locally. This is a kind of an exponential process and it means that you have to develop by sight and if you feel the image is ready you have to take it quickly into the stop bath to interrupt development immediately. This point in time is called the snatch point. Lith developer ages fast. The results can be very different from print to print. So after a few prints you will have to refresh the developer.
How much control do you have over the process? I would say: A lot. You can control color via the used paper and the dilution of the developer (the longer the development time, the more color you will get). And you control contrast via the exposure time. The less light you give to the paper, the more contrast you get.
Now, what do you need for lith printing?
- Obviously a lith developer. I use a developer from Wolfgang Moersch, it is called SE5 Lith and I often use his additive Ω in a second bath to get a bit more color and to deepen the blacks. But there are other developers out there and you can find a lot of recipes out in the net to brew your own one.
- A suitable paper. Not all papers lith equally well and some papers do not lith at all. The paper choices change over time since many papers which lith printed well are no longer produced. I usually use Fomatone MG FB (which liths in almost every developer setup), Adox Fineprint Vario Classic (not as easy to use as Fomatone, not as colorful and with a coarser grain), some rests of Kentmere Kentona (sharp grain and does not produce the redish tones of the Foma paper).
- Time and patience.
- Good music in the darkroom.
- Did I mention patience?
There is much more to know about this beautiful process, like bleach and redevelopment in lith, two bath lith, two bath lith with standard developer etc. Please have a look into the references.
Where to read on:
- There are two wonderful books by Tim Rudman: The Master Photographer's Lith Printing Course and The World of Lith Printing.
- There are some resources about lith printing on AlternativePhotography including a good introduction from ... (who else) ... Tim Rudman.
- There is some information in German on the web site of Wolfgang Moersch.
- And then there is the internet and search engines so more information is only a few clicks away.
Week 10: Snow (hopefully for the last time) ...
This is hopefully the last snow image for this year. We got a bunch of snow over the weekend. More than we usually have during a whole year (which is not much anyway). But last week got us already an outlook to spring, so snow is not welcome any longer. However, I resisted to go out and photograph snow since I still had a negative which I had not yet printed.
Here are two versions of it, both are Ω-lith prints (as mentioned in the last post). I like the one without negative border more than the other. The black negative border brings a lot of infectious development into the image, too much for my liking. But I just want to show the difference, so on the left you see the same image, this time with negative border.
The prints are done on Kentmere Kentona. I was searching for something in my darkroom when I got aware that I still have half a pack of Kentona. Sometimes you can have a hard time with this paper when lith printing. But sometimes you can get nice results as e.g. the image shown on the left which I did with my 8×10" pinhole camera two years ago in an industrial area in Frankfurt am Main. The characteristic of this image is much different from the characteristic of the ones from the weekend. The image on the left was done in more diluted developer and with this dilution the paper liths with a much sharper grain. Enough about this one.
So it seems that last weekend I had a good time together with this paper and I am very sorry, that this paper is no longer produced. When Ilford took over Kentmere the curtain went down on Kentona. Too bad, one less option for the lith community. But I should go and find out if there is still some of this paper on stock somewhere. Not an option for long running projects, but definitely for having a fun time every once in a while. And also good, I know already the images for the next two weeks, but I do not tell you yet.
Digital Lith ...
I know that there are not many visitors to this site and it happened only two times (at least that I am aware of) that people used the search on this site. And - how ironic - these two searches are both for digital lith photography. I do not know if it was both time the same visitor or two different people. But anyway, I want to let you know: I am of no use when it comes to digital lith and only of minimal use when it comes to digital technique.
But there are people who do digital lith - whatever that means. In Tim Rudmans book The World of Lith Printing there is a whole section about digital lith. And that goes from people doing normal lith prints and then scan the prints and print them larger or smaller on their ink jet printer as well as people who start from a digital file and then use image manipulation in Photoshop or other programs to create something which looks like a real lith print (doesn't that read like one of those long German sentences - sorry.) I do not do digital lith. Why is this? To put it simple, if you sit in front of a computer monitor all day long for your living, then an hour or two in the darkroom is just so much more recreational than sitting in front of a computer monitor again. All that has nothing to do with quality of the result or one being easier than the other or one being better than the other. I am preparing anyway a post which will talk in more depth about how doing one thing over the other is important for me. But in the meantime do not assume to find useful information about digital techniques on this site. You will not find it. All you could find out about my digital technique here is how lousy a scanner user I am. But you would need an original print to find this out. You do not have an original print in your hand? Good, then please enjoy all these great and perfect scans.
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.