DIY Lith Printing
written by lovely_lena
on December 29th, 2008
, 17 comments
(7 votes)
From time to time we are presented here at LSI with different ways of manipulating film; by peeing on it, scratching it, boiling it while putting our health at stake… but I don’t think I have seen a single lab rat tips on things you can du to your prints. Most of us apparently have our own darkroom, since we can develop our own color/slide film after having peed on it, so why not show some printing tricks.
OK, I’ll start: My favourite for the time being is lith print. You need to have a lot of time on your hands, plus some color or B/W negs. And some suitable paper.
Lith printing requires the use of highly diluted lith paper developer, a substance that comes in two separate bottles to be mixed just before use. It may be labeled “mix 1+1+10” but you will make that maybe 1+1+30 or so… overexpose your paper like crazy; that’s maybe 3 or 4 steps overexposure (maybe 2.5 or 3 minutes’ exp on a 10×12″ print). The paper goes in the developer and you wait for 5 to 20 minutes.
You will have plenty of time to listen to a good audio book. But don’t leave the darkroom! All the time you will have to check your print so that it stays under the surface of the developer.
Development time is determined by eye. At first the image will appear as a faint, soft toned image, but once the darks are showing, it all happens a lot faster. As soon as it looks “ready”, snatch the print from the developer and quickly move it to the stop bath. Fix it as usual and your print is forever there!
Yes, well, and it’s not super easy to get it right the first time. But as you get the hang of it, you’ll want to quit your day job to spend every day going through all your negs and lith print them to find something new in them.
Check out LD-20, Moersch Easy Lith, Rollei Vintage creative. Some papers are better than others. I just tried Efke Varycon PE this week and it worked fine. Also try Foma, Forte, Kentmere Kentona, Sterling… then show me the result! Please do, I’d love to see!
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