Tonight I ended up doing some second-pass lith development where you basically make a normal print and then bleach it and then lith print that. It can produce really unique results with some modern RC papers, though it’s definitely more tricky as it in my experience it can easily break the “golden rule” of lith printing, ie, that less exposure = more contrast.
I’m also preparing for a write up of The Ultimate Homebrew Lith Developer. TUHLD for short, heh. Basically the biggest problem with lith developers is that either they contain a relatively high amount of sulfite, the lith developer (part A) has practically no shelf-life nor tray life, or the lith developer contains formaldehyde and kills you slowly when you’re messing around in an enclosed room with 120F heated developer. The only real way of preserving hydroquinone in solution is to either add formaldehyde, put it into a very acidic solution and put a smaller amount of sulfite (but still absolutely some is required), or to never add water to it.
The solution I stumbled upon is to dissolve hydroquinone into TEA with absolutely no water added. Dissolving HQ into TEA is definitely not pleasant nor fast, but once it is mixed you have a somewhat easily mixed (well, as easily as HC-110) solution of HQ that keeps forever before adding water to it. It does involve adding several more “parts” to the lith developer, but actually makes it incredibly flexible for experimentation, since you can carefully vary the amount of sulfite, alkali, and restrainer. You can even try adding no sulfite at all and watch your developer quickly turn blood red with a weird film of oxidized HQ byproducts.
So, I’ll break down kinda the things learned a bit here in two parts. First, the TEA+HQ lith developer:
TEA can be heated to.. pretty hot (hot enough to burn but not scar you maybe) and at this point some HQ can be dissolved into it. I was able to somewhat easily dissolve 2.5g of HQ into 120ml of TEA, heated to around 80C/190F with a magnetic stirrer and constant stirring over about 20 minutes. The clear (photographic grade) TEA quickly went to yellow upon addition of HQ and basically looked pretty much exactly like HC-110 once it had sat for a day. I think more HQ could be dissolved, maybe 3g or even 3.5g into the same volume, but I don’t have a precise heating setup for stuff like this and I really didn’t want to get it insanely hot, and after 2g it really took a long time to dissolve the remaining 0.5g. If you want an easier time I’d aim for just 2g or 1.5g into 100ml
I didn’t mix a very large amount because I wasn’t sure it would work, but it worked great kept in a mostly empty bottle for ~5 days, no sign of difference between day 1 and day 5.
At least some amount of sulfite is absolutely required. In my experience around 0.2g sulfite is required for every 0.4g of HQ. Without sulfite, not only will it die in the tray quickly, but a tiny amount is needed for lith development to work properly. Infectious development is basically a cycle of which sulfite is a part of. If you do try adding no sulfite, your developer will quickly die and likely won’t even finish a single print, but you can save it by adding some sulfite to it. This basically turns the oxidation products (the red film that floats on top) back into usable HQ.
The TEA component is an alkali, but at the small amounts added for lith development, it’s not basic enough to make the developer work well. I recommend supplementing with a secondary alkali, HOWEVER, a significantly smaller amount will be required. Many part A lith developers are acidic, so you’re working against that with the part B alkali. In this case, the part A is already basic. I’d recommend adding 5 parts A (HQ+TEA), to 1 part B (base) to begin with.
I’ve tried using TEA as the part B alkali, but it requires a considerable amount. It does produce somewhat unique and slightly more colorful results with significantly better tray life of the part B component since TEA will form a lower but stable pH buffer compared to carbonate and hydroxide. However, I don’t really think it’s worth the extra expense. TEA isn’t that expensive, but it’s not cheap when you’re using 100ml for every lith printing session.
You can not mix most components into TEA. Specifically, neither bromide nor sulfite will go into TEA with no water present.
Mixing a developer like this will produce somewhat different results than a formaldehyde containing developer. The formaldehyde actually forms a sulfite like component which will shape the grains and such. Don’t expect any lith developer (commercial or homebrew) without formaldehyde to give exactly the same colors etc as a formaldehyde containing developer. The results can definitely be great, but your favorite paper may not look like what you want.. but your least favorite paper may look significantly improved. It just required testing.
Less sulfite is required for second-pass lith development. Sulfite helps to prevent fog and mottle and these basically aren’t a problem for second-pass lith, since there is no unexposed silver to fog. In addition less actual development happens in second-pass which means that your developer will die less quickly from development action.
You can surprisingly use this stuff until it’s really deep brown and it’ll still work for second-pass lith. It got a lot slower, but also a lot more colorful in its results.
Ok, with that out of the way. Next just some musings on second pass lith and my love hate relationship with it.
Most papers “work” to some extent with second pass lith, unlike with first pass lith. However, not all will produce the radically different results you’re looking for without a lot of testing. The primary papers I’ve tested are Ilford MGV RC and Ilford Cooltone RC
Cooltone RC can produce really nice split tones if you only partially bleach it. MGV is less colorful after drying, but partial bleaching can be a good way of keeping the brilliant blacks but getting some subtle colors in the highlights and better gradation from midtones to highlights
Second pass lith really breaks the golden rule that “less exposure and more development = more contrast”. For second pass lith contrast tends to be “fixed” without partial bleaching. I recommend printing a grade higher contrast level than you think you want if you intend to use partial bleaching to keep the blacks.
If you want maximum color, extremely slow lith developer should be used, ie, with little base and a lot of bromide. With this, you will NOT get proper blacks. If you do get proper blacks somehow, it’ll have little color and a lower amount of contrast than the original print. To get maximum color, you need to truly only partially develop it, removing some of the highlights. Thus, you need probably ~1/2 stop more exposure and partial bleach to keep the blacks, and then develop until you have the amount of highlight detail you want, and then quickly pull it before it reverts back to being over exposed.
Be extremely careful with bleaching. With RC it can quickly be rinsed to remove fixer using the standard 1m recommendation, but make sure that there is no residual fixer on your hands. With all handling, try to handle by the borders and highlights such as the sky. Any uncleanliness will be very obvious in shadows and blacks. Make sure to keep the same cleanliness standards when rinsing the bleach off the print.
Partial bleaching RC prints just doesn’t work well with all subjects. Large areas of black will bleach unevenly and then develop unevenly and can produce unattractive results after development
Prints can of course be gold toned afterwards. Be careful if trying to achieve a split tone though, as the “one-shot” gold toner I use (I’ll provide a recipe in a later post) can be fairly fast, and will change color slightly more after sitting in water. Gold toner can quickly destroy warm tones, but if done carefully can produce beautiful split tones with blue highlights and warm shadows.
First developer choice does matter, unlike much recommendations I’ve seen to settle on a neutral tone first developer, such as Dektol. I don’t have enough experience with this yet to talk in depth, but if doing partial bleaching, the shadows etc will mostly be set by the first developer. However, it also seems the first developer can somewhat change the results of bleached highlights and fully bleached prints. I need to do proper control tests, but for Ansco 130 vs Liquidol for first developer, it seems like Ansco 130 can produce especially warmer bleached highlights, while retaining it’s standard cold tone shadows with Cooltone RC paper. I experimented a lot and could not replicate the same look using Liquidol
Ilford RC papers will lose a lot of color upon drying. Some additional color can be revealed by rinsing after fixing in very hot water, but I’m unsure how much of this color actually sticks after drying