I’ve recently been experimenting with a prototype developer I’ve dubbed “magic lith”. This is a lith developer designed to work with any paper, including overly hardened RC papers. Primary test paper thus far is Ilford Cooltone RC. In normal lith developers it will not produce infectious blacks and will give a very low contrast and dull image.
Magic lith is being designed as an “HQTEA” mixture of individual components for simplicity. HQTEA is simply 60g of hydroquinone combined with 300ml of triethanolamine (TEA) to make ~350ml of HQTEA. HQTEA is a very simple way to preserve hydroquinone in a liquid(ish) solution. It will keep indefinitely but without a lot of sulfite will decay quickly once water is added. Using HQTEA is the ideal route to go for designing a lith developer because it keeps indefinitely and allows complete customization of the developer. TEA in theory may have some effect on the final result, even in very dilute solutions. At the very least it will increase the natural pH to ~10 for normal dilutions and ~11 for stronger dilutions. For standard lith printing, citric acid or some other stable acid can be used to reduce the pH for more color. TEA is very stable as a pH buffer and so doesn’t need to be constantly replenished like carbonate or hydroxide. The hydroquinone itself will die much quicker than the TEA.
The current starting point mix for magic lith is the following:
10ml HQTEA
3ml potassium bromide 10%
2ml potassium iodide 10%(!)
5ml benzotriazole 1%
10ml sodium sulfite 10%
50ml sodium carbonate 20%
1L luke warm water (~72F) — warmer water can be used but the developer will die even more quickly and development can speed up exponentially and be flat out difficult to control
This developer mix will die very quickly, within 2-3 prints. When the developer is yellow it is near death and ~2ml of sulfite should be added to keep it alive for one more print. Once the developer is red or brown and/or have a red film on top, it is dead. I’ve not done any testing with replenishment.
This developer produces “sort of lith” results with Cooltone RC. The tonality and grain is definitely there, but contrast is harder to control. Paper was over exposed by ~3 stops compared to a normal print. Paper should be rinsed before development to remove incorporated developers. Borders will be obvious within 30s, image will become visible around the edges at 2m, center will remain mostly invisible. Image will begin to become visible in the center at 3m. Infectious development happens around the edges at 5m. Center will appeared veiled, as if there is a layer of fog over it. As infectious development occurs, this fog will fade from the edges to the center. The veil appears to prevent infectious development from occurring in the areas affected. The end result will have significantly less development in the center than the edges. There is also some pepper fogging easily possible. The end result will be very grainy. With glossy MGV paper, the grain will somewhat follow the manufactured lines in the gloss finish, thus, pearl or some other finish is recommended. Cooltone RC does not seem to have these lines in the gloss finish.
The uneven development problem has been very difficult to solve. With no bromide and only iodide/benzotriazole, the center will actually develop faster than the edges. I believe there is a fine balance needed between the restrainer ratios and potentially the addition of more TEA (not HQTEA). The pepper fogging of course can be easily solved as normal with additional sulfite, though this can make infectious development a lot harder to achieve.
Component considerations:
HQTEA — The TEA may be the reason why this developer works at all. I’ve tried normal lith developers with a lot of part B and never got reasonable results. Regardless, the addition and subtraction of HQTEA hasn’t been thoroughly tested.
Bromide — This developer/paper is extremely sensitive to bromide. A little bit too much will completely prevent infectious development. Bromide will significantly slow down development, even for small amounts relative to most lith developers. With no bromide at all it will enter infectious development extremely quickly, even with significant amounts of other restrainers (ie, benzotriazole/iodide). Some amount is definitely required, but it must be carefully controlled. This also causes developer death to occur much easier since bromide is naturally released from paper development
Iodide — This seems to help balance the development between edges and center. Too much will stain the print edges yellow. Too little and edges will develop significantly faster than center. It seems like iodide helps to cut through the hardening to allow infectious development to occur faster
Benzotriazole — This is not a conventional addition to a lith developer as it basically just slows development down. Because of how active this developer is, I decided to add this to slow things down for getting the snatch point easier. I think this is an optional component though with the addition of bromide, but with minimal bromide this is also needed to prevent chemical fogging
Sulfite — Any HQTEA developer mix seems to be quite sensitive to the addition of sulfite. Too much and of course infectious development won’t occur, but too little and the developer dies during the first print. A lot more testing required to determine a proper maximum and minimum. The amount of HQTEA added affects the maximum amount of sulfite that can be used
Carbonate — This is simply used to get the pH of the developer to 11. If the developer is not to a high pH level, it will not cut through the hardening of the RC paper and never enter infectious development even with no restrainers, minimal sulfite, and a lot of HQTEA.
Water temp — Warmer water will not behave normally as expected for lith developer, ie, a linear speed up. It seems like as the water is made warmer development will exponentially speed up, making uneven development problems worse. I use luke warm so that it stays about the same temperature throughout testing.
Print aging — This will be much more affected by printing than many lith developers. The release of bromide causes the developer to slow a lot and the highly basic developer with minimal sulfite will naturally decay anyway. I don’t recommend trying replenishment nor use of old brown at this point.
A lot more testing to be done, but as seen above, there is big hope for producing a final Magic Lith recipe consisting of simply a part A and part B which will work with any paper. The results thus far show infectious development can happen, something previously regarded as impossible, and now the rest of the testing is just figuring out how to control that aspect so that the typical “lith split” between highlights and shadows can occur evenly across the entire print. Ideally the developer would last longer than 2-3 prints, but right now I’ll settle for whatever works and figure out better tray life later.