Hi everyone. I’ve delayed any real timeline I had for shipping ModernLithC1 kits due to the coronavirus… However, due to this I’ve been doing a lot more testing. I was initially planning to keep the formula a secret but as I do more and more testing, “proprietary” additions can produce good results but compromise in various ways. The formula I continue to get great results with on almost all papers is basically just the original ModernLith formula with very minor adjustments, specifically more carbonate and a tiny bit more sulfite and bromide. The formulation thus far is a 3 part A+B+C kit. The specific names are Developer, Activator, and Stabilizer, respectively. This seems to allow for the most control and the most flexibility with different dilutions. I also had a lith printing survey and got a good number of data points. I’ll eventually write a full blog of the results, but the basic summary is the following:
Fiber based papers are much more desired for lith printing than RC papers, even when modern RC papers could be easily used for ideal results. I believe this is due to the archivability and uniqueness of FB prints compared to RC. Specifically, many people think that RC paper feels too similar to inkjet prints, and “plasticy”. FB papers also allow for some unique textures not available for RC papers. The pain and process required for FB processing seems to be of fairly small concern.
Quite a number of people want to mix the formula from scratch, around 40% surprisingly. Despite how much I enjoy it, I believe many people want a basic set of stock solutions that can produce reliable results. This also has driven me to publish the final ModernLith C1 formula.
Most people don’t care about my other potential products. The only one with any interest in “EXK” an attempt at a neutral tone print developer that is long lived and environmentally friendly (ascorbic acid based).
Most people use a heated setup, ~70%, and of those, most use a “setup” of simply starting with hot water. I tend to do this myself so that the first couple of prints are significantly faster without needing to drag out my sous vide setup (which can also only handle 8x10 trays really)
The biggest concern people have in lith printing is being limited to very few modern “lithable” papers and formaldehyde being harmful to handle.
So, the progress on ModernLithC1 has been dedicated primarily to trying to fix a few issues:
Eliminate fog that develops when using hot developer on Ilford papers
Eliminate snowballing that happens when using cold developer on many FB papers
Keep an interesting spectrum of colors in the final result
Ilford MG FB in ModernLithC1 with sodium chloride and old brown addition (in room temp developer)
Various restrainers were tried for reducing the tendency of fogging in hot developer. Both potassium iodide and sodium chloride. Although iodide works well, it requires a rather huge amount to completely prevent and has a lot of undesirable effects. Some papers really exhibit some weird problems such as mottling and uneven development with very much iodide. This amount of iodide being present also affects the fixer. Specifically, it requires at least double the amount of fixing time and exhausts the fixer significantly faster. It is still something worthwhile to play with as it can produce some interesting tonality and color, but should only be used in tiny amounts and not as a complete fog prevention solution.
Chloride was something I really tried out not with the intention of fixing anything, but rather with the goal of producing deep red tones like is possible on the famous Polywarmtone paper. It didn’t produce that, but was interesting regardless. The primary advantage of chloride is that it seems to very weakly affect most RC papers and maybe even accelerates development on RC papers, but also acts to significantly decrease the amount of snowballing on FB papers, making them reasonable to use with room temperature developer. I believe the chloride stands in as a 90% neutral salt that just helps the developer to penetrate more evenly into the FB emulsions, and maybe to penetrate more quickly into RC emulsions. I believe this is why I had fewer problems when I was using massive (and expensive) quantities of oxalate. The actual effects on tonality with chloride are fairly minor, tending to produce more golden and yellow tones rather than peach and making the famously neutral tone Foma emulsions pick up a hint of warmth in the highlights. Chloride wouldn’t be included with any ModernLithC1 kit, as it’s so easy to find locally (literally just kosher salt etc) and the absolutely massive amounts required. For instance, in most tests I start with ~80g per liter of developer. The exact amount is far from critical for chloride due to it’s very weak restraining effect in this type of developer.
ModernLithC1 v10 prototype formulation
Part A, developer:
Add 100g of hydroquinone to 800ml of heated propylene glycol. Temperature needed is ~140F. Do not boil the glycol and be careful of flammable vapors!
Top to 1L with glycol
Part B, activator:
Start with 800ml of room temperature (not hot) water
Add 350g of anhydrous potassium carbonate. Solution will heat up significantly
Add 10g of potassium bromide
Add 25g of potassium oxalate (determined to be optional, but may increase tray life slightly)
Add 25g of sodium sulfite (use 30g for longer tray life when using old brown)
Top to 1L with water
Part C, stabilizer:
Add 40g of ascorbic acid to 400ml of heated propylene glycol. Temperature needed is ~160F and significant stirring is needed. Do not boil the glycol and be careful of flammable vapors!
Before all the powder is dissolved completely, top to 500ml with heated glycol (solution is very close to solubility limit so the extra glycol makes things go faster)
Part D, bonus:
Start with 800ml of hot water
Add 200g of sodium chloride (anything non-iodized such as kosher salt or pickling salt)
Top to 1L with water
Part C can be substituted with simply adding some ascorbic acid to water to make a % solution. However, the solution will not be stable and will decay within a matter of hours, so only a small amount should be made at a time.
Usage: Start with a dilution of 10ml + 40ml + 10ml per liter for RC papers and 10ml + 40ml + 5ml per liter for FB papers. Stabilizer is optional, but excluding it will cause shorter tray life and poor reactions in some papers. Additional stabilizer tends to slow down infectious development and in some papers trend toward colder brown tones of lower overall contrast. For FB papers especially, add 200ml of part D per liter of developer. This will prevent snowballing and may increase overall development speed. It will also cause some cold and neutral tone papers to give peach highlights and some peachy warmtone papers to give yellow and golden highlights.
Usage of old brown can give nice results, but for consistent results the old brown should be “tracked” and not allowed to “condense” too much. I recommend keeping a “round 1” and “round 2” bottle of old brown. When fresh developer that had no old brown expires, put it into round 1. When the developer expires that used the round 1 old brown expires, put it into the round 2 bottle. When the developer used from round 2 old brown expires, don’t keep it for old brown purposes. Bromide especially will accumulate in old brown as it is condensed more. Because so many modern papers are sensitive to bromide amounts, this can cause poor results where you simply follow “add 200ml of old brown” but end up adding what would be the equivalent of 2L of “uncondensed” old brown worth of bromide. Old brown has a number of effects if used with some caution. The primary components of old brown are additional alkali, additional bromide, and potentially a weak but very stable developing agent called hydroquinone-monosulfonate. In my testing, old brown usage tends to cause more highlight development and thus reducing contrast and to give more colorful highlights in general. Too much old brown can cause the lith “split” to break down, where midtones are too dark but shadows aren’t dark enough. It can also cause blacks to remain fairly brown instead of becoming a properly dark black.
Importantly however for old brown usage, is that it means I can keep ModernLithC1 stock solutions very low bromide, but also not need to provide yet another solution part for the papers that might give better results with additional bromide. So, the ModernLithC1 formula going forward is basically being designed to incorporate old brown into the final working solution.
Test 4x5 portrait to a test 11x14 Ilford MGV RC lith print in ModernLithC1 with chloride and old brown (still learning how to take not terrible portraits in this isolation)
And now, for a combo of blooper reels and early success in the formulation, and some notes on things learned.
Ascorbic Acid is a lot more soluble in triethanolamine (TEA) than propylene glycol. It also functions as a chelating agent, keeping the ascorbic acid alive longer in tap water containing iron. I was hoping I could use it in the part C so that it can contain more ascorbic acid and it’d increase tray life stability. However, TEA seems to intensify potential staining and fogging. It also causes some papers to develop unevenly, even in extremely small amounts. In previous testing TEA has seemed to interfere with infectious development and this was doubly confirmed in these recent formulation tests with fairly large amounts of TEA. It didn’t exhibit the same effect when using very small amounts.
Benzotriazole is an interesting addition. It is soluble in propylene glycol, unlike other possible restrainers. While a small amount definitely cools the print image, if a lot more is used it can actually give very warm tones, especially toward browns and even reds. On most papers though a large amount massively slows down development, and require significantly more alkali to get proper infectious development. It does however cure the staining issue I see on some papers with heated developer. I don’t really like the effects it tends to give so it won’t go into any official ModernLith formulation, but feel free to make a 0.1% solution and add between 5ml to 100ml. 100ml is where it will start to give warmer tones, while 5-30ml it’ll give colder tones.
I tried using isopropyl alcohol in the formulation just to see if it would prevent snowballing, and it actually made things incredibly very badly worse. It also is very strong smelling in a tray, caused shorter tray life, and is a hard to find commodity these days with the coronavirus and all.
As a conclusion, I still have a small number of notes to directly apply to improve this formula, as well as ideas still to try. It has been more frustrating than I imagined really to get something I’m 100% happy with, especially when going beyond the great Ilford MGV RC. However, progress is being made, and hopefully after this coronavirus stuff dies down, I can look more seriously at something that can be shipped.