Lith Printing
From Silvergrain Labs
[[foto:Lith printing
I am still exploring this technique, both aethetic and chemical aspects. At this point, there are only few things to report here.
1. Lithable RC paper
AGFA MCP (resin coated) or MCC (baryta) is very lithable. Give about 2.5 stops overexposure and process in Kodak Lith (A-B powder) 1+1+13 with continual or very frequent agitation for 25 to 35 min. Monitor closely after about 20 minutes. In every several prints, I see a strange black spot, which is much bigger than typical pepper fog dots, and of course the spot which wasn't in the original image. I think an addition of very small amount of sulfite is likely to take care of that. The color is yellowish, very warm brown. At abrupt transition from bright to dark areas, you will probably find orange brown color.
Here's an example of lith processed AGFA MCP vis-a-vis normal b&w print.
Shown in the pictures is Matt Samolis, a friend photographer who got me into lith printing. The photo was taken on HP5 Plus in Konica Hexar with 35mm f/2.0 Hexanon lens. The image came out rather too plain and grainy, so I thought it would make a good lith experiment. These photographs were scanned from unspotted prints and shown with no intentional imagewise manipulation, except that I made a small correction in the color so that the actual print tone matches on my monitor.
In the picture, the lith effect is not too apparent because of the image size and JPEG compression. But color is obvious, and softer highlight to midtone is also apparent.
