Tim Rudman

Tim Rudman

Member, Freestyle Advisory Board of Photographic Professionals

Biography

Dr. Tim Rudman is well known as an accomplished photographer, master printer and authority on darkroom techniques as well as a regular writer and lecturer. He has conducted workshops on printing and toning techniques in Britain, Spain, Australia and USA. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, The British Professional Photographer's Association and of The Royal Photographic Society in Great Britain, where he sits on the Society's Distinctions Panel for Visual Arts and is the Chairman of its Distinctions Panel for Photographic Printing. Tim is a member of the Arena group and is the immediate past Chairman of The London Salon of Photography. He was awarded an Associateship by the India International Photographic Council, for services to photography, and holds the distinction of Excellence of the Federation International de l'Art Photographique. Tim's work has been widely exhibited in over 25 countries, receiving numerous international awards and is held in several permanent and private collections around the world. Tim was a main feature writer for Photo Art International throughout its existence until its demise this year and has published several hundred articles on photography and printing in Europe, America and Australia.He has published three books. The first, 'The Photographer's Master Printing Course', was an instant best seller with the first print run selling out in just 4 months and has been regularly reprinted. This was followed by 'The Master Photographer's Lith Printing Course', which was widely acclaimed and remains the only book on this beautiful process. His new book 'The Photographer's Toning Book...the definitive guide' has met with much critical acclaim as the most comprehensive book on the subject.

Ask The Experts

This is an unusual question and quite difficult to visualise without seeing the results. I am not clear from your description whether the various filters you use are in front of the camera lens or the enlarger lens. If the former, the results should be on the negative and the enlarging distance should not matter, other than some contrast effects perhaps. I think therefore that they must be in front of the enlarger lens. The diffusion effects produced here would likely alter as the magnification increased and consequently the infectious development could cause blacks to appear in different fashion on the larger prints - I have not tried your technique, but can well believe this could happen as the kicking in of the 2nd development stage is very much influenced by relative exposure ratios. What puzzles me more is that you report that the effects reverse again to 'normal' (using the term very loosely!) at even greater magnifications. I suggest that you try adjusting the lens to filter distance as the lens to paper distance goes up. This should affect the amount of unwanted detail you are getting. The texture might be affected by printing through different contrast filters as you are using MGWT paper. I rarely use contrast filters for my Lith works as they increase the already long exposure times and I can get the effects I want without using them. However, your objectives and techniques are different to mine and it would be worth experimenting with this - although I must stress that this is quite theoretical on my part, not FROM experience. You might also want to experiment with adjusting the developer dilution. Stronger (and fresher) mixtures with perhaps some extra bromide will give results with more graphic effects, more texture, greater split and colder tone. Higher dilutions give warmer colours but also favour more highlight tonal differentiation. If every thing else fails you could scan the 10 x 8 print and make a large acetate negative for contact printing. I wish you good luck with what you are doing. It sounds fascinating!

Dear Frank, Whilst a considerable amount has been written about archival preservation and deterioration of film stock Frank, because of their commercial and archive storage importance, much of it has been to do with motion picture film and microfilm. Not so much that I know of, which directly answers your question. (Which is not to say that it has not been documented of course, only that I am not currently aware of it.) For the short answer, I should say first of all that, from a practical point of view and assuming normal darkroom use, I have never heard of negatives fading from exposure in the enlarger. However, you don't specify whether you are referring to conventional silver negatives or to chromogenic negatives, which as you know are based on colour film technology and contain dyes, they do not contain silver. These two materials are different. Henry Wilhelm's seminal book 'The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures' examines (amongst other things) the fading of colour film as a result of 'visible light and UV radiation by the image dye molecules, causing them to break down', but this is in relation to the intense exposure involved in motion picture projection. He also states that it is the light rather than heat that causes the dyes to fade (see the second part of your question). These conditions are very different from the exposures given in the darkroom of course, but we do know that colour transparency film fades with repeated projection. I have therefore asked my friends at Ilford/Harman Technology if they are aware of any reports of fading of their chromogenic Black and White film 'XP2 Super', as a result of enlarger exposures. The short answer was no, but the question has been passed to their technical department and if there is anything further to report from them, I will let you know. They were also unaware of this problem occurring with silver based negatives exposed in the darkroom, and again I will let you know if there is any further news from their technical department on this. During the 1980's The Image Permanence Institute in Rochester, NY, conducted work on silver based microfilm and ways in which its permanence might be improved. In their paper 'Stability of Black-and-White Photographic Images, with Special Reference to Microfilm' authors Reilly, Nishimura, Cupriks, and Adelstein described the mechanisms of fading with silver, either as improper processing or oxidising chemicals, the driving forces being moisture, air and pollutants (notably gases) - not light alone - and they examined the protective benefits of selenium, gold and sulfiding. Their paper makes interesting reading, for although it doesn't directly answer your question, it suggests the mechanisms for silver fading lie in other areas to those you are asking about, but more importantly, it underlines the importance of careful processing and protection - which I am sure outweigh any theoretical risk from enlarging exposures. I will let you know if I find any further information on your question.

Hello Mark,
There are quite a few references for making your own developers. As you suggest, The Darkroom Cookbook is a good starting point. It explains the basics and gives a range of formulae for different types of developer and what they do. It does also go into the function of the different components.
Some websites that you might also find useful (although probably going over more or less the same ground) are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_developer
http://www.digitaltruth.com/data.html
http://www.jackspcs.com/chemnote.htm
http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Developers/Formulas/formulas.html

However, I sense that you want to avoid using existing formulae in favour of starting from scratch with your own. The existing formulae do have the advantage that they have been used for many years and there are people around on the internet discussion groups who use them and are happy to discuss their experiences. This can be a very good source. I would recommend Pure Silver (via http://www.freelists.org/ ) - or the now much bigger and more active APUG site. This is an internet community of 'analogue' photographers with over 16,000 members and they have discussion forums for any analogue interest - including chemistry, making developers etc. They are a very friendly and helpful group. As always, the members range from the expert to the not so expert but you would find them a useful resource I am sure. They are at http://www.apug.org

Kind regards,

Hello Shawna Firstly, perhaps I can say something about what often makes some papers unsuitable for Lith printing, because knowing this can save a lot of time and experimentation. Resin coated (RC) papers typically develop very fast - almost instantly in some cases. This is partly because they may contain incorporated developer agents or development accelerators mixed into the emulsion. Such papers will not usually be suitable for lith printing as these agents take over the development and interfere with the infectious development process, on which lith printing depends. Fibre based papers do not normally contain these agents and as a group are rather more likely to be suitable for lith printing than RC papers. However, there are some RC papers that share the same emulsion as their FB counterpart - i.e. the paper comes in two versions, FB and RC which are otherwise virtually the same. In these cases they usually lith print (or not) as well as the FB version. Fomatone MG Classic (which is FB) and Fomatone MG (which is RC) are examples, and both lith print to give the same effect and colours. If in doubt about whether an RC paper contains these products take a small piece of the paper in question into the daylight and add a few drops of Lith B developer. If a black quickly appears, proceed no further - that particular paper is not going to lith print successfully. Now, what makes a paper lith printable? For success in lith printing the emulsion must be capable of "filamental crystal growth" when over-exposed. As a general (but not absolute) rule, papers with small or fine grain emulsions are more likely to do this and tend to lith print best. I.e. most good lith papers are warm-tone papers. However there are exceptions and there are other factors that facilitate lith printing: For example, Kentmere, who manufacture some of the most 'lithable' papers, tell me that removing the supercoat seems to allow this to happen with their Bromide emulsion, and bromide emulsions are of course typically cold in tone and large grained. Other constituents also promote lith printing. Cadmium is perhaps one of the better known and papers that contain this generally excel for lith work. For environmental reasons, cadmium is now restricted in the manufacturing process of photographic papers and consequently some of our favourite lith papers are now cadmium free and this significantly alters their response in lith developer and in toners, notably selenium. Whilst they may still lith print, they have a different look. Adding pigment particles to the emulsion also seems to act as a partial catalyst in lith printing in some cases. For example Kentmere's Fineprint Warmtone liths well - but the same emulsion as Fineprint, without the pigment, does not lith print. So you see the process is complex and as you can't tell what pigments have been added to a paper that you buy, or whether they were added to the emulsion or to the paper base before coating, it helps to have a master list for reference. Such lists can be found in my lith printing books 'The Master Photographer's Lith printing Course' and the new 'The World of Lith Printing', but we live in a changing world and materials for silver gelatin printing alter all too frequently.

Dear Mark, The answer to this question is not simple, as so many variables affect the outcome with FSA, sometimes to a large degree. Using bleaches based on the 3 different halides can produce very different results with the same paper in the toner. I did write up a chapter on this in my toning book, which you might find interesting. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, as these results can be modified considerably by partial bleaching or partial toning, or by both. You have chosen for your example a toner that is capable of an unusual range of effects and also (unusually) substantial increases in density, thus expanding the options with partial toning, as complete redevelopment may be unnecessary for adequate density recovery and this can affect the colours. Throwing into the equation a mix of different halide bleaches sequentially on the same print must have some other effects and I imagine is quite possible to do, but I wouldn't care to predict what these might be - and in any case, the results are likely to vary with different papers as well as bleach times, solution strengths, and whether or not there is an R in the month! In short, there could be unpredictable results of spectacular interest or thoroughly underwhelming appeal! The only way is to experiment in true pioneering spirit and find out for yourself, keeping careful notes and changing only one variable at a time - otherwise you can be sure that the one experiment that you truly like above all others will be the one where you can't remember what you did! I spent more hundreds of hours playing with toners than I care to recall, but you have unerringly alighted on on that I didn't do, so have a go and let us know your results. With kind regards,

Dear Mark, Yes, we live in testing times - in all senses. And I think therein lies the answer, in that some testing is ultimately the only way to find what paper(s) give(s) the closest to 'that look' that you have in your mind, when used with your negatives in your enlarger. There are so many variables in the equation. Having said that there is a reasonable choice. I believe that you are on my mailing list at www.worldoflithprinting.com? If so, you should have received my recent mail shot updating all those on my mailing list as to the current situation with regard to market changes in papers and developers suitable for lith printing. Most 'lith printable' papers (but not all) tend to be of the warm tone variety and therefore would potentially fall into the group you are considering. As a fan of Bergger papers, you probably know that the emulsion used was made by Forte, which recently went out of business in January of this year. However, Bergger plans to continue distribution of all their papers with the exception of CB Art. They tell me that they have acquired the emulsion rights and some of the Forte vessels and equipment to produce the emulsion elsewhere, so they are hoping for minimal change in the final characteristics. I don't have any information about their base materials. There have been alterations in the base material market too, as the producer Felix Schoeller ceased production and exited this market. They produced the base material for Kentmere's Art Classic, hence their search for a replacement. I'm afraid I don't know if this will affect Bergger's plans - I believe it won't, as they have confirmed their intentions to me since Schoeller's departure. As you like their materials so much I suggest that you stay with them. Similarly, Kentmere have been negotiating for the Forte Polywarmtone emulsion and plant equipment, with a view to producing that emulsion on a new base in their own coating plant. This story is still unfolding but as you like this emulsion it would be worth watching for this new product when it emerges. The Forte emulsions are known for their responsiveness to direct toners like selenium and gold and I would suggest that you follow those market sections especially, given the results you are seeking. Also, you should know from my mail shot that Fotoimpex have started coating early samples of the original Agfa emulsion for MCC and MCP, which they will release probably under the Adox label. This is likely to be a responsive paper for the sort of results you are looking for and free samples can be obtained from the link I sent out in my update. As they make all their own emulsions and coat their own papers, Kentmere's other warmtone papers have not been affected by these closures . If you haven't explored their range I would recommend that you do so. They make some excellent products. Ilford make very fine papers too. MG Cooltone, perhaps surprisingly, responds positively, although slowly, to gold toning. It is only available in RC form at present, which might not fit with your aesthetic, but a FB version is under consideration. Neutral MGIV, and of course MG Warmtone, which are both firm favourites of mine are excellent exhibition papers, although Multigrade's highlight curve may or may not suit your developers quite as well. MGWT is not as warm as the Forte PWT but is a really lovely paper in either glossy or a beautiful semi matt surface and with a positive, albeit more subtle, response to Selenium and Gold. It is a matter of taste. For some, the Forte response was too much, for others the Ilford to subtle, so you have to find what you like. Ilford's quality control and consistency is excellent - not always the case with some of the central European producers, where it was often variable. Foma are producing some stunning papers for Lith - very warm toned and in a lovely range of surface finishes. Whether or not they are what you want I can't say of course, but you should take a look at their range - also about to be distributed under the Rollei label too, as you would know from my update. From what you say about the paper qualities you like, I would guess that you might care for their chamois paper - Fomatone MG emulsion on what was the old Kentmere Art Classic base. Varycon VC FB from Fotokemika is a good warmtone lithable paper but I have little experience with it for conventional printing and toning and can't comment much further on it. There is a lot of food for thought here I know, but I feel that these would be the front runners for your work, based on what you have told me. After so many predictions of doom, it is encouraging to see how things are unfolding. Kind regards,

John, Bromofort has gone, along with all the other papers made by Forte, which ceased business again, and finally, in January. Undoubtedly the coldest lith paper by far is the Russian paper Slavich. It is very cold and not the easiest paper to control. We experimented with it along with many other papers this Fall in my Montana workshops and people found it easier to work in the new Arista Lith than some other lith developers.

Dear Mark, Thank you for your question. Sistan is still widely available in fact. A&O imaging solutions GmbH took over the AgfaPhoto GmbH chemical production facilities in November 2005 after Agfa ceased production. I see from their website that Freestyle stock Sistan, as do Silverprint in London and a number of other outlets, many of which provide a mail order service. I don't think that this is old stock from Agfa as production is still continued by A&O using the Agfa logo. The A&O website carries the following statement: Snip snip ... "All products will continue to be produced by a&o imaging solutions according to the original formulation used by AgfaPhoto GmbH. All these chemicals will continue to carry the Agfa-Rhombus.(snip) And we will not stop there. The continual improvement and optimization of all products is guaranteed by our team of experts. It is your guarantee that you will always acquire photo chemicals that meet the newest demands." So I hope future supplies should continue as long as there is a viable market. I don't have the exact formula for home production as this is, I believe, protected, but the constituents (pot. Thiocyanate + 'POP' or polyoxyethylated octyl phenol, probably as a wetting agent) can always be found from the MSDS data sheets although this won't tell you how to produce the final product. AG guard uses different chemistry (2-(amidinothio)ethanosulfonic acid rather than Pot. thiocyanate) but I don't know of any meaningful controlled comparisons of the two products I'm afraid. Kind regards

Yes indeed they can, and there are a number of ways of doing so. Both selenium and sepia are archival toners - very stable and image silver so toned is mostly unaffected by any subsequent toner action (with the exception of gold toner after sepia, which gives a colour shift towards red and orange hues). Copper and iron toners belong to the metal ferrocyanide group and are less stable, not archival, and are readily subject to attack by various other chemicals. For this reason the usual way of duo-toning with these 2 groups in any permutation is to partially tone (or 'split tone') with the archival toner first as follows: Selenium works 'bottom up', toning the dark values first and gradually working up the tonal scale to the highlights, which are the last to be affected by 'full toning'. However, the toning can be terminated at any point to give 'split toning'. Split toning will give part of the image silver (lower values upwards) converted to silver selenide - which will be unaffected by a second toner. The remaining untoned silver (upper values) is then 'up for grabs' by any second toner - copper or iron for example. Similarly, sepia toner bleach works from the top down and split sepia toned prints will leave the lower values available for a second toner - e.g. copper or iron (or any other). This second toner (unless it is gold) will not affect the sepia toned silver but will tone the rest. To avoid confusion I refer to this as 'duo toning' rather than split toning, which can be done with just one toner. Therefore, iron toner after sepia will give blue lower values and sepia higher values. The crossover point will be determined by the strength of the sepia bleach and the time in the bleach bath. With warm tone papers the blue tends to shift towards blue-green. Iron after selenium will give brownish (depending on the paper emulsion being used) low values and blues high values. Other colours as appropriate with other toners, but the principle is the same. However, there are always exceptions to 'rules' and the above is not the only way to duotone with these toners - just the easiest and commonest. It is also possible to reverse the order for different effects, including reverse toning and two colour solarisation, but the techniques might need to be altered to make it work satisfactorily. If you are interested in this perhaps I can refer you to my book on toning 'The Photographer's Toning Book', which will give you very full details with colour examples of lots of these techniques in much more detail than I can do here. Kind regards

I take it that before you begin your outlined process, you have fixed the print in a single fixing bath and then plan to use a second fixing bath before toning. Also, this advice is intended for FB papers, not RC papers. For archival quality prints and for prints that are to be selenium toned, a 2-bath fixing routine is advised. In the first bath, most of the fixing takes place, but as the bath gets used - and well before it is used up or exhausted - insoluble silver-thiosulphate compounds (argento thiosulphates) are formed and left in the print. As these are largely insoluble in water, even prolonged washing does not remove them. Their removal is important both for the long term survival of the print without image-silver deterioration, and for toning (in many toners). Fresh fixer converts these to water-soluble products, so a second bath of fresh fixer (which does little of the actual fixing as this takes place in the first bath) enables their more easy removal from the print - as does Hypo Clearing agent (HCA). When the first bath is becoming well used, it should be discarded, where upon the second bath moves into 'first place' and a new fresh second bath is made up. This second bath does not have to be used immediately after the first bath. Prints may be kept to one side and re-fixed later in fresh fixer before final wash or before toning. Ansel Adams used an acid fixer with hardener for the first bath and plain hypo (at 2 pounds of sodium thiosulphate per gallon plus 4 oz sodium sulphite), for the second fixer bath. Today, paper emulsions are tougher than in his time and, apart from a few processes, hardening fixer is largely unnecessary. It also makes toning more difficult, so unhardened rapid fixer (ammonium thiosulphate) has largely replaced the old 'Hypo' fixer (sodium thiosulphate) in many people's workflow and commonly 2 fixer baths of rapid fixer with no hardener are used followed by HCA. This is effective at facilitating the removal of unwanted by products from the print. Ilford have postulated 2 short fixing baths of film strength unhardened rapid fixer (rather than paper strength fixer) for just 30 seconds each, the rationale being that at this strength most papers are fully fixed well within this time but the fixer does not have much time to penetrate the fibers of the paper base on which the emulsion is coated, and therefore there is less to wash out. Kodak recommended a pre-toning bath of Kodalk OR HCA. This removed acidity from the print, which can cause staining in selenium, and it removes sulfur compounds. If you have HCA in your workflow here, you don't need kodalk. Ansel Adams used to mix his selenium toner with HCA instead of water. I recommend using the HCA as a pre-toning bath (for the reasons above) and mixing your KRST with water. There are 2 reasons to do this in 2 steps instead of one. It has been shown that there is no advantage in mixing HCA with Selenium. HCA has a working life of a few hours only. Selenium toner will last for years until exhausted by use. It can therefore be rebottled and kept. Also it has been shown in archival studies that in a given time, selenium/HCA mixes tone less (maybe just slower) than selenium mixed with water. You don't say whether you plan to tone for image colour or archival purposes or both. It used to be said that very dilute selenium toner used for a short time would give full archival protection to the print, without colour shift of any degree. (Some papers change colour much more than others in selenium toner. You may or may not want this.) It is now known that this is incorrect. Selenium tones from darkest tones up, reaching the mid tones later and the highlight tones last of all. If full protection is to be given, toning must go well towards completion, by which time susceptible papers will change colour. KRST 1+9 for a minimum of 3 minutes is recommended for archival protection. There are other ways to provide improved Dmax, minimal colour warming and still provide archival protection.

Dear Dan Your question is a little outside my personal experience as I don't use the head you use – so I 'used my head' and asked my good friends at Ilford Photo. Here is the reply, which I hope fully answers your question: "The quick answer is yes, cold cathode enlargers (cold light) are perfectly fine to use with our Multigrade variable contrast papers. They may give a slightly reduced contrast range however - but usually it can be extended/helped by having the 00 filter available to use. If e.g. our MG filters are not used (but dial in heads are used) - then giving additional yellow filtration ought to help extend the contrast range. For example - adding 70Y should help. The actual contrast range with cold cathode enlargers can vary too - depending on which particular light cold source (spectral characteristics) is used. So - all we can really suggest - is that acceptable results should certainly be available (by applying the above) - but there would still need to be an element of testing involved with using the different filtrations to try and get the optimum contrast range from the specific enlarger. 1. Yes this cold cathode enlarger/Aristo V54 light source is considered as being absolutely fine and compatible to use with our VC papers. 2. We would not advise using a yellow filter before the other filters (e.g. our Multigrade ones). It seems generally known/reported that inserting a yellow filter will achieve nothing - it will simply lengthen exposures. As mentioned above, simply using the standard filters ought to enable a perfectly good and even contrast spacing. Probably though - fractionally less than a non cold cathode enlarger. 3. Ref how to use the filters. They still need to be below the lens or in the filtration trays (or dialed in to colour heads). The only difference re how to use them with a non cold cathode enlarger/V54 light source to 1 - is that we would perhaps suggest you are more likely to need the filter 00 to get your full range (or use 70Y in the head). " Hope this helps,

Hello Will, Welcome to the world of toning! If you liked iron blue I am sure you will like copper. It has a lot in common with blue and they both belong to the same family of metal ferrocyanides and so in lots of ways they both behave in similar fashion. However, copper toners vary more than iron blue toners. Different brands may have significantly different formulations and give quite different colours as well as their ability to solarise etc. It is a pity you can't find Tetenal products. In my opinion their toners are quite outstanding and well worth searching for. If you are looking for the purple end of the spectrum I would suggest that initially you avoid those that are described as copper brown (or similar). Copper red toners are more likely to give you the purple hues when used with a cool tone paper and for a short period - with extra dilution if necessary, as the colour will commonly go on to red if allowed to do so. A useful tip here is to pull the print much earlier than you think necessary and quickly hose off the toner. The print colour can be hard to assess through the colour of the toning bath and commonly will have more colour than you think. If it hasn't gone far enough, just dip it back in for a bit longer and repeat. It also helps to have a wet untoned print alongside for comparison, as your eye quickly adapts to the changing colour and can fool you without a reference print. The choice of paper is important. Some papers will give you brick red or pink quickly. Others start off from a cooler hue. Ilford Multigrade IV is a good one to begin with for these colours. Do try for Tetenal, but otherwise try any 'red' type; Palette copper would be a good one to try - and you will have a lot of fun with this kit too. It's blue is better than many and with the yellows you can achieve wonderful greens, which are difficult to do with other toners. You might also like to try the selenium/copper or selenium/copper/weal developer techniques on P. 131, to get similar colours. Have fun. You have a world of discovery ahead of you.

Tony, I haven't answered your question yet as I was expecting you to come back to me with your location. However, if you are in the USA, or in the UK (and I guess Canada, but don't know if there are mailing restrictions there for this item) you can buy it at The Photographers Formulary and I am pretty sure they will ship to the UK as I have had products shipped to me in the UK from them. Go to http://www.photoformulary.com (store > bulk chemicals) If in the UK you might possibly get it at Silverprint although it isn't listed in the catalogue, as a search for sodium sulphide on their website takes you to their chemicals list and the following comment " chemicals not listed are possibly stocked or can be ordered." Go to http://www.silverprint.co.uk Alternatively you can buy it at a number of chemical supply firms such as Mistral chemicals. Go to www.mistralni.co.uk (> pure chemicals > this page http://www.mistralni.co.uk/products.php?type=purechem&page=180&limit=20 where you will find it. A search on Google will bring you other options. By the way, be aware that the smelly gas given off (hydrogen sulphide) by this toning process not only smells of rotten eggs and will lose you friends in the vicinity, it is a fogging agent for photographic emulsions and personally I would never use it in my darkroom. The garden or garage (if you haven't got paper stored there) would be better. There is a non smelly alternative based on Thiourea which ends up with the same sulphide on the paper and has additional advantages that you can change the hue of sepia that you get by adjusting the amount of the additive you add, so it is more flexible too - and you get to keep your friends and family. Different papers very quite a lot in the range of sepia colours this can give you and there are examples of these in my toning book. Have fun. Kind Regards

Eric, I think what Ray is probably referring to is the archival protection given by selenium toning. As you know, silver prints may deteriorate over time with the silver showing yellowing, fading, mirroring and/or bronzing. You often see this in very old prints. Good fixing and washing technique goes a long way towards eliminating this risk in the shorter term but the print still needs the protection of an archival toner (such as selenium) if it is to have a much extended life protected from all the environmental pollutants and attack from harmful substances in storage media (acid, lignin, paint and varnish products etc, etc) and atmospheric pollutants. Selenium starts working mostly in the darker tones and the mid and then the light tones are left unprotected until the toner has fully toned the print all the way up to the high lights. Any selenium induced colour change with a particular paper is going to happen by the time the paper is thus fully toned for protection. It used to be taught that a short toning in very weak selenium would protect the print without colour change. This isnt true and if you want the max protection that selenium can give then you have to tone fully and accept the colour - or tone partially and accept that protection is also partial. There are other ways around this however. A huge protection with minimal colour shift (varies a lot with the paper emulsion though) is obtained by brief toning in very dilute polysulphide toner, which protects all the way through the tonal range very effectively with short and partial toning. Cool or neutral tone papers may show small colours shifts this way. Or there is a non toning protection bath such as Sistan, which gives no colour shift. If you partially tone your prints in selenium for a certain colour, that is fine. They will only be partially protected (like so many allegedly selenium protected prints have been for years!). There is no reason that they should change colour other than from the mechanisms briefly outlined above, and that is not going to be in the short term if your fixing/washing process is as good as it should be and if the print is not exposed to a high risk in storage or hanging (e.g. near a laser copier or etc). You can always add a final Sistan bath for extra protection. Kind regards,

Dear Renzo, Firstly, with regard to your P.S: Thank you for your book order. Your signed and personalised copy was shipped out to you yesterday. Along with the book I also included for you a 6 page update on all the current lith printing materials - papers and developers - as of October 31st 2008, so this should answer the first part of your question for you as well. Obviously I cant list the whole 6 pages here but in view of what you say, you will be pleased to read there about the resurrection of Agfa MCC emulsion on a new whiter base under the Adox label. Unfortunately I cant bring you similar news about the old cadmium-containing Luminos paper that was so good in Lith, but you will find details of the current closest thing, available in a wide range of surfaces and bases and which is also said to contain cadmium, as indeed its response to lith and to selenium would suggest. The current Oriental emulsion does not lend itself well to straightforward lith printing. I hope you enjoy your read and I wish you success. Welcome back to the darkroom!

Hello Wil In general 2-bath developing processes aim to take advantage of the different properties of different developers on one print. The greater the differences are the more may be squeezed out of the negative onto the print. In the case of Lith 2-bath developing, the options are expanded further as lith developers possess some characteristics that are completely different to normal developers. In the case of 2-bath lith printing, the amount of dilution of the lith developer can have dramatic consequences on the appearance of the print with some papers. For example, a stronger brew may give deep blacks and high contrast graphics images the tone of which varies with the paper but is at the cooler end of what that paper is capable of. A highly dilute solution will give much warmer tones and with some papers the difference is extreme - Fomatone MG being the most striking example. These more colourful prints also tone differently. It will also give a different tonal range with expanded delicate, soft, low contrast highlight tonality. All this comes at the expense of the blacks which may be softer and Dmax may be reduced (papers vary). It is possible therefore to deliver the deep cold blacks in a strong bath and the colourful delicate mid and upper tones in a very weak bath. Fomatone and LD20 would be a good combination for this. In the case of what one might call 2-bath hybrid lith printing one uses a lith developer for one set of properties and a non-lith developer for another. If you come on my workshop next year at The Photographers Formulary in Montana J you will learn this technique, probably using the Moersch Polychrome kit. This has a glycine super warmtone developer to give very colourful prints on BW papers but has very weak blacks, so these are dropped in as high contrast cold blacks using a separate lith bath. Other combinations can be used for other reasons. You can read more about this technique in the World of Lith Printing, and more about the how to do side of lith printing in The Master Photographers Lith Printing Class, my 2 books on lith printing. Im sorry about the book plug - but you did ask! Kind regards

Hi Frank, I am not sure why you would want to leave the developer on RC papers for an extended time (or what you mean by extended). RC papers respond pretty fast to developer and may contain developer accelerators to speed that response. These papers reach an end point quickly, after which development rapidly slows and pretty much stops, so extending developer contact will not achieve anything useful. Once all the silver halide has been converted by development to metallic silver the process is over and you can use archival toners as normal.

Nice thinking Vassili - but the answer is NO. FSA water are mutually reactive and so the FSA doesnt keep too well, even as a solid, unless special precautions are taken to keep out (damp) air. This is why Speedibrews packs it in glass tubes. So Im afraid you have to follow the instructions in the book! :-) Best wishes

Dear Frank, From the description you give, ferricyanide would be my choice for a grey spot in the upper tones. Iodine based bleaches are far superior if you have to deal with a black spot. Ferricyanide should either be used without fixer added, in which case you can redevelop it if you mess up, and then you must fix afterwards - or you can mix the ferri with fixer from the start. I always use the latter approach, as with the former I find that some extra bleaching tends to take place in the fixer after I think I have got it just right. Depending on the spot and on your skill, you may be able to bleach to the exact point you want. Otherwise, if you over-bleach, you will have to spot in as required after toning. If the bleached spot changes colour (mostly warm tone papers) you might be advised to over-bleach and spot back to the correct colour (but see below re selenium) With regard to selenium, you should bleach first and tone afterwards and spot last of all. There can be a risk of local colour shift in selenium after local bleaching. The bleached areas may shift to a different hue when toned. Cool tone papers toned for Dmax are not likely to give you a problem. This is most at risk when bleach is applied to mid and low values on a warm tone paper which gives a colour shift in selenium. In the case of a bleached highlight spot this is unlikely to be a problem, especially with neutral and cool papers. There is less silver there and selenium produces most of its colour shift in the low and mid tones. Also of course selenium is slow to reach right up into the highlights and often gets pulled before that fully occurs.

Dear David Using contrast filters certainly makes a difference to your exposure time! As I use +2 or +3 stops over-exposure for most lith prints and sometimes more, I dont want anything in the light path that cuts the light further. If you are using a Gr4 filter your exposures will significantly lengthen - OK for a 10x8 maybe but definitely an issue with large prints, especially with slow papers and more so if you want to keep the aperture closed down to the lens sweet spot. Your exposure times will become excessively long. Lith printing is such a flexible process that you can get a range of 6 or 7 full grades with many papers anyway so I very rarely find the need to use filters at all for lith prints. I know that some do but it isnt my normal practice and certainly not essential. I dont have much current experience with the Sabatier process so I cant give an authoritative answer to that one. Kind regards

Thank you Bruce. Yes, I have considered it but no, I don have any plans to do so at the moment. I appreciate the sentiment though. Kind regards

Dear Jamin, The answer is yes they will receive significant archival protection at that level. Research at the Image Permanence Institute showed that very little protection was given by the common practice of selenium toning for short periods at high dilutions in order to avoid colour shift. They recommended that Kodak rapid Selenium toner should be used at at least 1+9 for 3 minutes in order to gain a reasonable degree of protection - although other factors also can affect this. So your regime should give your prints added protection. Many papers change colour quite a lot with this degree of selenium toning but some do not. That does not mean that it isn working. Warmer tone papers have a higher proportion of fine silver grains. These are the most vulnerable to attack and deterioration. They are readily toned but give a colour shift. Cooler tone papers have a higher density of large coarse silver grains. These resist selenium toning and as they are cold in tone they mask the colour chnage in the finer grains so you don see it so much. Fortunately these large untoned grains are also very resistant to attack by environmental agents. Kind Regards,

Dear Jamin, Probably not, although I havent tested current iterations of Oriental graded papers in Lith and their papers have been through several changes over time. My preference for my own work is generally for the warmer emulsions as I can manipulate the tones so much more. The versions I tried didnt lend themselves well to lith work and I suspect this is still the case as I believe they still come from the same coating plant. In any event the result will be different to the VC emulsions you know, as the emulsion must be different by definition. Such emulsions often lend themselves to BW to bleach to lith redevelopment though and that would be worth doing, but again probably different to the papers you like.