By now, it has been suggested that the Freestyle lith would be as good,
and no doubt much cheaper. (About $32 for a box of 100 8x10s.)
But I've lost track of who was making a positive/ negative in continuous
tone and who was reversal processing the lith. Or maybe it was Mike
Robinson doing both?
For what it's worth, my experience with lith film is that the older the
better. That is, lith film is made for high contrast. With age, it
flattens, probably loses D-max, fogs up a bit -- which makes it *much*
easier to get continuous tone.
I ran a series of tests comparing new Kodak lith films (3 kinds) with my
-on-the-shelf-3 years Freestyle lith (and probably pretty old when it
arrived). The Freestyle was much much *much* easier to get into
continuous tone in low-to-moderate density for gum.
Did you say what density range and process you're aiming for? Of course if
you're doing salted paper & albumen, or whatever else likes very long
scale, lith of any make gets easier to work with. But I can't help wondering
about the Rodinal -- wondering if rather than continuous tone you actually
got something more like a random dot which acted as a halftone effect...
Which may be same thing for all practical purposes, of course.
I mentioned a while back that I tried reversal processing lith for
direct negative with a white light flash in mid-development --- it worked
OK, but I couldn't get perfect tone for tone. This sounds better, and
sounds also like the timing isn't so utterly critical. But can you control
the contrast as desired?
Judy