you said: <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?>
Yes, it was me doing both. I made the positives to judge the quality of
the first image before attempting to reverse it.
<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.>
Well, this Fuji film is about eight years old. Gee, I hate to think that I
would'nt get these results with fresh film.
<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.>
Perhaps you could fill me in on a few details regarding your testing.
Developers, density ranges etc.
<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.>
I work with albumen, so I need a DR about 2.20. This is just about what I
got with the test.
<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 made 11 x 14 positives from 5 X 7 negatives. With a lupe, I can't see
any grain or random dot pattern. They look like continuous tone to me. I
compared the positives on a lightbox to 11 x 14 prints made from the same 5
X 7 negs and the tonal scale and resoultion are very similar. If this is
'random dot' which I'm not familiar with, that's ok ith me.
<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?>
When I was testing the positives, I got flatter results with shorter
development times and greater dilutions of Rodinol. I suspect that the
first developer would provide the opportunity for contrast control.
However, as I mentioned, these are just preliminary results. I haven't
tried to make negs with a lesser density range.
Mike Robinson