From: Liam Lawless (liam.lawless@blueyonder.co.uk)
Date: 07/22/03-04:09:41 PM Z
Nigel,
I'm fairly puzzled too, but if David's drying the fixed/washed prints and
toning later, I suggest that adhesion of the emulsion may not be good enough
to cope with *repeated* expansion and shrinkage of the paper. Try another
with more "tooth", maybe, use all solutions as cool as possible, and/or
pre-shrink the paper. Maybe the gum printers know something about that...
Liam
-----Original Message-----
From: Nigel Miller [mailto:nm1@bolton.ac.uk]
Sent: 22 July 2003 18:21
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Liquid light questions
Hi
One of the students where I work (Bolton Institute) has recently been
experiencing a (to me at least) strange phenomenon when using liquid light.
I have promised to pass his query on to the group in the hope that someone,
somewhere knows the answer. Here goes:
We are coating A1 sheets of watercolour paper with liquid light.
This is processed using standard print developer, acetic acid stop bath
(Ilford IN1N) and a hardening fixer (Ilford Hypam 1:9 + Ilford hardener
1:40).
This has produced (in my view) extraordinary results, David (the student) is
using three coats of liquid light, the first two diluted 1:1, with the third
undiluted. Each coat is allowed to dry fully before the next coat. This
gives an emulsion capable of fabulous tonal range, deep blacks etc. but.....
The problems!
David has then tried to sepia tone these prints but the sepia tone process
(both thiourea and the smelly one) seems to unharden the emulsion resulting
in many ruined prints due to emulsion lift
We have partially overcome this by using quite dilute sepia bleach and
redeveloper. We get away with this although there are still many (the
majority) ruined prints
In another attempt to produce a 'toned print' David tried using Lith
Developer. The tones David produces are excellent but again the emulsion
bubbles and lifts off too often for this to be practical. The effect of both
the sepia toner and the Lith developer appears identical.
One solution David is trying (as we speak) is to pre coat the watercolour
paper with a gelatine solution hardened with Chrome Alum but this has
produced its own interesting (but annoying) effect. The print now darkens
significantly when it is at the fixing stage, it doesn't look fogged it just
looks like it has had too much initial exposure. David is also using Chrome
Alum as an additive to the Liquid Light emulsion but as well as the
darkening effect in the fixer the emulsion is still lifting off.
This is very frustrating because this process works fine with smaller paper
sizes, the problems have only occurred now that David is working on very
large A1 size sheets of paper.
Does anybody have any suggestions?
We are aware that we are using more than the recommended amount of Liquid
Light per print but this has worked so well with smaller prints and reducing
the amount of liquid light produces a poorer print (blacks etc).
In Hope!
Nigel Miller (for David Rato)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 08/07/03-03:34:50 PM Z CST