Lith printing would work very well with the lovely North Wales landscapes.
Lith is a great process but it takes a while and a lot of experimentation to get it right. Tim Rudman is the expert on lith and you can get a free download report from his website on materials and papers to use.
I found the Fotospeed L20 developer a good choice.
Paper is more problematic and I've experimented with many and found that a lot don't work well for lith. Although I love Ilford paper for general printing, it doesn't take lith well. I narrowed it down to 2 paper types that I use for lith:
1. Slavich Unibrom from Silverprint which is a cold tone FB paper giving high contrast images almost like charcoal drawings, and
2. Fomatone MG from ag photographic which gives warm and smooth tones and a lovely peach and salmon colour range.
These 2 papers are at the opposite ends of the spectrum depending on what you want the lith prints to look like.
Lith printing is different from normal processing as it is an infectious developer so the print is in the developer for an indeterminate amount of time and removed (snatched) from the developer when it looks right. ie the snatch point.
There are several key factors in lith printing and each one can have a significant impact on the end result which is why it is said that much experimentation is necessary before getting the result you want.
Key factors are:
1. Highlights in the print are dictated by exposure time under the enlarger; the longer under the enlarger the more highlight detail there will be, Tim Rudman suggests over exposing by 2 to 3 stops as a rule of thumb.
2. Blacks and shadow detail are determined by length of time left in developer. The print is left in the developer until the blacks and shadow detail is at the desired level and then the print is snatched and fixed. The snatch point time can vary enormously. I've had it from 2 minutes to half an hour depending on other factors such as chemical and paper type and exposure time.
3.Developer used.
i As above I use Fotospeed L20 but other developers are available
ii Dilution of developer. I experimented with dilution levels between 1:15 and 1:30 and found higher levels gave more pleasing results. Tim Rudman recommends mixing in 'old brown' (exhausted developer) at 1:4
iii Freshness of developer. A fresh mixed batch only does a few prints, far fewer than you would be used to with traditional printing, and exhausts very quickly. The stage of freshness therefore impacts on final result.
4. Paper type.
As above I use 2 different types of paper that react very differently to lith and the prints would look very very different even if every other variable was identical.
Hope this helps.
If you are in North Wales you are not too far from me in Manchester. So if you fancied a trip here I would be happy to show you how this all works in practice in my darkroom here,
