Lith Print of a Clear Glass Ambrotype

As said before I also made my first real clear glass ambrotype, aka a glass negative, in Montzen. Yesterday I tried to make a lith print out of it. Very much to my liking! The grain really adds to the ambience and feel of the image.

I used Rollei Vintage 131 Fiber paper and made the first print on 18×24 cm paper to try it out. I loved it so much I”ll be making a large print as soon as the paper arrives: 50×60 cm. Also, this was my first go with the Omega D2 enlarger…wow..that thing is awesome!!! Beautiful machine which I’ll use a whole lot more often now that I got it working with the 4×5″ glass plate holder.

The only thing needed to be done was the toning part. I always used selenium toner before but also bought gold toner a while back. With selenium the tone, or wouldn’t hardly change, or make it more red. Both was just not what I had in mind. Luckily I remembered my gold toner in time so I ordered 2 more liters for the large print and tonight tested it. The prints are still wet so I’ll scan and post them tomorrow. Impressions: 4 minutes were too long; too blue. With 2 minutes I kept a little warmish yellow and got a little blueish and that was exactly what I was after.

Sure, with lith printing the true characteristics of Collodion have practically gone (though not really if you look carefully) so you might wonder why. First of all, because I couldn’t wait making and printing my first collodion negative! Secondly, lith printing is what I know (a little) and came to love (traditional bw printing has gotten boring to me) so this was the way to go for now. I’m still trying to figure out which processes I’m going to dive into for printing the collodion negatives but time has not really been on my side so far. Thirdly and most importantly, because I like it! So eat it!

Anyway, a happy goose here and I’m looking forward to the big print!

-Indra