Black & White Printing with contrast control

[cliveh]

For those of you who print with contrast control, how many of you find you dial in more magenta than yellow. I would bet most and wonder what this says about your exposure and development?

 

[Bob Carnie]

magenta is often used more than yellow in my case so you are correct. I like slightly meatier negatives.

 

[cliveh]

magenta is often used more than yellow in my case so you are correct. I like slightly meatier negatives.

Don't you mean prints.

 

[Oscar Carlsson]

It sounds mostly like you don't want any answers but simply state something you take pride in - please do this in your blog or something instead.

To feed the obvious troll here - I prefer to raise the contrast instead of having to pre-flash to handle negatives with too high contrast. I prefer a negative with a slightly lower contrast.

Also, it all depends on how I'd like the print. If I want it soft...well no magenta here.

 

[Doc W]

It sounds mostly like you don't want any answers but simply state something you take pride in - please do this in your blog or something instead.

To feed the obvious troll here - I prefer to raise the contrast instead of having to pre-flash to handle negatives with too high contrast. I prefer a negative with a slightly lower contrast.

Also, it all depends on how I'd like the print. If I want it soft...well no magenta here.

I am with you Oscar. I try to get the negative right to avoid all that darkroom drama. If I can get what I want from mostly a straight print, I am happy.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Don't you mean prints.

no I meant negatives with lots of density , and these negatives always require a magenta filter.

 

[cliveh]

It sounds mostly like you don't want any answers but simply state something you take pride in - please do this in your blog or something instead.

To feed the obvious troll here - I prefer to raise the contrast instead of having to pre-flash to handle negatives with too high contrast. I prefer a negative with a slightly lower contrast.

Also, it all depends on how I'd like the print. If I want it soft...well no magenta here.

I agree that all images are subjective and it very much depends on how you like the print, but regardless of that I wonder what % of people are using more magenta than yellow, with no troll intended.

 

[NedL]

I come to this from the other direction. My cold light has lots of blue in it, so my soft (green filter) exposure is always much longer than my hard (blue filter) exposure. Typically about 25s G and 6s B. I've found that negatives that print this way give me good latitude of choice with the hard exposure. If my negatives have a bit too much contrast, my hard exposure gets down around 1 or 2 seconds. Like others above, I like to have a little more control in adding contrast, so I target my film development for a 20-6 or 25-6 split. I make my notes and decisions about how to develop the film based on how these splits play out from printing ( along with overall density and shadow detail ... which is also about how the film is exposed, not just how long it is developed )

 

[MattKing]

Depends on light source.

But with respect to negatives, like Bob I tend to prefer having certainty about there being enough exposure, so my negatives are more likely to err on the side of over-exposure. Which means I'm unlikely to over-develop. Which means that 2.5 is much more commonly used than 1.5.

 

[Mark Tate]

I use a lot of both, Half my exposure at 00 and the other half at 5 or any percentage of each depending on the negative and what I want in the print. Split filtering is a great way to exploit unique contrast and tones.

When you start to use Ortho films like Rollei ortho 25 most of the time you need to use more yellow in order to tame the high contrast of this type of film, for this film I often use around 70% yellow with only 30% magenta.

I will also use selective contrast control on just parts of the print.

But no I do not automatically use more Magenta than Yellow, for films such as Tmax100 developed in my standard way I could print without any filters 90% of the time.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

I am with Bob. I like a thick neg and that requires magenta. I can't remember the last time I didn't use any magenta in a print.

 

[Neal]

Dear cliveh,

I think the crossover from yellow to to magenta for most papers is around grade 2 so it would seem that your observation is quite reasonable. With my old Super Chromega Dichroic head the normal setting is between 10M and 20M.

Neal Wydra

 

[David Allen]

It is totally irrelevant how much of one filter or the other a photographer uses.

The only thing that matters is that the print matches what the photographer wanted to create (with the proviso that the interpretation of the negative may well change over time).

In any other sphere of creativity, would anyone even ask such a question? - I think not. In my experience what people in other fields discuss is what is their opinion of the final result.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de

 

[Doremus Scudder]

I think the question here is, do most of us develop our negatives so that "normal" is in the middle of the contrast scale of the paper (i.e., very little of either magenta or yellow) or not. The implied assumption, however, that not doing this is somehow "wrong" is false. I designate a large portion of the negatives I shoot for printing on grade 3 or higher for the sake of micro contrast and grain. For these negs, I use magenta filtration or a higher paper grade (I still like graded papers, although finding them is getting harder).

Certainly, you don't want to be consistently at one end or the other of the contrast scale, since you have little leeway in one direction that way. However, "normal contrast" is anything you want it to be within reason. I like to standardize on higher paper contrast for small negatives and a large part of my LF work.

Doremus

 

[Bill Burk]

I'm a bit confused by the comment that a dense negative requires high contrast to print... I recently printed a negative with lots of density... and I printed it on Galerie Grade 2 paper.

My instinct tells me Bob Carnie is working with studio lighting which might be giving lower lighting ratios than my outdoor nature photography in the mountains.

And I do a bit of tailoring of negative development time to fit subject luminance range onto paper grade. I could give information about the subject brightness range and the negative density range and the characteristic curve of the film... and it all supports that I got what I aimed for...

But then even Andreas Feininger shows me that contrast is reduced when you overexpose. He was showing a print series from exposures of a clear light bulb over a range of exposures from minimum where you just see the filament to normal where it looks like a light bulb to overexposure until you get partial solarization (which looks just like Sabbatier effect) and onto complete solarization where the filament is black on the print and everything else is white.

So it must be that at some point you do lose contrast... But my exposures which are just a stop or two over minimum, print on normal paper.

 

[cliveh]

I'm a bit confused by the comment that a dense negative requires high contrast to print...

I was also.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

It is totally irrelevant how much of one filter or the other a photographer uses.

The only thing that matters is that the print matches what the photographer wanted to create (with the proviso that the interpretation of the negative may well change over time).

In any other sphere of creativity, would anyone even ask such a question? - I think not. In my experience what people in other fields discuss is what is their opinion of the final result.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de

100% agree with this. My personal preference is to give my film a little bit more exposure than what the manufacturer recommends, and process a little bit longer. This gives me negatives with a little bit more density and a little bit more contrast than recommended by the manufacturers. This way I get great shadow detail, wonderful midtone gradation, and highlights that require a little bit of work, but I think the print itself becomes more appealing tonality wise when I am successful at bringing them to the tonality that I want.
That's my system.

I find that I usually end up printing at Grade 3 or 3.5, by the way, so if I was using a dichroic head, I would be using more magenta than yellow. As you can tell, I like contrast and rich tonality.
But as David says, all of that is academic if the printer/photographer achieves what they want. It's a big system, where every action until the print comes out of the final wash affects the end result. Hopefully most of the decisions leading to those actions are conscious, indicating that we are relatively well in control of our work flow.

 

[MattKing]

I'm a bit confused by the comment that a dense negative requires high contrast to print...

I think a lot of people who choose to expose generously also develop a bit less, with a mind to keeping the highlights in check. So the result is a negative with a bit less contrast.

The increased density alone doesn't result in less contrast, unless you get way up in the shoulder of the curve.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I'm a bit confused by the comment that a dense negative requires high contrast to print... I recently printed a negative with lots of density... and I printed it on Galerie Grade 2 paper.

My instinct tells me Bob Carnie is working with studio lighting which might be giving lower lighting ratios than my outdoor nature photography in the mountains.

And I do a bit of tailoring of negative development time to fit subject luminance range onto paper grade. I could give information about the subject brightness range and the negative density range and the characteristic curve of the film... and it all supports that I got what I aimed for...

But then even Andreas Feininger shows me that contrast is reduced when you overexpose. He was showing a print series from exposures of a clear light bulb over a range of exposures from minimum where you just see the filament to normal where it looks like a light bulb to overexposure until you get partial solarization (which looks just like Sabbatier effect) and onto complete solarization where the filament is black on the print and everything else is white.

So it must be that at some point you do lose contrast... But my exposures which are just a stop or two over minimum, print on normal paper.

Bill I do control the lighting ratio to 1:5 and not beyond so maybe this explains a bit.

 

[DREW WILEY]

If you HAVE to routinely add magenta, it means your negatives are underdeveloped, of too low contrast; if you have to inordinately use yellow, they're overdeveloped. But beyond that, we might just be stuck with a particular frame on a roll of film out of character from the rest. Then with some VC papers, the manner in which the respective color layers respond unequally to toners might require me to bend the rules. There are just so,
so many variables. If you develop small as well as large negs to the same parameters, but print to the same size, the smaller ones will obviously
need greater magnification, hence more contrast, more magenta. But it helps to have your "typical" negatives start around the mid-point.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

I think a lot of people who choose to expose generously also develop a bit less, with a mind to keeping the highlights in check. So the result is a negative with a bit less contrast.

The increased density alone doesn't result in less contrast, unless you get way up in the shoulder of the curve.

This is exactly right. I overexpose Tri-X regularly when I want to get the shadows up off the long toe and don't lose contrast at all unless I overexpose so much that the highlights start to shoulder off. That, however, is about 3 or more stops overexposed in a normal contrast situation. Other films may be different. However, when you get the highlights up onto the shoulder, it becomes difficult to get the separation you often desire and they need "a little bit of work" to get them to sing. Knowing what your film does and what you want from the print helps here.

And, as mentioned, I'm with Drew about tailoring your negatives so that most print well somewhere in the middle of the contrast range.

Best,

Doremus

 

[cliveh]

Bill I do control the lighting ratio to 1:5 and not beyond so maybe this explains a bit.

That explains a lot, as the original lighting ratio and exposure are very relevant factors.

 

[Doc W]

Most of my negatives print with equal amounts of magenta and yellow. I guess I really don't understand this thread. It seems to be implied that using magenta is somehow virtuous.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Either a misunderstanding of why it is done, or just one more redundant thread for the sake of something to talk about...

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Most of my negatives print with equal amounts of magenta and yellow. I guess I really don't understand this thread. It seems to be implied that using magenta is somehow virtuous.

No, it's just a creative tool to extract the qualities desired by us as printers. There is no more virtue associated with using magenta than there is with yellow. Whether you want low or high contrast in your resulting prints is a matter of taste, and therefore not an observation that can be objectively judged. Since it's subjective, nobody is right and nobody is wrong.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Most of my negatives print with equal amounts of magenta and yellow. I guess I really don't understand this thread. It seems to be implied that using magenta is somehow virtuous.

Not virtuous, but sometimes better. VC papers often have a "flat spot" in the mid-tones at the lower contrast settings. It's where the two contrast slopes for the two emulsion components cross, resulting in an area where the paper doesn't respond linearly. The older Ilford MG papers exhibited this; I'm not sure if it's been corrected in the latest batch. So, there is an argument for tailoring your negatives to print on the contrastier half of the range.

Personally, I use graded papers for grade 2-3 and lower and only dig out the VC when I need really high contrast (so I'm always using a lot of magenta when printing on VC). I'm using Slavich, Galerie and Foma graded papers these days.

Best,

Doremus