Burning Highlights

Nathan King

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I have a negative with a small distracting highlight near the edge that I am trying to burn down slightly. The spot on the negative is at full density and prints paper white. No matter how long I burn the spot it does not darken (5+ stops of burning). I'm assuming this means absolutely no light is making it through the negative. I tried removing the negative for the burn, but that is extremely difficult to control as a large amount of light is projected even at the smallest aperture. How does everybody here solve this issue?

I'm a decent printer but have never come across a highlight that absolutely refuses to burn!
 

Bob Carnie

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Nathan

this calls for a slight pre paper flash, and then burn in with the grade 5 to darken any darker areas in the highlight.

Calls for a second light source or enlarger, and basically you do a test strip of flash with image over top.. at a certain point you will reach the threshold that works besf for you.

leave the neg in the enlarger.
 

Sirius Glass

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I too would go with cropping since it does not add to the composition.
 

spijker

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Another option might be to remove it with retouching the print. It depends on the size of the highlight and its surroundings. I've "removed" a bright lamp post in a night shot that way. The surrounding area was very dark in my case so all I had to do was fill up the bright spot with black spotting dye.
 

dpurdy

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Ditto.

If it is small and near the edge I would probably spot it down with spot tone.
 

MartinP

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If it is a hard edged highlight of significant size then you could make a quick RC print of the scene and cut out the highlight to use as a mask. Feather down and darken the edges of the cutout, to avoid any reflection from the thickness of the paper edges. If the neg is completely light-proof then use some sort of flashing torch, with a MG filter if white light doesn't easily produce the tone you want.
 

David Allen

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If you do not want to crop due to detail elsewhere at the edge of the image, then a small pre-flash of this problem area is the easiest way to go.

Firstly, you do not need a second enlarger or light source.

Secondly, you will need to be able to mask around the area slightly (using your hands or make a hole in a piece of card).

Thirdly, you need to make sure that you pre-flash the area is slightly larger than the white highlight.

To do the pre-flash you will need a thin piece of semi-opaque perspex large enough so that it covers the enlarger lens and there is enough to spare so that you can temporarily fix the perspex to the barrel of the lens using a couple of bits of BluTack. The perspex will diffuse the whole image creating a uniform diffuse light source meaning that you can do a test print on any area of the print.

Find the time that achieves the level of toning down (moving away from pure paper base) that suits your requirements.

Using your hand or the card mask, expose the pure white highlight area for the determined time and then remove the perplex and expose the print for the correct exposure that you have already pre-determined in the usual way with a test print that has identified exposure and contrast..

Incidentally, you can use the same piece of perspex/technique for whole print or selective pre-flashing in the future.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de
 
OP
OP

Nathan King

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The highlight in question is a piece of sky. There is no detail to recover in the negative, I simply want this small area to print very slightly darker than paper white to mitigate distraction. I will try the flashing technique this weekend, but I'm quite intimidated as it seems complicated.

This is exactly why I love this forum. There is so much knowledge here!
 

ic-racer

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Simple flash= burn after removing negative or use penlight
 

David Allen

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Hi Nathan,

the method that I described is very easy to do - no need to be intimidated.

All you are really doing is slightly fogging the area where the highlight is to take it away from pure paper base. This is exactly the same as any other area that you might burn in - only difference is that you are adding a grey tone rather than detail a per normal burning in.

Once you give it a try, I am sure you will get the hang of it very quickly - and pre-flashing is a very useful technique to have in your toolkit.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de
 

MattKing

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It is a lot easier to use the penlight, if you start with some light flashing to get the paper right up close to the threshold.
 

cliveh

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I would suggest that you need to address the cause rather than the effect. Could you not crop it out in the original composition, or expose to allow for this highlight at a lower value?
 

Mike Crawford

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Hi Nathan
I use a very similar method to David and works a treat. I use a larger sheet of diffuse perspex (about 30cm square) held between the paper and lens so can either give a complete flash or with a card flash in edges or very hot spots. best thing is no need to take the neg out or move the enlarger. I normally do it all as a post flash but works the same pre or post. As David says, very easy to get the hang of it. I was teaching this one time and a student suggested using a paper cup under the lens. Could work.
 

Bob Carnie

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Nice method ... I always have an enlarger prepped for flashing and never considered this way of doing it.
 

DREW WILEY

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A thick piece of black board with a hole in it, itself covered with frosted mylar. Helps to have a registration frame.
 

blindpig

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I've used Drew's technique only with the diffuser below the large piece of cardboard and a white or light gray piece of paper on top.The hole is through the white paper and cardboard.With the large piece of cardboard covering the whole printing area,it can be closer to the print paper and you can see the image on the white paper on top allowing accurate location of the hole.It can be moved around to help with softening the outline if needed and in this case registration wouldn't be necessary.
Good luck...
 

Sirius Glass

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Take a print of the negative and cut out the highlight area and then use that as a mask to burn in the area with or without the negative in the enlarger.
 

Bob Carnie

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All my burning in cards have white paper on top so I can see where to burn in.. very good technique.
 

M Carter

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Two thoughts on this -

The "you need a second light source" to fog or flash - I don't believe this is the case. I made a flashing-thing… a 2" - to 1.5" PVC adapter, with a circle of matte plastic, and a 1" piece of 1.5" PVC pushed in to hold the diffusion in place. I stick the fat side right over the lens and flash.

With diffusion, you don't need to pull the negative or anything - you just get even, white light. It's not a ton of light, and you have to do a flash test strip for the f-stop, height, and paper type - my times are running 10-20 seconds… but that's kinda cool if you want to mask or dodge the flashing. There is absolutely no sense of the negative on the paper plane - just even light.

Precision burning: we all have our white-top, black-bottom cards with little holes. I had a shot where I needed to burn in just the wedding ring on a hand shot. I took a scrap of red gel and rested it on top of the burn card. That way, I could get the card perfectly aligned on the spot with no exposure due to the red, and then with a slide of my thumb move the red gel away without moving the card. I set the timer longer than the burn, and once the gel is slid away, I count to the beeps.

In the past I've used a desktop microphone boom stand to position precise dodging and burning cards, since it's heigh adjustable and can swing away. This works pretty well, you just have to jiggle the card - but the red gel for very specific burns - man, it's pretty kickass.

I drew this with my stylus pad and it's horrible but shows the idea:

 

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M Carter

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Two thoughts on this -

The "you need a second light source" to fog or flash - I don't believe this is the case. I made a flashing-thing… a 2" - to 1.5" PVC adapter, with a circle of matte plastic, and a 1" piece of 1.5" PVC pushed in to hold the diffusion in place. I stick the fat side right over the lens and flash.

With diffusion, you don't need to pull the negative or anything - you just get even, white light. It's not a ton of light, and you have to do a flash test strip for the f-stop, height, and paper type - my times are running 10-20 seconds… but that's kinda cool if you want to mask or dodge the flashing. There is absolutely no sense of the negative on the paper plane - just even light.

Precision burning: we all have our white-top, black-bottom cards with little holes. I had a shot where I needed to burn in just the wedding ring on a hand shot. I took a scrap of red gel and rested it on top of the burn card. That way, I could get the card perfectly aligned on the spot with no exposure due to the red, and then with a slide of my thumb move the red gel away without moving the card. I set the timer longer than the burn, and once the gel is slid away, I count to the beeps.

In the past I've used a desktop microphone boom stand to position precise dodging and burning cards, since it's heigh adjustable and can swing away. This works pretty well, you just have to jiggle the card - but the red gel for very specific burns - man, it's pretty kickass.

I drew this with my stylus pad and it's horrible but shows the idea:

 

Bob Carnie

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We seem to be speaking very small localized area in the sky..

My comments were for very large areas of sky where one wants to put in a slight tone to separated sky from lets say the rebate.

A second enlarger or light source on a controllable timer is more conducive to this..
Also if we want to step it up a notch we could discuss making a positive blocking mask which would be above the paper plane that allows only light to pass
into the highlight regions.
This would allow for multiple areas to be affected at once with a controllable burn

We use to use red ruby masks that were positioned on a swing out arm that held glass or plexi that would be used for these kind of secondary burns.
A lot of this could be solved with registered pins in the enlarger and double printing as well.
Contour masks above a large negative could also be used.

Alan Ross I believe uses a variation on some of this thinking to work around diffiicult negatives.
Steve Sherman is a great pre flash printer and his results speak volumes to this method of controlling highlights.

Another key to burning in highlights which seems to be ignored is using the Grade 5 filter to darken down areas within the highlight that have tone
to create a believable burn.
 
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