Comprimise to use one glassless mask and one glass in your neg holder ?

Many threads discuss the use of a pair of glass neg holders instead of the metal glassless holders.

I've also heard of people not using the AN glass for the top and using a metal glassless one in its place.

How much of a compromise is that to film flatness during printing ?

Thanks all !
Ron

neg popping is an issue with no glass, your solution kind of makes sense but if the pop only goes down.

I guess that riding a motorcycle with just one flat tire is better than riding on two flat tires, but not by much!

I assume both of you prefer the full glass approach ?

You are doing right thing only if you have glassless carrier on the bottom and AN glass on the top. Then you have 2 surfaces less to clean and your negative will not pop.
Despite all BS (filling numerous posts on internet) about extra dust showing on the pictures, keeping AN glass clean is very easy.
I have to admit that having glass on the bottom is pure pain, very similar in intensity with printing with both glassless carriers.

I have always used regular glass on bottom AN glass on top. since 1980 .

Though I did do a lot of wedding portraits before that where we did not use glass carriers,, 10 second exposures, diffusion colour enlargers and a slight softness of the portrait sometimes was a good thing.

I generally use AN glass BOTH above and below, since before 1980. But ALWAYS glass both sides, always. Whether or not I need AN below instead of basic optical glass depends on how slick the emulsion is (this is a foggy climate, prone to Newton ring issues). The texture of the glass won't interfere with the image at all IF you have the right type of AN glass for the degree of magnification and angle of incidence of the light source. But that's a more involved subject. If you prefer "pops" they have a type of corn that does that nicely.

All but one of my negative holders are glassless and I do not have a problem with them. Not negative popping.

However if I have trouble with a negative because its edge is too close to the image so the film does not lie flat or I am dealing with half frame [single frame] 35mm film then I use a 4"x5" glass negative carrier. Another time I use the glass carrier is when I am printing the WideLux negative which are 24mm x 59mm which does not work with any of the glassless negative holders.

I think that a negative always pops UP towards the heat source. Makes sense as that side of the negative is warmer and therefore expands more than the side towards the lens. So to avoid this, you would use (AN) glass on TOP of your negative. With large negatives, I presume that one can also get some sagging DOWN due to gravity. Here glass underneath your negative would be helpful.

I only use 645 negatives nowadays and use glass on both sides, plain glass at the bottom, AN glass (specifically for enlargers) on top. That works for me and I find that the Ilford anti-static cloth works very well for cleaning the glass. I always inspect the "mounted" negative with a loupe on a light pad for dust before the negative carrier goes into the enlarger. I don't find that much of a pain. FWIW I use a LPL 670 VCCE enlarger with the universal glass negative holder.

It depends on which format film you talk about and which enlarger you use. I can only speak for myself and my enlargers, but what goes for my system may not work for yours.

I use Leitz Valoy II, Focomats 1C an 2C and a Durst L1000.

The Valoy II and 1C have a condenser that presses down on the negative: no further glass involved and wonderful engineering of the glassless negative holder, all remains 100% flat. For the Valoy II Leitz made socalled Anti Newton condensers (standard in the later grey and lightgrey versions) and for the 1C there's a anti newton glass that slips on the condenser.

The 2C has diferent negative holders. Most common is the one with two glasses, the top one anti newton. This enlarger does 135 to 6X9. With this holder everything is flat but you are cleaning four sides of the glasses. For 6X6 there are metal holders made by Kienzle. For the 2C I have never seen any metal holder for larger than 6X6.
Less common is the 135mm negative holder, which is precisely what you are talking about: plain glass below and a metal holder on top. It works perfectly and reduces the cleaning to only the bottom glass.

Over the years I have gotten extra metal holders for 135 and 6X6, that I have all filed out a little, also the ones made by Kienzle. These give me more black border around image which I then mask off with easels.

The Durst L1000 has a holder that has either glass, or metal masks. I haven't had this enlarger long enough to experiment with glassless.

I may be wrong but sometimes, with the 2C, I have felt Anti Newton glass does do something to the image. Let's say it evens it out more, or makes it a little less in contrast. This certainly does not go for all negatives. So sometimes I change to glassless holders for that reason. Or sometimes, for 135mm, I switch from 1C to 2C with the Newton glass in the holder because that solves a problem.

A useful 'easy' way to print 35mm with the apparently-fashionable black neg border in a Meopta enlarger is to use the top frame of their glassless mounts on the bottom part of the carrier, together with the standard AN glass on top. The glassless top frame is a mm or so wider and longer than the image on the neg, and the AN glass takes care of the usual upwards bulge of the neg.

One must be careful not to leave the steel glassless frame in contact with the AN glass (ie. with no neg in between) to avoid damage to the glass, which would then show up when you use the universal carrier for medium-format negs.

The Focomat V35 has a carrier with AN glass on top and glassless below, as do some rather ancient Zenith enlargers, so it can work for small negs. In my experience, double glass is usually more certain though, and definitely flatter than glassless.

It's not just about "pop". Any kind of distortion is going to compromise print sharpness. That includes the paper itself warping during exposure. So to even do an objective test you'd need to project onto something firmly held in a vacuum easel, which would preferably be
sheet film rather than paper for the sake of optimal detail capture, and have all the planes, lens choice etc optimized, true optical-bench
standards. Then the bigger the film or thinner (120 acetate), the more the problem is going to be. But having done this type of thing a long time with very high quality gear intended for immaculate big prints, I'd say anything "glassless" is practical only if you've got a cool light source and relatively brief exposures. Even then, I'd be very skeptical how many prints are coming out as sharp overall as they could be doing it the right way. But then, I can understand why some people don't want to be constantly cleaning glass.

neg popping is not a problem with some enlargers and it is with others. The new LED light sources don't generate heat like a bulb does.

Best policy is to keep negs pressed flat so that if heat isn't a problem then you don't need glass top or bottom with smaller negs.

Just depends on your standards. "Good enough" for some is not anywhere near good enough for others.

shoot6x7 said:

Many threads discuss the use of a pair of glass neg holders instead of the metal glassless holders.

I've also heard of people not using the AN glass for the top and using a metal glassless one in its place.

How much of a compromise is that to film flatness during printing ?

Thanks all !
Ron

Click to expand...

film flatness is key during enlarging.I'm more worried about focus than dust.I clean and spot before putting up with out-of-focus-images

I made a post in "Enlarging" section that was meant to be here. Don't know if or how I can to move it!
Richard

I have a LPL 6700 enlarger with both glass carriers and glassless. The glassless carrier always allowed the 35mm negative to move irrespective, long exposures are the worst. I therefore adapted the glassless one using a AN glass from a 35mm slide mount and using double sided adhesive tape, secured it to the underside of the upper plate on the carrier on one side allowing it to move like a hinge. The problem of 'popping' has all but been eliminated. I did have to make some adjustments to the hinges as well with thin washers under the hinge and the arrangement works very well. The only downside is I have to remove the carrier if I need to adjust the position of the negative. With one glass only, dust isn't a problem either.

It is actually quite striking how much difference this had made. I use a Rodagon APO lens and whereas before I had to stop down to F5.6 to get good coverage corner to corner, I can now expose at F5.6.

shoot6x7 said:

Many threads discuss the use of a pair of glass neg holders instead of the metal glassless holders.

I've also heard of people not using the AN glass for the top and using a metal glassless one in its place.

How much of a compromise is that to film flatness during printing ?

Thanks all !
Ron

Click to expand...

That's what I've always done, never had a neg pop in over 40 years.

Ian

Ian Grant said:

That's what I've always done, never had a neg pop in over 40 years.

Ian

Click to expand...

My Beseler 67 pops 35mm negatives after about ten seconds with very few exceptions. You can power up the lamp while looking through the grain magnifier and slowly but surely watch the nicely focused grain turn into a blur. If you keep the light source on and "pre-pop" the negative it is bowed up in the center enough to put the corners very slightly out of focus on large prints. I ended up having to make prints in five second intervals with a five second rest in between. It was so irritating I purchased a Focomat with a glass carrier for my 35mm negatives. Interestingly enough, I've never had a medium format negative pop in that enlarger. I've never had a soft print with the AN condenser resting on the negative and no bottom glass.

I tried the one glass system and had issues... specifically on very large magnifications where grain is obvious consideration.

I have always used two glass .. regular bottom and AN on top.. I know its a pain but basically worth the effort.

I have a light box setup, with paper towels, anti static cloth to clean the neg, lens cleaner cloth which is great for cleaning the glass, Super Gunk remover, methol alchohol , a good loup, qtips,Edwal film cleaner,
Black electric tape to mask out the negative-used on the bottom of the regular glass, and scotch tape to hold neg in place.

Biggest factor is 45% and above humidity and a can of dust off, which after using the above is not used as much as one thinks.

I have quite a few setups for the different formats so every two years or so I buy more glass from Focal Point and basically can make pretty decent prints.

I use to be a good spotter of prints, now not so much so I have a good couple of retouchers that work magic.

I would love not to use glass but I am afraid I am spoiled with super sharp prints and do not want to go back.

Early on in my darkroom I had a Bogen/Vivitar 66 type enlarger with flimsy sheet metal carriers. I was able to take them apart and put the 66 part on top with a lantern slide glass taped underneath, using the 35mm bottom part, and masking tape for guidance rails. I think I had that about 10 years. Without the glass the carriers didn't work well, but with it they were fine. I didn't know about Newton Rings at the time, so they never found me. Or maybe it was something about the lantern slide cover glass.

For a while I used a sheet of glass on the bottom and mat board cutouts on top. Each mat was cut to size and covered with black tape to keep dust down. Worked great, never had issues with interference fringes (aka Newton's rings).

I detect the usual bifurcation between the pro school of thought and the Beverly Hillbillies concept of a darkroom, which goes better with
gopher stew.

I don't know about the stew, but for the 35mm and 6x6 holders on my Chromega B I took the AN glass out of Gepe slide mounts and carefully glued it to the inside of the top half of the film holder. No more popping and no complaints. I'm printing 16x16 from 6x6 at a sharpness level that I'm very happy with. Of course, my enlarger is aligned and my enlarging lenses are selected from testing. YeeHaw!!!

I did the same thing with my very first enlarger. AN Gepe mounts. That lasted about six months and I moved up to a real deal 4x5 rig, which
was nice as long as I didn't need to print real film (8x10), the kind of thing worthy of real badgers and skunks in the stew.