Contrast filters

[DREW WILEY]

ooops... meant to say, old Brilliant print. LOTS of silver back in them thar hills! As far as Oriental goes, the neo-Seagull just didn't have the same
guts as the earlier Bromide paper, and their VC version has always been disappointing to me.

 

[Svenedin]

Here are some test strips I made for calibration purposes (Stouffer transmission step wedge) on Ilford Multigrade IV RC. The actual numbers are not important for this discussion but the strips illustrate how contrast increases with increasing grade number. It also illustrates how there are more grey tones using a softer (lower number) filter and fewer with a higher number filter.

Picture attached.

 

[DREW WILEY]

That's a good illustration, but one statement was potentially misleading. A harder grade paper doesn't necessarily diminish the amount of grey tones,
but can in fact bring out even more via accentuating microtonality. It all depends on the contrast in the original negative, along with how one might dodge, burn, or mask that particular image when printing. Even a Grade 1 paper can be turned into proverbial "soot and chalk" if the negative is too
contrasty in the first place. I've taken negs with no visible image on them at all - just the pyro stain itself which can only be seen through a deep blue
filter - then printed onto the hardest grade a VC paper will achieve, using a deep blue 47B filter over the enlarger lens, and ended up with incredibly
nuanced grays and internal detail. Old school wisdom called for "thick"(overexposed, overdeveloped) negatives and soft papers. I often do just the opposite, though it is critical to maintain threshold shadow separation in the original shot. The proof is in the pudding.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I'd like to try printing just the stain and see what actually happens. Presumably a film like FP4 should stain pretty well in a strong-stain developer like PMK or WD2H. It would be a difficult comparison to make though.

I agree it is potentially misleading to say lower grades print more greys. In fact every grade prints the same continuous scale of greys from d-min to d-max. The difference is the log H range.

Good Point Michael

When printing with the Lambda we balance a 21 step wedge and have complete tonal balance from highlight to shadow.
This paper is a Galerie Grade 4 emulsion with some red sensitivity .

Bob

 

[DREW WILEY]

Michael - I came up with some weird pyrogallol tweak with HP5plus that left stain only, but did NOT involve bleaching the silver image like others have done. I had some fun experimenting with this kind of thing, and ended up with lovely prints, but stopped doing it once I switched over mainly
to Bergger 200 and then TMY for my 8x10 needs. My own tweak wouldn't work with any other modern film, including FP4, though old school Super-XX with its thick emulsion would have probably worked. I still do similar prints, but just with a weak full-scale visible image instead of using the stain alone. Pyro has a tanning effect which gives an interesting negative/positive effect, where one can evaluate the positive image using oblique light with a black background. But you need a silver rich paper which can really skate on the gradation nuances. I originally used Brilliant Bromide; but
now MGWT does a fine job. I haven't tried Ilfobrom Galerie yet, though I am printing normal pyro images with it when appropriate. I'm one of those
itchy printers who tailors paper, surface sheen, developer, and toning to the specific image, rather than a one-shoe-fits-all approach.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I can't answer that. I was operating on the premise of an alchemist, not a chemist. I have labored long and hard to FORGET my three miserable years
of college chemisty! I'd have to look back at my notes to refresh my memory on the specific technique. It was a special pyro formula I made up on
a hunch, based on preliminary results with a small quantity of Super-XX I still had; and it was completely repeatable with early HP5-plus, but with nothing else hence. Around a decade later I noticed a very subtle change with HP5plus, and assume there was a minor change in its manufacture. None of the later product worked for stain only, nor did FP4 etc. This wasn't the only peculiar trick I was experimenting on with HP5, so I was keenly aware of minor nuances in development and printing. Early on, I was doing more "thick negative" technique with HP5 in order to bring exposure well
up the curve, while exaggerating midtone tonality, then pulling down the highlights via unsharp masking. As an alternative I tried that crazy stain-only
tweak and got similar results on hard grade paper. Once Bergger (Lotus) 200 hit the market as a partial substitute for Super-XX, I switched over to
it for its very long straight line characteristics which saved me from routine masking in high-contrast situations. Now TMY comes close, though it's
not a true straight-line film. Fomapan 200 is just too slow and idiosyncratic, and has too many quality control issues to fill that niche for me. Doubt
we'll ever see a true old-school thick emulsion sheet film on the market ever again.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Drew invented photography, I believe all his stories, he actually met Big Foot and has the pictures.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Nice try, Bob. (He's referring to a thread on a different site.) I didn't own a camera yet. I don't remember if my mom or any others took a snapshot of Bigfoot in costume or the rest of us with her box Brownie prior to departing for the hoax. If she did, it would be tilted like all her other pictures.
We weren't wealthy, but at that point in time my older brother was selling Linhof and Rollei gear, and managed to talk a Pentax salesman into a deal on one of their early Honeywell 35mm cameras, which was my birthday present the following year. I was thrilled. But not every oddity of luck
in a darkroom can be explained or repeated later in history. Has anyone ever figured out how color dauguerrotypes came into existence? There is
speculation that some unknown contaminants in batches of sensitizing solution were involved, since quality control was poor back then. But the
remaining images are so rare and historically valuable that no one is likely to subject them to any degree of destructive analysis.